The German Democratic Republic was founded on 7 October 1949. For four decades it existed as a socialist state on German soil before being brought down in 1990 in the course of the counterrevolution. The founding of the GDR was a response to the experiences and political conditions of its time. German fascism had destroyed the organized workers’ movement in the interests of monopoly and finance capital, abolished bourgeois-democratic structures, and established an open dictatorship backed by a comprehensive system of terror. At the same time, fascist Germany unleashed the Second Imperialist World War.
The peoples of the Soviet Union and the Red Army, together with the political and military leadership of the USSR, played the decisive role in crushing fascism. Alongside anti-fascist resistance movements and partisan forces in numerous European countries, they made enormous sacrifices in securing fascism’s defeat. It was against this historical background that the GDR emerged, with the declared aim of making a fundamental break with fascism and capitalism and building a socialist society.
The achievements of the GDR and the Cold War
The GDR was thus the socialist and anti-fascist answer to a capitalist system that had repeatedly fed the working class into the slaughterhouse as cannon fodder and reduced entire countries to ruins. In less than thirty years, international monopoly and finance capital had twice plunged the peoples into gigantic wars, leaving millions dead and wounded in the struggle for maximum profits.
For four decades, a socialist society was successfully built in the GDR: peace, social security, greater equality and social justice, no unemployment or homelessness, and the nationalization of industry, banks and trade. Healthcare and education were free of charge. Gender equality was also more advanced than in the Federal Republic of Germany, while homosexuals enjoyed a more progressive legal status. As the Party of Labour states in one of its declarations: “The GDR was a milestone in the world revolutionary process.”
These realities, together with the GDR’s other achievements, represented — and still represent — a threat to the monopolies and their political servants in the bourgeois parties. Once the construction of socialism was proclaimed, anti-communist and counterrevolutionary activity by the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Economic Community, NATO and U.S. imperialism intensified.
As the Party of Labour (PdA) notes: “The GDR was never able to develop under ‘normal’ conditions. During the Cold War it stood on the front line. It had to bear enormous expenditure for the security of the state and its population, while constantly confronting hostile propaganda and espionage, technology embargoes, sabotage, and the problem that its own currency was not convertible on the world market.”
The Cold War was felt in the GDR with particular intensity. It was regarded as the forward post of European socialism, while the special situation created by West Berlin — an enclave surrounded by the territory of the GDR — further sharpened the conflict.
Western infiltration – with the destruction of the GDR as the goal
The GDR also had to contend with extensive infiltration from the West. Imperialist states and alliances hoped that a counterrevolution in the GDR — which played an important role in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) — would set off a domino effect, encouraging similar developments in other socialist states.
Berlin in the 1950s became a center of massive intelligence activity, with reports referring to around 80 different secret and intelligence services operating there. The objective was the destruction of the GDR, including the recruitment of informants and collaborators who could carry out sabotage from within.
As Tibor Zenker has observed: “Socialism is not a fool’s paradise in which everyone can simply do whatever happens to suit them. That kind of individualism has nothing to do with freedom. Nor is socialist revolution a magic trick by which all the problems of the world and humanity are solved overnight. It ‘merely’ creates the possibility — the necessary precondition — for solving them.”
This reality, combined with the need for economic reforms, Western propaganda and the systematic recruitment of qualified workers and specialists, contributed to sections of the GDR population leaving the country through Berlin. At the same time, economic problems, shortages of raw materials and unfulfilled expectations among parts of the population created additional difficulties.
The GDR was therefore confronted simultaneously with Western aggression and multiple internal crises. This situation ultimately led to the beginning of the construction of the Wall on 13 August 1961. It formed an essential basis for the GDR’s economic survival and for maintaining peace. Even John F. Kennedy recognized the latter point. The Wall also contributed to a greater concentration of social forces on the construction of socialism inside the GDR.
It was certainly not the original objective of the SED leadership to build a wall. It was the outcome of concrete historical conditions and became necessary for defending the continued existence of the GDR until 1989. It safeguarded the power of workers and peasants and the many social achievements won during those decades.
The myth of the Wall’s victims – while Frontex is considered acceptable
Alongside the myths already mentioned, the GDR’s border regime and the so-called “victims of the Wall” remain among the most frequently used instruments of anti-communist historical falsification.
Between 1961 and 1989, 140 people died at the Berlin Wall. Of these, only 101 were people attempting to flee who were shot, suffered fatal accidents while trying to cross the border installations, or took their own lives. Today almost nothing is said about GDR border guards who, over the course of 28 years, maintained peace along the inner-German border and were themselves killed by counterrevolutionaries and saboteurs. On the contrary, such cases are often included in the general number of “Wall deaths,” thereby distorting the statistics.
This corresponds to an average of around 3.6 deaths per year associated with border enforcement. Compare this, for example, with recent crossings at Ceuta, where as many as 140 people can die in a single day. Yet the European Union is not described as an “unjust regime,” nor does its border system provoke comparable public outrage, because it supposedly exists to defend “our freedom.”
According to the Missing Migrants Project, there have already been 2,185 dead and missing in the Mediterranean this year; in 2016, the figure reached a peak of 5,143. Frontex continues to perform its role in defending the European Union as an alliance of banks and generals. Over fifteen years of border enforcement in the Mediterranean, more than 38,500 people have died or gone missing, many of them as a consequence of policies carried out by Frontex together with the Libyan Coast Guard — intercepting overcrowded boats, forcing people back, sinking vessels and withholding assistance.
Yet none of this produces the same outrage.
There is no comparable scandal over the horrors generated by capitalism, over wars, the climate crisis or the other consequences of the economic system that dominates the world today. Instead, once again, every imaginable anti-communist myth is brought out — not only against the GDR, but against the Soviet Union as well.
Because only through lies, historical distortion and diversion can the existing system continue to present itself as the better alternative.
Source: Zeitung der Arbeit