Both quotes come from "Stalin's Unwanted Child -the Soviet Union, the German question and the foundation of the GDR." by Wilfred Loth.
In regard to the war years, the manifold uncertainties of the Soviet decision makers as to how to treat the defeated Germany and also the permanent orientation toward a joint administration by the victorious powers have been confirmed through research conducted by Alexei M. Filitov. He has examined papers of the Department of International Information of the Central Committee of the CPSU and of the Planning Commissions of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. In the very first and most detailed document setting out Soviet war aims, signed by Ivan Maiskii and sent to Molotov on 11 January 1944, Germany was treated as one of the countries in which "it may be necessary in order to secure the establishment of democratic regimes, to apply various measures of intervention from outside, by the USSR, the USA, and Britain". Maiskii affirmed that "the USSR is interested in seeing to it that the state structure of these countries shall be based on principles of broad democracy, in the spirit of the people's front idea" and presented the democratization as a joint venture of the Allies: "There are grounds for thinking that, where democratization of the regime in postwar Europe is concerned, it will be possible for the USSR, the USA, and Britain to cooperate, though this will not always be easy.";
Kliment Voroshilov, as chairman of the Commission for Questions regarding the Armistice, warned in April 1944 that it was "impermissible" to regard each Occupation Zone "as property of the Allied power which will occupy it". In November 1944, work was done on drawing up lists of candidates for administrative authorities for all of Germany; "under the joint control of the four victorious powers", all "of Germany's democratic forces were to participate". Maiskii explained that for this purpose, the old laws and the constitution of the Weimar Republic were to be put into effect; democracy had to be built upon this foundation.' At the same time, Maxim Litvinov, as chairman of the Commission on Questions of the Peace Treaties and Post-War Construction, recommended the formation of a "neutral zone" in the middle of the European continent encompassing Norway, Denmark, Germany, Austria, and Italy, "wherein both sides [the British and the Soviet] will cooperate on the same footing and with regular mutual consultation".'
The effects of this planning on the expectations and orientations of the KPD leadership in exile in Moscow can now be traced thanks to published excerpts from the papers of Wilhelm Pieck and Wilhelm Florin. In many different ways, these texts confirm that by the war's end the path to socialism was not on the agenda of the German Communists. On 24 April 1944, for example, Walter Ulbricht declared unequivocally to the Central Committee's commission responsible for planning the future:
Thus, according to this understanding, the "final goal" was not to be "striven for" at all in the democracy phase. Democracy was regarded as the prerequisite for the mere propagation of the final goal, and this was to be achieved solely through propagation. That much remained of the old Communist dream of the "masses" achieving class consciousness.In the period of opposition to Fascism, of Hitler's war, and in the period of setting up a new democracy, the party defers efforts to realize its final goal. In the struggle in Hitler's war and participation in setting up a new democracy, the extermination of the German reaction, the party sees the creation of the prerequisites for the propagation of its final goal.'
That Stalin understood "democracy" in this context, as nothing principally different from what his Western allies understood, is once againaffirmed by explanatory remarks Anton Ackermann made in 1963, after having been removed from power, to staff at the Institute for MarxismLeninism of the SEW According to his statements, the concept of "parliamentary-democratic republic" was explicitly employed and discussed "as the main orientation of the KPD" in the central meeting between the KPD leaders and Stalin on 4 June 1945:110 "Stalin too was
of the opinion that this motto was appropriate for the situation; a parliament can have various characters. But the hegemony of the working class and its revolutionary party had to be protected. Stalin clearly stated that the Soviet system was not to be transferred to Germany." Even though it remains unclear to what extent subsequent memories and contexts of the GDR have entered into these statements (above all in regard to the emphasis on the hegemony concept), the actual orientation on the contents of the KPD appeal of 11 June 1945 is unmistakable.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Vladimir Semyonov also leaves no room to doubt that the KPD appeal is to be taken at its word: "The concrete actions foreseen in this document became the practical plan of action for SMA. I remember well that we constantly measured our work against this document." Accordingly, for him, "all important antifascist-democratic reorganization in the Soviet Occupation Zone [was] completed in 1948". Semyonov quotes a statement made by Stalin in a Politburo session in late May 1945:By way of interpretation, the author added that Stalin had in mind "for a transition period the order and also certain persons of the Weimar Republic".Subsequently too, Semyonov confirms again and again the orientation of Soviet policy on Germany as a whole. In the reported Stalin quotes, the problem of Germany continually appears as a joint task of the victorious powers ("a question of the grand policy of the states of the anti-Hitler coalition"); never is an East-West division even discussed. For Semyonov, the Stalin Notes of 1952 represent a wholly obvious continuity with the Soviet proposals at the foreign ministers' conferences of 1946 and 1947: "The struggle for a unified, independent, and peace-loving Germany went on for several years after the founding of both independent German states."It is especially revealing that Semyonov too confirms the unauthorized actions of some leaders of the SMA and the SED who, according to my analysis, contributed substantially to establishing the socialismof the GDR. As he wrote, regarding May and June 1948,The task lies not in destroying Germany but rather in taking away the possibility that it would once again arise as an aggressive power in Europe. That means that the roots of militarism and Nazism in Germany must be eradicated but [Germany] itself must be preserved as a unified, peace-loving, and democratic state.And further:Some hotheads in the SED overestimate the meaning of the reforms up to this point and are giving out the false orientation that we can go over to the construction of socialism.
Semyonov stood in direct contact with Stalin. Tulpanov was responsible for everyday political matters in the Soviet Zone; according to Semyonov, he lacked "the time, also possibly the knowledge, character, and inclination, to raise himself above the current problems of the day - they engulfed him completely". For his part, Ulbricht dealt mostly with Tulpanov only, and so he adopted "tactical methods [which were] not always the best". In a "strictly personal" letter to Stalin in 1952, Semyonov complained of "a host of critical points" concerning Ulbricht. Among them were his directive issued to subordinate SED authorities to report to him on all contact with the SCC, as well as his tendency "simply to copy" Soviet experience."I heard that at action meetings of the SED, Tulpanov was declaring that in the Soviet Occupation Zone the transition from the antifascist-democratic order to the construction of socialism and to establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat had now come. I asked him to comment on that. He admitted that he had said things of that sort. But it had been merely a matter of unofficial exchange of opinion in which he wanted to assess to what extent things had been successful in the zone. As befitted the situation, I gave Tulpanov my opinion and stressed above all that it was by no means permitted to make those sorts of declarations without prior approval from the
Central Committee of the CPSU (B).
The autonomous role of Tulpanov is described even more precisely in a study of Soviet occupation policy by Norman M. Naimark. From the files of the Central Committee of the CPSU, it becomes clear not only that Tulpanov was in fact very independently bent on rearranging the Soviet Zone according to the Soviet model, but also that he repeatedly
came under fire from investigative commissions of the Central Committee because of this. As early as October 1946, a commission found that he made "serious errors" and was "insufficiently disciplined" in his performance. In late April 1948, a further investigative committee criticized the rash pushing of the introduction of socialism in the Eastern Zone, the neglect of the middle-class parties, excessive meddling in the day-to-day politics of the SED, and the general "inadequate comprehension of the historical perspectives on the development of Germany". A representative of the Main Political Administration of the Army, Colonel Konstantinovskii, reported to Moscow in late August 1948 that Tulpanov was still committing the same "serious political mistakes", which among other things had led many political officers to the incorrect view that the formation of a "socialist republic" was already under way." Nevertheless, he was relieved of his duties only in stages because his knowledge of the land and its people was not so easy to replace.
On the basis of materials from the archive of the SMA and other sources, Naimark furthermore reports on innumerable problems of rivalry and jurisdiction, liberties taken by local commanders, disciplinary problems, and continually-excessive workloads; all this finally making it easier for the SMA to hand over authority to the Germans. It becomes clear that the authorities of the SMA initially did in many cases attempt to implement the democratic programme for Germany as a whole. They pressed for politically-balanced administrations and energetically took action against "revolutionaries", regardless of whether they were members of the KPD, the SPD, or the Antifa committees. SMA authorities and Central Committee representatives also noted what catastrophic consequences the brutal rapes, the capricious arrests, and the endless dismantling had. In the chaos of the Soviet system, however, they were in many cases not in a position to enforce their views. Thus, according to Naimark too, the Sovietization of the Eastern Occupation Zone appears to have been a consequence of the weaknesses of the Soviet system: in overcoming the problems before them, the occupiers acted in accordance with what they had learned; and the contradiction in the tasks of the occupation administration which arose in this way could not be sufficiently corrected given the meagre possibilities to steer the system.
New information as to the prehistory of the Note of 10 March 1952 comes via a memoir account by Georg Dertinger made in November 1967 to which his wife Maria Dertinger has given me access. According to this source, the proposal to augment the calls for negotiations with the draft of the principles of a peace treaty came in 1951 from the GDR foreign minister. Dertinger formulated a draft in accordance with this. As Mrs Dertinger reports,'? Semyonov pressed for a formulation which would have a chance of being accepted by the West Germans; and he had Dertinger reassure him that this chance did exist. Thereafter, Dertinger heard nothing of the matter for a long time. When the Note was published, he was surprised that it "almost to a letter, with very few deviations, corresponded to my draft, admittedly with a decisive change which I did not have in it: The NVA. In my wildest dreams I had not supposed that an army for Germany could be foreseen in the peace treaty."" The rejection of the Note by the Western side, again according to Mrs Dertinger, was registered with great disappointment everywhere.
Disappointment is also to be seen in Soviet records of Stalin's answer to Pieck's question about the prospects of success for the note initiative; the meeting of 7 April 1952 in which these records were made has been investigated by Michail M. Narinskii. It is noted thatThis confirms that in his offer of 10 March 1952, Stalin had seen a maximum on possible concessions, and now, after this initiative too had met with rejection, he definitely gave up his earlier optimism regarding success in negotiations.Comrade Stalin considers that the Western powers will not agree to any proposals that we can make on the German question, regardless of what these would be, and that the Western powers will not withdraw from Germany in any case. It would be a mistake to think that a compromise might emerge or that the Americans will agree with the draft of the peace treaty. The Americans need their army in West Germany in order to keep Western Europe in their hands. They say that they have their army there [to defend] against us. But the real purpose of this army is to control Europe. The Americans will draw West Germany into the Atlantic Pact. They will create West German military units. Adenauer is in the pocket of the Americans, as are all ex-fascists and generals too."
More clearly than the parallel notes on the conversation made by Wilhelm Pieck, these records show that with the Western refusal of the offer of 10 March 1952, the status of the GDR changed in Stalin's eyes: "In reality, there is an independent state being formed in West Germany. And you must organize your own state. The line of demarcation between East and West Germany must be seen as a frontier and not as a simple border but a dangerous one. One must strengthen the protection of this frontier."" Up to this point, the GDR had been for him a short-term provisional arrangement which could at any time be offered up in negotiations. Only now was it to take on the characteristics of a state for a rather long transitional period.
Documents in the Archive of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation show that Stalin's successors began preparation of a new initiative on the German question during the second half of April 1953. The barriers against the neutralization project, which the Western powers erected by demanding prior investigation of the prerequisites for free elections, were now to be eliminated in that the Soviet government proposed that both German parliaments immediately form an All-German Provisional Government. This entity was to take in hand the organization of elections, and in order to guarantee its freedom of action, the Allied troops were already to have left the country and have given up all military bases in Germany at the time this government was to be established. Until a new constitution came into effect, the existing governments were to be responsible for the regular business of government. The experts at the Moscow foreign ministry did not regard it as too likely that the Western Allies would agree to the immediate withdrawal of troops. They were certain, however, that the proposal "would find warm approval with the people of Germany, including Western Germany and amongst well-known parts of [the] German bourgeoisie". They therefore expected that "the great powers will have difficulty objecting to the formation of an All-German Provisional Government" .22 As the final outcome of the initiative, they expected "a four-power conference that they thought could be convened as early as June to conclude with Germany a peace treaty".
These papers confirm that Beria's initiative was in fact supported by a general consensus of the collective leadership after Stalin's death. They underscore the continuity from the initiatives of 1952 to the activities of Beria and the public proposals made after Beria's fall. And they also confirm once again the calculation which lay at the basis of the Note of 10 March 1952: The hope of being able to compel the Western Allies into substantial negotiations over a peace treaty by mobilizing the West Germans and the "German bourgeoisie".
Even with the additional sources, of course, the origins of the GDR have still not been completely reconstructed or wholly explained. The decision processes within the Soviet apparatus require a still more precise reconstruction, as do the decisions within the SED leadership and the interactions between leading SED comrades, Soviet representatives, and
the Moscow centrale. Likewise, the social and political processes in the SOZ/GDR itself must be made more clear. For a critical discussion of the structural elements of Soviet Communism, the Western reaction to its appearance in the middle of Europe, and the German way of dealing with the defeat of 1945, enough clues are already at hand now. It should thus not be put off any longer.
he is a professro of modern history at the University of Essen
