APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110019-3
he inclines to stand up to Soviet pressure. Under Honecker, the East German leadership has been impelled to make significant changes in its policies in order to accommodate Soviet interests.
The SED under Honecker's leadership has continued to place highest priority on economic development, but it has approached this problem in a more practical manner by stressing results and deemphasizing the rigid economic formulas of the past. In contrast to the Ulbricht era, party work and ideology have received increased attention and more emphasis has been placed on the leading role of the SED. The importance and independence of the young technologically oriented intelligentsia has consequently been deemphasized.
2. SED organization and membership
The SED is organized according to the principle of "democratic centralism," under which actual control is exercised from the top despite the nominal elections held at all levels. The SED is defined by the 1963 statutes as the "conscious and organized vanguard... of the German working class."
According to the Central Committee report to the Eighth Party Congress held in June 1971, the SED had 1,909,859 members and candidate members, making one out of every six citizens above the age of 18 a member of the party. This is an increase of 140,938 or 8% since the previous Congress in 1967. Honecker reported that 36.6% of the members and candidates were workers, 5.9% collective farmers, and 17.1% members of the intelligentsia. The percentage of workers is considerably higher than reported at the Seventh Congress, but this probably reflects a juggling of numbers rather than a significant change in the social composition of the party. The report also claimed that 45% of the party members were under 40 years of age and that 28.7% were women.
Following the Czechoslovak crisis in 1968, the party cadre section began an intensive program designed to weed out members whose loyalty was questionable and those who evinced a lack of enthusiasm. The drive to tighten party ranks was extended in the fall of 1970 to a formal exchange of party cards, but the results were not particularly impressive since only 9,000 were denied new cards.
According to party statutes, the SED is democratically organized, with the Party Congress functioning as its highest organ. The Congress, which is supposed to meet every 5 years, elects the Central Committee and has a purely formal role in rubber-stamping the decisions of the party leaders, i.e. the Central Committee Secretariat and the Politburo, expressed through the Central Committee apparatus. The Central Committee meets about 4 times a year. In addition to its statutory authority to act between congresses as the highest party body and to lead "its entire activities," the Central Committee functions as a body which coordinates and implements Politburo decisions and passes them on to lower party units. The Central Committee also operates a number of schools and institutes which not only train future party leaders but also provide it with information and research on various problem areas. The most important of these is the Karl Marx Party College.
The actual center of authority within the party and the state is the Politburo, which is "elected" by the Central Committee and is nominally responsible to it. In practice, the Politburo is a small self-perpetuating body which formulates regime policy and implements it through a network of subordinate offices in the party. In 1972 there were 16 full members and seven candidate members. Politburo membership traditionally has been very stable; at the Eighth Congress, for example, no one was dropped. Erich Honecker has repeatedly emphasized the continuity and collectivity of the leadership, which suggests that party leader may be uneasy about the reaction of the people to signs of open disagreement within the top leadership. For staff assistance, the Politburo utilizes permanent bodies (commissions and bureaus), usually headed by Politburo members or candidates, and several ad hoc commissions.
The Secretariat, second only to the Politburo in power and prestige, in 1972 was composed of a first secretary - Erich Honecker - and eight secretaries, each of whom is responsible for several of the operational departments (Abteilungen) and other institutions attached to the Central Committee. The Central Committee has at least 32 operational departments, each of which is responsible for a major field of activity, such as church affairs, transportation, agitation, and Communist activities in West Germany. Nearly every aspect of public activity and economic and social life comes within the purview of one or another of these departments.
Between the top leadership and the rank-and-file party members are several levels of progressively smaller versions of the central organization which implement the directives of the leadership at the district, county, city, urban residential, and basic party organization levels. In an effort to insure control over all facets of life, the basic party organizations are established, according to party statutes, in factories, collective farms, artisan production cooperatives, police units, state and economic administrations,
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110019-3
