De-Stalinization

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The Stalinization was a series of political, economic and social reforms on the part of state and party leaders of the Soviet Union who are against the previous Stalinism taught. The aim was to end the personality cult around Josef Stalin , who died in 1953, to limit the violence exercised by the state, to promote the consumer economy and to create space for ambivalences in party and culture. After a hesitant beginning, the de-Stalinization with Khrushchev's speech on the XX. Party congress of the CPSU 1956 official party line. In other countries of the Eastern Bloc they were followed with varying degrees of intensity.

“Silent De-Stalinization” 1953–1956: From Stalin's death to Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech

The Soviet Interior Minister Lavrenti Beria initiated the first de-Stalinization measures three weeks after Stalin's death. He banned ill-treatment while in custody, rehabilitated the Kremlin doctors who had been accused of political conspiracy immediately before Stalin's death , strengthened the national cadres in the sub-republics and stopped the work of the "Committee on Counterrevolutionary Crimes", one of the central state repressive organs, a. Most important, however, was probably the release of around 1.2 million inmates from the penal camps . However, this amnesty only applied to prisoners who had served a sentence of less than five years. Politically persecuted people were thus excluded from this measure. In the course of the relaxation of the prison system, there have been increasing camp riots since 1953, which were directed against the persistently poor prison conditions.

The years from Stalin's death to Khrushchev's secret speech are also referred to as “silent de-Stalinization”, since a departure from previous policy has been partially implemented but has not yet been openly proclaimed.

During this time, Stalin's succession was not clearly regulated either. First a collective leadership came to the head of the state. Lavrenti Beria was arrested by this leadership on June 26, 1953 (for fear of the powerful head of the secret service); in December 1953 he was executed. In the diadoch battles that followed, Khrushchev finally prevailed over his rivals for power - through clever tactics and with the help of the party apparatus that he largely controlled. To legitimize his rule politically, he emancipated himself from Stalin, although, like the entire leadership of the country, he was one of his closest confidants during his lifetime and was involved in the crimes of the regime. Malenkov - before Stalin's death the "second man" in the state - was chairman of the Council of Ministers until March 8, 1955.

Beginning of the open de-Stalinization: Khrushchev's secret speech on the XX. 1956 party congress

On the XX. At the CPSU party congress , Khrushchev gave a speech on the personality cult and its consequences in a closed session on February 25, 1956 , in which he criticized the personality cult around Stalin, his abuse of power and the state repression against party officials. The party's power is not based on a person, so Khrushchev, but on the "unbreakable bond with the masses." He also called for a return to the teachings of Lenin and the associated return to the principle of collective leadership: collectivity is "the leading principle of the leadership of the party". The terror against the general population and the political "cleansing" before 1934 were not mentioned in this speech.

Thus Khrushchev criticized Stalin personally, but not fundamental structures of the Stalinist system. Despite the postulate of secrecy, the speech was sent to local party authorities and communist parties in the Eastern Bloc . By chance it got through the Israeli embassy in Warsaw to the Israeli secret service, which forwarded it to the CIA , whereupon it was published on June 4, 1956 in The New York Times .

New beginnings in art and literature: the cultural "thaw"

The literary work of Soviet authors during the Stalin era was shaped by the total appropriation of literature by the Communist Party. The art style of socialist realism was considered the yardstick by which every artist had to be measured. In 1954 Ilja Ehrenburg's novel “ Thaw ” was published. Instead of painting a consistently positive image of the Soviet Union, as has been the norm up to now, Ehrenburg tells a story about average Soviet people and at the same time carries out a psychological analysis of his protagonists. The novel thus became a symbol of the new artistic possibilities, and its title established itself outside of literature as an epochal term: "Thaw" from then on stood metaphorically for the process of a slow thawing of a society frozen by strict directives and state terror.

The “thaw literature” particularly criticized the so-called “production and collective farm literature” with its stereotypical heroes, the plot clichés and the conflict-free atmosphere. They also questioned the modern belief in progress in the Soviet Union and the behavioral mechanisms of the CPSU and called for truthfulness and honesty in literature. However, even at the time of the “thaw” there were limits that literature could not exceed. This continued, albeit in a restricted form, to publication bans and state reprisals against writers. The most famous example of this is the novel Doctor Schiwago by Boris Pasternak , who received the Nobel Prize in Literature for this work in 1958 . Because of the criticism of Marxism-Leninism and Bolshevism presented in the novel , but also because of the political instrumentalization of the work by the West, the printing of the novel was banned in the Soviet Union and the author was exposed to a smear campaign in the Soviet press.

The new free spaces also led to a critical reappraisal of Stalinism. In 1962, for example, Khrushchev personally endorsed the publication of Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn's story “ A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ”, in which Solzhenitsyn, himself a former prisoner, impressively described the atrocities of Soviet camp life.

For music, the de-Stalinization meant a relaxation of the closeness of art to the people demanded by the CPSU Central Committee in 1948. The composer Dmitrij Shostakovich , ostracized under Stalin for his modernism on the one hand and celebrated for his international successes on the other , experienced a kind of unofficial rehabilitation and was elected secretary of the composers' association in 1957.

With the fall of Khrushchev in 1964, the policy of limited freedom for the artists of the Soviet Union also ended and the “thaw literature” disappeared in the Brezhnev era.

Consumer goods instead of heavy industry - the de-Stalinization of the Soviet economy

After Stalin's death, the economy in particular faced major challenges, since for decades only heavy industry had been driven at the expense of agriculture and consumer goods production. It was becoming increasingly difficult to convey renunciation and restraint to the population, which is why the first steps to reorganize the priorities were taken as early as 1952. However, since the arms and space industries, which at times claimed up to 30% of government spending, were indispensable for the balance of power with the USA, investments could not be reduced. The further development of heavy industry therefore remained an essential part of Soviet economic policy.

Efforts to increase efficiency, which should at least relieve the budget in favor of the other branches of the economy - such as massive decentralization and regionalization as well as the dismantling of bureaucratic planning apparatus - ultimately failed due to the general lack of interest in reforming fundamental planned economy deficits. The innovations were therefore partly already revised by Khrushchev, but finally after his overthrow.

Nevertheless, there was a step-by-step increase in production volume in the consumer goods industry, which, however, could hardly keep pace with the rapidly growing demand of the Soviet population since the mid-1950s. An important exception to this was state housing, which under Khrushchev was given special importance. This led to a visible improvement in the housing situation in the USSR, which has been extremely tense, especially since the Second World War. However, the quantitative increase in the housing stock and consumer goods production was still associated with quality deficiencies. The measures can therefore only be rated as successful in their approaches, since they could not overcome the deficits of the weaknesses symptomatic of a planned economy.

In agriculture, Khrushchev strove to increase agricultural production by expanding the arable land. The steppes on the lower Volga, in northern Kazakhstan and in western Siberia were to be made fertile for agriculture. The nature of the state campaigns to reclaim new territory differed little from the mobilization of the masses under Stalin. While the Neuland campaign was able to achieve at least temporary success, the attempt to cultivate maize failed mainly for climatic reasons.

Reforms in the prison system and partial opening of the camps

Only a few months after Khrushchev's "secret speech" on the XX. At the 3rd party congress, the GULag was dissolved as the main administration of the Stalinist camp system and the remaining camps were placed under various other agencies. According to official Soviet information, 70% of the inmates of the 1953 camp were released from prison by May 1957. The number of camps decreased significantly and the conditions of detention improved. Nevertheless, the institution of the camp system remained as a penal system until the end of the Soviet Union.

Furthermore, potential and supposed opponents of state power disappeared in the camps, albeit in significantly fewer numbers than under Stalin. The latter thus continued to serve, albeit in a weakened form, to suppress and discipline the population. The camp system lost another fundamental function almost completely: From 1929 to 1953 the labor of the prisoners was to be used profitably for the state economy. The prisoners of the GULag worked as forced laborers for decades in the industrialization of the Soviet Union . After this had reached a certain level, it became more and more evident in the 1950s that the Soviet Union no longer needed the massive workforce of poorly trained and quickly exhausted forced laborers, but rather qualified and motivated skilled workers.

Due to the obvious economic ineffectiveness of the prisoners' work in the context of the new economic policy aimed at decentralization under Khrushchev, the function of the GULag established under Stalin as an important economic factor in the Soviet Union ended. This is likely to have been a major reason for the dismissal of the army of millions of unfree camp forced laborers after 1953.

XXII. Party congress in October 1961

At the XXII. At the CPSU party congress in October 1961, the focus should be on the adoption of the new party program. Nevertheless, Khrushchev (probably to the surprise of many delegates) put de-Stalinization back on the agenda; the behavior and machinations of the “anti-party” group around Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (which had been ousted in 1957) was publicly denounced.

Podgorny and JV Spiridonov (First Secretary of Leningrad) and Masurov (First Secretary of the Belarusian Communist Party) gave the main speeches.

In numerous speeches, the “anti-party” group was accused of participating in the crimes of Stalin and called for their expulsion from the party and the initiation of criminal prosecution. By decision of the party congress, Stalin's name was deleted from the Soviet public: numerous cities and streets named after him were renamed; his body was removed from the Lenin mausoleum.

By reverting to de-Stalinization, Khrushchev attempted to re-establish his weakened position of power vis-à-vis his internal party opponents.

Shortly after the XXII. At the 3rd party congress, thousands of Stalin streets, squares and factories were renamed in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and the GDR, Stalin monuments were dismantled, Stalin pictures painted over and Stalin's works removed from the libraries. Soviet Stalingrad (Tsaritsyn until 1925) was renamed Volgograd . The " Battle of Stalingrad " was now called "Battle of Volgograd" in the Soviet Union and the "Battle of the Volga" in the GDR.

End of de-Stalinization

Khrushchev was deposed on October 14, 1964 due to the loss of support within the Central Committee. Disappointed hopes in economic policy, a concentration of power in the hands of a single person, and a series of controversial foreign policy decisions made the loss of power possible. As his successor, Leonid Brezhnev took up the position of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Under the new leadership, no further measures of an active de-Stalinization policy were taken; instead, the principles and traditions of Stalinism were reoriented; therefore one speaks in this context of neo-Stalinism . The case of the historian Alexander Nekritsch can be considered symptomatic of the transition from de-Stalinization to realignment . In 1965, in his book on June 22, 1941, he criticized Stalin's failures on the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union and was thus largely on the basis of the criticism that Khrushchev had already made in his secret speech of Stalin. Although Nekritsch's account was met with great approval, the book was added to the list of banned books in 1967 . In addition, Nekritsch was robbed of the basis of his scientific teaching and research activities, so that he finally emigrated to the USA in 1971.

De-Stalinization in other countries

On April 17, 1956, the information office of the communist and workers' parties Kominform was dissolved. The Pravda declared, must be demanded by the communist parties, "the peculiarities of national conditions of their countries particularly careful consideration". The close leadership of the Communist parties by the Moscow Communist Party during Stalin's time has now been relaxed. A development towards " polycentrism " began.

China

see Sino-Soviet rift

GDR

The XX. The CPSU party congress presented the SED leadership with a difficult situation. They had only just got over the crisis into which they had gotten by the popular uprising of June 17, 1953 ; now there was a threat of sharp criticism of the late Stalin, to whom they were completely sworn until 1956, to once again delegitimize their claim to power: in October 1955, at the 25th meeting of the Central Committee of the SED , the party leadership was still on the “teaching of Marx, Engels , Lenin and Stalin ”. The text of Khrushchev's speech was kept secret in the GDR. Instead, Walter Ulbricht published an article in the party organ Neues Deutschland on March 4, 1956, in which he first praised Stalin's "important services in building socialism and in the fight against anti-party groups".

“However, when Stalin later placed himself above the party and cultivated the personality cult, the CPSU and the Soviet state suffered significant damage. Stalin cannot be counted among the classics of Marxism. "

With that he had superficially distanced himself from Stalin; there was no deeper discussion of Stalinism. The content of Khrushchev's speech was briefly explained by Karl Schirdewan to the delegates of the 3rd party conference of the SED in March ; but Ulbricht had already spoken out in advance that the teachings of the XX. To heed party congresses only insofar as they are applicable to the situation in the GDR. In a further contribution in Neues Deutschland on April 29, the Politburo declared that there had been neither personality cult nor mass reprisals in the GDR, which is why there was no reason for a "backward-looking error discussion". The 28th meeting of the Central Committee of the SED in July 1956 gave an idea of ​​an ideological turnaround, in which an appeal was made to “overcome dogmatism” and the previous condemnation of Titoism was revised. The general line remained the same as before.

There were some reliefs in the humanitarian field: Former Justice Minister Max Fechner was released from prison where he was incarcerated because of his failure in the 1953 popular uprising; Former leading SED politicians like Franz Dahlem , Elli Schmidt , Anton Ackermann and Hans Jendretzky , who fell out of favor in 1953 for supporting Rudolf Herrnstadt and Wilhelm Zaisser's attempt to overthrow Ulbricht, were rehabilitated. But they did not regain their previous position of power. Over 20,000 political prisoners were released.

These changes made some GDR citizens and politicians hope that further liberalization would be possible. Intellectuals began to discuss comparatively openly; The editor-in-chief of the Aufbau-Verlag, Wolfgang Harich , looked for opportunities for the reunification of Germany with a group of like-minded people . In view of the unrest that the de-Stalinization had triggered in Poland and Hungary, the SED leadership quickly put an end to these efforts: with the 30th plenum of the SED Central Committee, which met from January 30 to February 1, 1957, the " brief thaw in the GDR ”.

De-Stalinization only came about in the GDR in November 1961 as a result of the XXII. Party congresses of the CPSU: Stalin's name disappeared from the public, the place Stalinstadt , the Elektro-Apparate-Werke JW Stalin and streets like the East Berlin Stalinallee were renamed on the night of November 14, 1961 and the Stalin monument there was removed. Even these measures only changed nuances in the dictatorship that continued to exist .

Poland

After Stalin's death in March 1953, the cultural and political areas were relaxed. On February 28, 1956, after reports from Jerzy Morawski, Jakub Berman , Józef Cyrankiewicz and Aleksander Zawadzki , the PVAP Politburo decided to convene key party activists from March 3 to 4 in Warsaw to inform them about the speech. Morawski and his colleagues in the Politburo had to put up with probing questions from the plenum.

Three days after this first meeting, a large group of party cadres met in Warsaw, who voiced harsh criticism of the Bierut government, which had been in power for eight years, and of the continued membership of the Stalinists in the Politburo. The full text of the Khrushchev speech was not yet officially in circulation in the PVAP; what had leaked out of its contents sparked a deluge of Bierut critical comments. Bolesław Bierut had suffered a heart attack after Khrushchev's speech and had stayed in Moscow to convalesce after the end of the party congress. His sudden death on March 12th gave the de-Stalinization in Poland an enormous boost.

Within a day or two, large numbers of anti-communist and anti-Soviet leaflets appeared in almost all parts of the country, denouncing Bierut, expressing joy at his death and reviling the Polish leadership as a "Russian-ruled government". Graffiti appeared on house walls in Warsaw (especially in the university) and in other cities around the country. Rumors quickly spread that Bierut had been “poisoned by the Soviet secret police at the behest of the CPSU leadership”. Some party officials also publicly claimed this. Against the wishes of the new Kremlin chief , the PVAP elected Edward Ochab as Bierut's successor.

After the bloody suppression of the Poznan uprising in 1956, which initially had a material background, on June 28, 1956, the dispute over how to proceed in the Politburo deepened. The situation was exacerbated by the popular uprising in Hungary . While the Stalinist faction in Poland ( also called the Natolin Group after their meeting point in the former Potocki Palace in the Natolin district of Warsaw ) pleaded for a continuation of the political course, the Liberals (also known as the Puławy Group ) spoke out in favor of a social reform movement, which the dictatorship of the proletariat did not want to touch. The latter prevailed. The Stalinist chairman of the 'State Commission for Economic Planning' Hilary Minc had to resign; The rehabilitated former General Secretary Władysław Gomułka returned to power in triumph on October 21 (see Polish October ), although Moscow initially refused to agree. Despite support from the Soviet Union, Defense Minister Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Rokossowski could not hold out his negative attitude towards Gomułka and was called off to Moscow in November 1956. In his first speech, Gomułka announced far-reaching reforms, a promise that was, however, only hesitantly or not at all kept.

Hungary

From 1945, Mátyás Rákosi carried out the Sovietization of Hungary and gained the power of a dictator (see details here ). In June 1953, the Soviet leadership forced Rákosi to give up the post of prime minister (in favor of Imre Nagy ). However, he remained party leader of the "Party of the Hungarian Working People". In early 1955, the group around Rákosi seized power again: Nagy was removed from office on April 14, 1955 and András Hegedüs was appointed his successor. Rákosi remained MDP general secretary even though the Hungarian uprising was already looming, and had thousands of opponents of the regime arrested or killed.

The discovery of Khrushchev's secret speech significantly promoted de-Stalinization; Rákosi lost his post as MDP General Secretary in July 1956. In 1956, László Rajk , victim of a show trial in 1949, was officially rehabilitated and his body was reburied with great public sympathy.

The Hungarian people's uprising began on October 23, 1956 : 300,000 Hungarians spontaneously joined an approved demonstration by students by the evening. The new MDP General Secretary Ernő Gerő responded to calls for democratization and the reinstatement of Nagy as Prime Minister by alerting Soviet troops and giving a radio speech , which further heated emotions. The ÁVH (Hungarian State Security Police) shot at demonstrators in front of the radio headquarters , which is considered one of the triggers of the popular uprising. Sections of the population armed themselves, fought against Soviet troops and the police, overthrew the Budapest statue of Stalin and forced Gerő to resign. Imre Nagy became Prime Minister again.

The uprising was bloodily suppressed by the Soviet army . Nagy was sentenced to death in a secret trial in June 1958 and executed. Around 400 people, mostly workers, had been executed by 1963. Over 200,000 Hungarians emigrated to Western Europe or North America after the failed popular uprising.

János Kádár became the new “strong man” in Hungary ; he remained Secretary General until May 1988.

Bulgaria

During the Stalin era, Valko Chervenkov (1900–1980) was head of state and party leader in Bulgaria. After Stalin's death, he tried to gain more political support from the population. He gave up his party leadership in 1954, reduced the influence of the Soviet Union on economic and political events in Bulgaria, reduced collectivization and released around 10,000 political prisoners by 1955. After Khrushchev's secret speech on the XX. CPSU party congress in 1956, in April 1956, the Bulgarian CP condemned Stalinism and, implicitly, the authoritarianism of Chervenkov, who resigned in the same year. His successor was Todor Zhivkov (1911-1998), who did not belong to the Moscow émigré group, but had supported the Bulgarian resistance movement. Trajtscho Kostov , who was executed after a Stalinist show trial in 1949, was rehabilitated; likewise all the others who had been convicted as "Titoists" in the trial against him. In 1957 other Stalinist functionaries were removed from their offices, in 1961 the November plenum of the Central Committee of the BKP excluded Chervenkov from the party.

Romania

In Romania, de-Stalinization began only hesitantly. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (1901–1965) was able to assert himself at the head of the state and party until his death in March 1965. It was not until April 1968 that he was posthumously criticized in a decision of the RKP Central Committee as responsible for violations of law and statute as well as for the deaths of leading communist politicians during the early 1950s. Victims of Stalinism such as the former Justice Minister Lucrețiu Pătrăşcanu were rehabilitated, “socialist legalism” was restored, while the party strived for greater political, ideological and national independence from the Soviet Union while maintaining the dictatorial mode of government.

Yugoslavia

At the end of 1947, Stalin changed his Balkan policy. First, it was the cause of the Communists in the Greek Civil War (1946-49) lost, on the other hand he wanted to independently and confidently occurring Yugoslav leader Tito "rein in". On February 10, 1948 in Moscow, Stalin sharply reprimanded high-ranking party delegations from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia for their policies. Without consulting Moscow, Tito and Dimitrov had undertaken a number of unauthorized actions within the Soviet sphere of power. Dimitrov bowed to Stalin and admitted "his mistakes" ; on the other hand, the Yugoslav delegation left Moscow without any promises. The conflict between Belgrade and Moscow worsened in the following weeks because Tito and with him the Yugoslav Central Committee were not prepared to submit to the Soviet guidelines. As a result, the Yugoslav Communist Party was excluded from the Cominform in June 1948 . Albania and Bulgaria, on the other hand, became satellites of the Soviet Union again (or were made into them by Stalin) and in turn broke with Yugoslavia.

Renaming

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: De-Stalinization  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephan Merl : De-Stalinization, reforms and the race of the systems 1953–1964. In: Stefan Plaggenborg , Manfred Hellmann , Klaus Zernack , Gottfried Schramm (eds.): Handbook of the history of Russia. Volume 5: 1945-1991. From the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Part 2. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-7772-0343-2 , pp. 175-203.
  2. ↑ Viktor Knoll, Lothar Kölm (ed.): The case of Berija. Billing log. The plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, July 1953. Stenographic report (=  AtV 8037). 2nd Edition. Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-7466-8037-9 ; Michael Heller, Alexander Nekrich : History of the Soviet Union. Volume 2: 1940-1980. Athenaeum, Königstein / Ts. 1982, ISBN 3-7610-8183-9 .
  3. ↑ Full text of the speech
  4. ↑ Khrushchev's secret speech. About the personality cult and its consequences. Speech by the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee on the XX. Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, February 25, 1956. Dietz, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-320-01544-3 .
  5. ^ Unwilling spy Jüdische Allgemeine , October 25, 2007
  6. ↑ See: Barbara Bode: The discussion about Solzhenitsyn as the center of the conflict in Soviet literature. In: Eastern Europe. 10/1965, ISSN  0030-6428 , pp. 679-694.
  7. ↑ See: Wolfram Eggeling (Hrsg.): The Soviet literary policy between 1953 and 1970. Between de-dogmatization and continuity (=  documents and analyzes on Russian and Soviet culture. Vol. 3). Brockmeyer, Bochum 1994, ISBN 3-8196-0297-6 .
  8. ↑ See: Karen Laß: From Thaw to Perestroika. Cultural Policy in the Soviet Union. (1953-1991). Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-412-16801-7 (also: Bochum, Univ., Diss., 1999).
  9. ↑ Donald Filtzer: The Khrushchev era. De-Stalinization and the limits of reform in the USSR, 1953–1964 (=  International Introductory Series. Vol. 2). Decaton-Verlag, Mainz 1995, pp. 70-81.
  10. ↑ Alec Nove: An Economic History of the USSR, 1917-1991. 3rd edition, (new and final edition). Penguin Books, London a. a. 1992, ISBN 0-14-015774-3 , pp. 349-377.
  11. ^ Robert W. Davies: Soviet economic development from Lenin to Khrushchev (=  New Studies in Economic and Social History. Vol. 34). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 1998, ISBN 0-521-62260-3 , p. 69 f.
  12. ^ Declaration by the Deputy Attorney General of the Soviet Union, PI Kudrjawszew, in: FAZ of May 16, 1957.
  13. ^ Jacques Rossi : The GULAG Handbook. An encyclopedia dictionary of Soviet penitentiary institutions and terms related to the forced labor camps. Paragon House, New York 1989, ISBN 1-557-78024-2 , p. 192.
  14. ↑ a b Der Spiegel 49/1961: Kranz von Tschu
  15. ↑ See: Thomas Schütze: “Stalinpolitik” in the Soviet Union. A political science case study on Stalin as the legitimizing figure of Soviet politics under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev. dissertation.de, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89825-470-4 (At the same time: Hamburg, Univ. der Bundeswehr, Diss., 2002).
  16. ↑ From: Wolfgang Leonhard : Die Dreispaltung des Marxismus. Origin and Development of Soviet Marxism, Maoism & Reform Communism. Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1970, pp. 251-256.
  17. ↑ Alexander Nekritsch, Pjotr ​​Grigorenko : The Red Army on June 22, 1941. Europa-Verlag, Vienna / Frankfurt am Main / Zurich 1969.
  18. ^ Wolfgang Leonhard: Kremlin without Stalin , Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne, Berlin 1959, p. 221f.
  19. ^ Klaus Schroeder with the collaboration of Steffen Alisch: Der SED-Staat. History and structures of the GDR 1949–1990 . Hanser, Munich 1998, p. 133.
  20. ↑ a b Klaus Schroeder with the collaboration of Steffen Alisch: Der SED-Staat. History and structures of the GDR 1949–1990 . Hanser, Munich 1998, p. 133 f.
  21. ^ A b Hermann Weber : The GDR 1945–1990. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1993, p. 46.
  22. ^ Hans-Ulrich Wehler : German history of society. Vol. 5: Federal Republic and GDR 1949–1990 . CH Beck, Munich 2008, p. 32.
  23. ^ Dierk Hoffmann, Karl-Heinz Schmidt, Peter Skyba (eds.): The GDR before the Wall was built. Documents on the history of the other German state 1949–1961 . Piper, Munich / Zurich 1993, pp. 233-236, 277.
  24. ↑ Stefan Wolle : Departure to Utopia. Everyday life and rule in the GDR 1961–1971 . Ch. Links, Berlin 2011, p. 127 f.
  25. ^ Hermann Weber : The GDR 1945–1990. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1993, p. 134.
  26. ↑ De-Stalinization and the crises in the Eastern Bloc ( Federal Center for Political Education )
  27. ↑ De-Stalinization . In: dtv lexicon on history and politics in the 20th century , ed. v. Carola Stern , Thilo Vogelsang , Erhard Klöss and Albert Graff, dtv, Munich 1974, vol. 1, p. 219.
  28. ↑ According to the playwright Julius Hay , the order to shoot for the evening of October 23 came from Gerő personally - in breach of a promise to the contrary, which he had made on the same day to a delegation of writers, including Hay. See Hays autobiography Born 1900 , German paperback edition Munich 1980, p. 343.
  29. ^ After Stalin (Library of Congress Country Studies)
  30. ↑ The Fall of Chervenkov
  31. Jump up ↑ Wolfgang Leonhard : Kremlin without Stalin , Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne, Berlin 1959, p. 215.
  32. ↑ Carola Stern et al. (Ed.): Dtv lexicon on history and politics in the 20th century . dtv, Munich 1974, vol. 1, p. 219 f.
  33. ↑ Carola Stern et al. (Ed.): Dtv - Lexicon on history and politics in the 20th century . dtv, Munich 1974, vol. 1, p. 219 f.
  34. ↑ Review ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Table of contents + links , book on the V&R homepage ( Memento of the original dated December 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vr.de
  35. ↑ Part of the studies of the SED State Research Association at the Free University of Berlin
  36. ↑ online , see also bibliography portal on the history of East Central Europe