Socialism in the colors of the GDR

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Socialism in the colors of the GDR is a term coined by the longtime General Secretary of the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED Erich Honecker at the end of 1988 and with which he distanced himself from Mikhail Gorbachev's reform project .

background

The SED leadership stood against Mikhail Gorbachev's reform course, which was concretized in the concepts of perestroika (“transformation”) and glasnost (“openness”), and also distanced themselves from the reform approaches of Poland and Hungary . Instead of fundamental economic and political reforms in the form of market economy elements, democratic participation and the granting of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the Central Committee of the SED adhered to its leadership principle of democratic centralism and emphasized the independence of the GDR in relation to the Soviet Union, including in questions of socialist ideology. The potential revolutionary dynamic of a restructuring of socialism was also feared.

Conceptually, socialism in the colors of the GDR is based on socialism in the colors of France , the self-description of the French communists .

Use of the term

Erich Honecker first used the term on November 11, 1988 in a speech to athletes who had returned from the Summer Olympics . The phrase became better known when the SED General Secretary used it again on December 29, 1988 on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the KPD .

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan Wolle: The ideal world of dictatorship. Everyday life and rule in the GDR 1971–1989. Munich 1999, p. 292.
  2. ↑ Klaus Taubert: Theory of colors à la Honecker https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/ddr-affront-gegen-moskau-farbenlehre-a-la-honecker-a-950097.html