The Campaign State: Communist Mobilizations for the East German Countryside, 1945–1990 9781501757655

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The Campaign State

The Campaign State COMMUNIST MOBILIZATIONS FOR THE EAST GERMAN COUNTRYSIDE, 1945-1990

GREGORY

R. WITKOWSKI

N I U P R E SS I

DEK AL B ,

IL

Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb 60115 © 2017 by Northern Illinois University Press All rights reserved 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 978-0-87580-771-3 (cloth) 978-1-60909-229-0 (e-book) Book and cover design by Yuni Dorr

1 2 3 4 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

I AM HAPPY TO DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO ALL MY FAMILY MEMBERS, WHO PROVIDED ENDLESS SUPPORT OVER THE YEARS,

AND ESPECIALLY TO MY MOM AND DAD, WHO ALSO INSTILLED IN ME A COMMITMENT TO EDUCATION AND A CURIOSITY ABOUT THE WORLD.

Contents Abbreviations viii Illustrations

ix

Author's Note

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

INTRODUCTION

Campaigns in Context

3

Part One CHAPTER ONE

Out of Ruins? Creating an East German State, 1945-1952

19

CHAPTER Two

State Planning in Action: Communist Campaigns in the Era of Collectivization, 1953-1961 CHAPTER THREE

78

Recruiting the "Best Workers" CHAPTER FOUR

Workers to the Countryside!

121

Part Two CHAPTER FIVE

Reforms New Opportunities after the Berlin Wall CHAPTER SIX

Campaigns in Honecker's Germany

189

CoNCLUSION

Evaluating the Campaign State Notes

233

Bibliography 263 Index

273

221

159

53

Abbreviations Barch BLHA BL BStU

Bezirksleitung, District (party) Organization Bundesbeaftragte fur die Unterlagen der Staatssicherheit, Federal

DBD

Commission for the State Security (Secret Police) Records Demokratische Bauernpartei Deutschlands, Democratic Peasants' Party of

Bundesarchiv Berlin Brandeburgisches Landeshauptarchiv

Germany

DDR DFD DSF FDGB FDJ FIT

FRG GDR Ha

IaL KL

KLAH LPG MLHA

MTS NVA OLB

Deutsche Demokratische Republik, GDR Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands, Women's Federation Gessellschaft fiir Deutsch-Sowjetische Freundschaft, Society for GermanSoviet Friendship Freie Deutsche Gewerksschaftsbund, Trade Union Freie Deutsche Jugend, Youth Organization FDJ Initiative Tierproduktion, FDJ Livestock Production Initiative Federal Republic of Germany, West Germany German Democratic Republic, East Germany Hectares Industriearbeiter aufs Land, Industrial Workers to the Countryside Kreislfitung, County (party) Organization Kreisarchiv Ludwigslust, AuBenstelle Hagenow Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft, Collective Farm Mecklenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv Maschinen Traktor Station, Tractor Station National Volksarmee, East German Army Ortliche Landwirtschaftliches Betrieb, State Farm

RdB RdG RdK RdS

Rat des Stadtes, City Government

SachsStaL SAPMO

Stiftung Archiv Partei und Massenorganization

Rat des Bezirkes, District Government Rat der Gemeinde, Municipal Government Rat des Kreises, County Government Sachsisches Staatsarchiv, Leipzig

SED VEB VEG

Sozialistisches Einheitspartei Deutschlands, Communist Party Volkseigene Betrieb, State-owned Corporation

ZK

Zentralkomittee, Central Committee of the SED

Volkseigene Gut, State Farm

Illustrations TABLE

1

Distribution of Farmland through Land Reform

TABLE

2

Development of Collective Farms in the GDR

28 68

TABLE 3

Participants in the Campaign "Workers to the Countryside"

TABLE 4

Participant Membership in Communist Organizations

TABLE 5

Participants Assigned to Parchim County

138

FIGURE

1

Map of Germany xvi

FIGURE

2

Map of East German Administrative Districts

FIGURE 3

"Industriearbeiter, Facharbeiter, Techniker" 96

FIGURE 4

"Junge Industriearbeiter aufs Land" 97

FIGURE 5

"Kurt Herzog, Schmiede Brigadier" 99

FIGURE 6

"Henny Meyer, Genossenschaftsbauern''

100

2

111

72

Author's Note This text relies upon many personal stories of individual East Germans relayed to me either through interviews or archival documents. German law requires that people who were not public figures have their identities protected, and so (although some participants have agreed to allow me to publish their names) I have kept all of these individuals anonymous throughout this text. I have only used the true names of individuals when they have previously been published in a public document-for instance, in a periodical or book. In those cases when a name is critical to finding a document in an unpaginated archival file, I have written the person's first name followed by the initial of his family name and have not listed the location where he worked. The names of all public officials, party and government administrators, have not been changed.

Acknowledgments Without the help of many people and institutions, this book would not exist. I have had three university affiliations, changed to a new field of study, and made many transatlantic connections in the process of writing this work. Historians are more dedicated to single-authored volumes than other disciplines, but that does not mean that these texts are solitary achievements. I am happy to have this opportunity to publicly thank those who made this work possible. This book began many years ago as a dissertation. It has changed tremendously over that period, but there is a core from the dissertation still in the work. I was fortunate to have received excellent guidance from my committee members and from colleagues who have become friends and longtime collaborators since then. My "Doktorvater" Georg Iggers and the late William Sheridan Allen, my advisor while I was completing coursework, continued to counsel me well after graduation. Arnd Bauerkamper initially served as an outside reader for my dissertation but has long since become a collaborator as we have both shifted our scholarly interests. He remained well versed in East German agrarian history, and our continued exchanges certainly helped the final product. Not least, Arnd introduced me to Jens Schone, another East German historian, who has likewise become a colleague and friend. Jens was generous with his time, keeping me abreast of new literature over the years and sharing his own insights as he researched new and related projects. The latter chapters especially benefited from his insights. Thomas Cox read countless drafts

xiv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

of this document, suggesting more streamlined wording, engaging tales, and providing an Americanist's perspective. Finally, the external readers Jon Olsen and David Tompkins read the draft in great detail, providing both important encouragement and critique. Their commentary helped me develop and highlight my central thesis that the GDR was a campaign state; I appreciate that both of them took the time to provide such detailed feedback. The staff at Northern Illinois University press was always prompt and responsive, aiding me throughout this process. Special thanks to Amy Farranto, who served as my primary contact and who remained engaged in both my success and that of the book even as her responsibilities at the press increased. I have been fortunate throughout my career to have engaging colleagues, and I would like to thank (chronologically) the chairs of my departments for their guidance and support: Mike Hand, Bruce Geelhoed, Dwight Burlingame, and Patrick Rooney. They also provided me with student help, who were likewise invaluable. Notable here are Shayne Mayer, John Kozlovich, and Barbara Duffy. I am also grateful for the advice and encouragement from many colleagues: Eric Juhnke, Charles Argo, Jim Connolly, Carolyn Malone, Ken Swope, Steve Hall, Kevin Cramer, and Nancy Robertson. Local friends and scholars Will Gray, Chris Fischer, and Elana Passman provided both sounding boards as well as advice on finishing a book-and great dinner partners. My work benefited from discussion with scholars in Germany both during my initial research and while returning. Christoph KleBmann, Konrad Jarausch, Greg Eghigian, Christel Nehrig, Dagmar Langenhan, Ulrich Kluge, Jennifer Jenkins, Paul Betts, and Corey Ross were all there while I was researching or writing and at different times provided important insights into the nature of the GDR or of academe. As this project focuses on everyday life, I am indebted to the many former campaign participants and state officials who shared their experiences with me. While I have kept their identities secret in this work, I would like to emphasize here how important they were to this project and once again thank them. Wolfgang Heun and Hans-Joachim Volkmann organized most of these interviews for me and in fact participated in some of them, helping me to understand local conditions in the countryside. I am deeply grateful for the time and effort they expended on this project. Hans Reichelt, the former minister of agriculture, was kind enough to meet with

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

XV

me and spent over four hours relating his experiences of the campaign and the communist regime. He also placed me in contact with others to interview. I used numerous archives for this project and found the staffs at these institutions always ready to help. Whether at a federal or local archive, the archivists were well informed and interested in my project. Many thanks to all of them. My research was financially supported by the American Historical Association, Ball State University, Briar Cliff University, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, German Academic Exchange Service, the Social Science Research Council/Berlin Program, and the State University of New York at Buffalo. All of these organizations provided funds for research or for writing and allowed me to travel to many of the local archives that made this work possible. I am grateful for this financial support. Finally, my parents, siblings, and their children provided me with emotional and material support throughout this process. My parents, Ronald and Mary Witkowski, gave me a strong belief in education that has helped me throughout my life. My brother, Ron, his wife, Tricia, and their children, Patrick, Catherine, Ryan, and Daniel; my sister, Mary Beth, her husband, Kevin, and their children, Tim and Liz; and my uncle Greg and aunt Lorraine and her husband, Bob, all provided good perspective, support, and understanding throughout the process. I appreciate all that they have done to support me and my work over the years.

FIGURE

1.

Map Division.

East and West Germany at Unification in 1990. Library of Congress, Geography and

The Campaign State

FIGuRE 2. German Democratic Republic Districts and Counties, 1968. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

INTRODUCTION

. . ampa1 n tn

G

erhard S. was a Communist. Born in 1919, he belonged to the generation that had reached adulthood during the Third Reich and had witnessed the destruction wrought by the Nazi regime. After the Second World War he joined the East German Communist party, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) to create a new Germany in the east by working for the SED county organization in Werdau. Saying goodbye to friends and relatives in nearby Zwickau, he left this administrative post in Saxony and moved 250 miles north to a village of a few hundred people in sparsely populated Mecklenburg. There he became director of a state farm converted from a German aristocrat's estate. Poorly structured for modern farming methods, this farm was in disarray when Gerhard arrived in 1955. He decided to concentrate on building up animal stocks as a way to make the farm more successful. In just three years he transformed a previously poorly run enterprise into the most productive collective farm in the county. 1 The SED rewarded Gerhard S. with a medal in 1959 as part of the decennial celebration of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). What compelled Gerhard to leave his home, family, and career to travel across the GDR and take on a more troublesome and less prestigious job? The account of Gerhard S., and the over 100,000 East Germans who similarly went into the countryside, provides insight into the functioning of the communist system and its effects on ordinary citizens.

4

INTRODUCTION

This study analyzes the SED's use of mass mobilizations, generally referred to as campaigns, actions, or initiatives by the SED. Starting with early efforts in the immediate postwar period and continuing through the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), this study is a comprehensive analysis of the campaign state. Campaigns initially represented short-term efforts to overcome hurdles but developed into state policy before ultimately becoming a ritualized form of governance. Such crusades sought to improve diverse sectors of society by concentrating resources on arenas marked a& economically deficient and socially resistant. Communist leaders sought to create overarching societal change through these mobilizations. My study analyzes campaigns to demonstrate how the central government created its goals and how those goals were transmitted to and also changed by local officials and ordinary individuals. It is appropriate that my study focuses specifically on agriculture because the majority of the communist states-contrary to Karl Marx's predictionswere heavily agrarian. Therefore, the mechanization and modernization of this sector of society was of fundamental importance for communist parties. 2 This book aims to understand both the successes that allowed for forty years of communist rule in the GDR as well as the challenges facing communist officials by focusing on efforts to transform the countryside. Through a mixture of political, social, and cultural historical approaches, I analyze the uses of campaigns, examine their importance within contemporary society, and assess their value for understanding the nature of communism. Emphasizing events at the grassroots level puts a human face on the communist experience in the GDR, illustrating how ordinary citizens lived in and helped create East German society. This book also provides a broad perspective that encompasses the entire history of the GDR, starting with the communist buildup in the 1940s and 1950s, through the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, to the ritualization of campaigns in the 1980s. While my work focuses on the GDR, the transformation of the countryside remained a signature program throughout most of Eastern Europe and therefore provides an ideal arena to study the everyday functioning of the communist system.

THE CAMPAIGN STATE

Communist regimes have often been associated with dictatorial power, state planning, and active propaganda machines. This book analyzes the

Campaigns in Context

5

nexus of these three elements in East Germany through a study of mass mobilizations. Communist leaders employed campaigns to create broad change by selectively concentrating resources to revolutionize defined areas. Whether the aim was to increase factory productivity, beautify a village, or build housing, party leaders and government officials used campaigns to implement policy. They were an essential part both of the long-term state planning characteristic of communist regimes and the often hastily implemented short-term initiatives to overcome immediate crises. Campaigns were a ubiquitous part of life in East Germany. While this study focuses on efforts to transform the countryside, the SED and the East German government employed mass mobilizations in their efforts to reshape all parts of society. It is striking that the term "campaign" appeared in 8,312 different stories published in Neues Deutschland from the formation of the GDR in 1949 to its end in 1990. On average, that is more than one article every other day. Campaigns belonged both to the everyday life of East Germans and the communist ways of governance. 3 I dissect the anatomy of campaigns by focusing on efforts to bring class-conscious workers to the countryside to create change in the GDR. Politburo leaders aimed to overcome political and economic deficiencies in rural areas by transforming agricultural production (through mechanization and rationalization) and societal structures (e.g., reorganizing village milieus). The regime enlisted more than 100,000 workers to serve in the countryside as farmhands, mechanics, directors of collectives, and even in some cases mayors. They were charged with imparting class consciousness in villagers and teaching peasants new production methods. These efforts were only partially successful, so that the regime continued to call for aid for the countryside throughout the existence of the GDR. Campaigns themselves were symbols of both the power of the state to mobilize the population and of their inability to shape policy exactly as desired. Campaigns were additional efforts that were needed because the system did not function efficiently. To be certain, the ability of a regime to mobilize the masses is generally part of the definition of totalitarianism, as well as of dictatorship. Yet the prevalence of campaigns indicates both the need to show concern toward a populace that does not have a feedback mechanism through voting and the inability to make a smoothly functioning system that does not require short-term initiatives and efforts. In this way, campaigns represent weakness as much as strength. My term, the "campaign state;' thus encapsulates the capabilities and limitations of

6

INTRODUCTION

communist rule in the GDR, focusing on a commonly employed means of governance. Over the course of the history of the GDR, it became increasingly harder to inspire public support for rural initiatives. While mass mobilizations had limited success as a form of governance, repeated calls for major change in the face of narrower goals and diminishing resources ultimately undermined the credibility of this form of governance and the legitimacy of the SED. The SED was caught between its rhetoric of "real existing socialism" and its reality. Still, campaigns remained one of the few solutions available to party officials. Unable to change the broader economic structures, they used campaigns because they had to. In this sense, the campaign state was also a symptom of the problems the East German regime faced. As the shift from policy to ritual was completed in the 1980s, campaigns undermined the legitimacy of the East German state and paved the way for its end. Scholars have yet to problematize the use of campaigns both as a means of governance and as a (orm of ritualized participation. Lynne Viola's breakthrough work analyzes a Soviet campaign, the 25,000ers, but covers only one mobilization over a handful of years. 4 Steven Kotkin illustrates aspects of the campaign economy in the Soviet Union but does not analyze campaigns in detail. 5 Jeffrey Kopstein, whose study focuses on East German economic policy, is one of the few scholars to address the use of campaigns. He concludes that the GDR had a campaign, rather than a command economy, because it was always reacting to short-term demands. 6 I argue that this definition underestimates the role of campaigns in state planning. In fact, a command, or planned, economy and a campaign economy are complementary since campaigns provide a means to carry out the economic plans of the centralized state. Kopstein's analysis centers primarily on the 1970s and 1980s and focuses on efforts at "crisis management" in the GDR. It therefore uses a narrower definition of campaigns that emphasizes their ritual nature. Jan Palmowski also examined campaigns in the GDR as part of his work on creating a sense of homeland. His innovative work shows how individuals negotiated everyday life in the countryside mediated through a sense of local belonging. Nonetheless, his work looks primarily at the cultural value of campaigns in creating identity rather than government use of such actions to implement policy/ My work analyzes forty years of East German agrarian mobilization to

Campaigns in Context

7

provide a better understanding of both the capabilities and deficiencies of this essential component of the communist system.

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONTRIBUTIONS

German reunification in 1990 signified not only a caesura in German history but also a turning point in GDR studies. Whereas previous Western studies of East Germany remained limited to a small group of academics, primarily political scientists, the 1990s witnessed an explosion ofhistorical studies on the former East Germany. The accompanying historiographical sea change replaced notions of communist stability with a new interpretation-namely that such states were destined to fail. Historians of the GDR fall into two broad schools of understanding the nature of the state, namely those who concentrate on the authority of the state and those who focus on individual agency. For much of the Cold War, contemporary and scholarly study of the Eastern Bloc emphasized the power and capability of the state. Whether employing the terms "totalitarianism'' or "Stalinism;' these works stressed the ability of those regimes to actualize their power and mobilize support for policies. 8 While some scholars continue to rely on this approach, which had a limited rebirth after the fall of communism, this study also follows those who challenge this theory. 9 In Soviet studies this "revisionist" approach rejected the totalitarian model in favor of a bottom-up methodology to understanding communism by focusing on the grassroots level. This approach, begun in the 1970s, has continued to influence scholars of the Eastern Bloc. 10 In the GDR, this revisionist approach might be best represented by Mary Fulbrook and her students who focus on the social and cultural realm and argue that the GDR was a dictatorship for the people. 11 My study seeks to unite political and social analyses to indicate both the degree of the regime's authority as well as the power of the populace. I aim to move past efforts to define the regime according to its power and seek instead to define it by its actions. The campaign state is a description of a means of governance that at once indicates power as well as weakness. In this way, it brings together two major trends of historical analysis, those focused on the power of the state and those focused on individual agency. My work emphasizes the negotiated nature of communist dictatorships,

8

INTRODUCTION

while accepting that the state wielded a great deal of power. Eastern European communist parties sought to transform the hinterland through collectivization-a process conceived as a matter of changing economic and political structures to create new methods of production and even new village mentalities. These grandiose goals have been linked by some historians of the Soviet Union with the concept of the "garden state;' in which the state seeks to order and organize society-weeding out "enemies;' such as the kulaks or Grossbauern, and reorganizing society, much as a gardener organizes otherwise haphazard, organic growth. 12 In this way, the state creates an organized, efficient, and centralized structure that makes society easy to govern. My analysis of grassroots interactions illustrates the multidirectional flow of ideas and commands among central authorities, local administrators, and individual workers and peasants. It is situated in a trajectory of literature that explains everyday life without positing a confrontational conflict between the government and the populace. This work draws upon the important early work of James Scott, who discussed the nonconfrontational "weapons of the weak" that allowed peasants to evade government policies without directly challenging them. 13 My analysis also builds upon Alf Ludtke's concept of"Eigen-Sinn;' which emphasizes not popular resistance but the totality of individual responses. 14 To break down the term, "Eigen" literally means one's own, or in this context the term can be understood as particular or individual, while "Sinn" translates as meaning or purpose. Thus the term evokes both the stubbornness of individuals in the face of societal change, as well as the ways in which each person individualizes the meaning of state policies. 15 My research reveals that local leaders, campaign participants, and peasants acted in ways-both compliant and noncompliant with party goals-that the leadership in Berlin had not anticipated. I argue that central authorities were disconnected not only from their citizens but also from local administrators. 16 I counter Andrew Port's view that the stability of the regime depended on many internal conflicts among a splintered population in one location. In fact, many rural East Germans found common cause with their neighbors against the encroachments of communist rule. 17 The rural worldview, in which there were locals and outsiders, played a much greater role than conflicts between different professions or agricultural production centers in the countryside, which also

Campaigns in Context

9

did exist. In this, I come to a conclusion, similar to that of Jan Palmowski, that local fealty featured prominently in villagers' identities. In analyzing the divide between the center and the periphery, I show that there was room for maneuvering by both officials and ordinary East Germans in the countryside. It was this adaptation that proved most effective in providing stability in the countryside. The regime's goals were not realized at the local level because individuals actualized their own aims. From factory directors who dumped their worst workers through the campaigns, to participants who enlisted simply to get better housing, to local administrators who used their official contact with each other to establish unofficial economic ties, campaigns were repeatedly instrumentalized in complicated ways. While the scale of the campaigns and the degree of responsiveness changed over time, this process of negotiation remained throughout the history of the GDR. It thus provides a common narrative to understanding developments within the GDR from the construction of socialism, through the normalization of rule, to the collapse of the regime. Most other studies of the GDR, and especially of the countryside, focus on a narrow time period marked by dramatic violence, such as the land reforms or collectivization. 18 In this way, they miss the norms of everyday life that allowed the East German regime to stabilize. Others focus primarily on institutions or party politics that likewise downplay the effects on the average East German. 19 There are two works that focus on everyday life in the 1970s and two case studies that trace the history of individual villages, but these are local or regional studies that do not reveal the differences between the traditional family farming in the south and the large Junkerdominated farms of the north. 20 By taking a more comprehensive approach through focusing on the use of campaigns, I am better able to identify the transformations in the countryside and the different challenges encountered by the regime in implementing policy throughout the north and south. Whether described as totalitarian, Stalinist, authoritarian, or modern dictatorships, historians have agreed that mass mobilizations or campaigns were an essential form of governance in the Eastern Bloc and that the ability to mobilize individuals served as a marker of communist power. 21 My study shows that these campaigns were both a sign of strength and of weakness. On the one hand, the ability to mobilize and move over 100,000 people through one campaign illustrates tremendous power. On the other hand, the incomplete success of the campaigns and the ways in

10

INTRODUCTION

which they were co-opted indicates the limits of that power. Even more importantly, the reality that the East German regime needed to rely upon targeted efforts instead of broad policy changes points to its general lack of resources.

SOURCES AND METHODS

This book combines a traditional historical methodology relying on an abundance of written sources with oral histories and statistical evaluations to understand events in the past. It focuses on· sources generated by the "three pillars" of the GDR: the party, the state ministries, and the secret police. 22 The hierarchies of these institutions created, implemented, and oversaw state policies. Key arguments in this study emerge from analyzing local actions, and I completed most of my research in local and regional archives, where I read SED district and county records, paying particular attention to the agricultural sector. 23 I also relied heavily upon Politburo and central SED department records. In addition to party documents, collections from SED leaders of the SED Department of Agriculture as well as the collections of Walter Ulbricht, Otto Grotewohl, and Erich Honecker proved useful. The records of the so-called mass organizations established by the SED to organize special-interest groups within the GDR have likewise yielded insights. These include the youth organization (FDJ), the trade union (FDGB), and the women's federation (DFD). Here I concentrated on the efforts of these organizations to cope with the labor shortage in the countryside. Unfortunately these records were not nearly as complete as those for the SED. At the central level the holdings are not fully cataloged, and at the district level many materials are simply not organized at all and therefore cannot be used. The state bureaucracy played a critical role as well. The bulk of my research focused on the records of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Labor, and the State Planning Commission. I also took advantage of the available sources at the district, county, and city levels, including the district/county leadership and the departments of agriculture and labor within those areas. 24 These sources tended to present less political conflict and more economic challenges facing the country.

Campaigns in Context

11

The government created both an office and a commission to direct and oversee the most long-lasting of the campaigns I study, Workers to the Countryside (Industriearbeiter aufs Land, hereafter IaL). The records of campaign offices at the national, district, and county level, which illuminate how the administrative apparatus worked, provide the foundation for my work. In addition to frequent campaign reports, the documents include summaries of the commission meetings, which highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of the campaign organization. The records also offer insights into obstacles that participants faced and the hardships that they endured. At the local level I had access to personal data from surveys filled out by participants, which included important background information on campaign participants. This dataset allows some analysis of the participants' demographics. Finally, to improve my understanding of the motivations and conditions facing the participants, I conducted a total of seventeen oral interviews with former participants and administrators. I spoke at length with the former GDR Minister of Agriculture Hans Reichelt and with the agricultural secretary in the first county to collectivize, Eilenburg. I used the snowball method to find campaign participants and followed a semi -structured approach to the interview. Other than Reichelt and Gerhard Schroeder, because of their status, and Karl- Heinz Barwinsky, who was featured in another book, I have used pseudonyms for these interview partners. While government and party records account for the majority of my sources, I have taken the least information from the files of the secret police because they provided less coverage of these campaigns. Nonetheless, I found some relevant material on both the administrative apparatus and the popular reaction to collectivization generally. The documents that I used include reports from informants for the secret police and from police officials relating to conditions in the countryside. By using a wide variety of sources, I gained a fuller understanding of the campaign while minimizing biases inherent in all sources. My project makes most extensive use of sources available at the county archives because local officials reported events in the greatest detail. In the GDR, summaries sent to the next level often highlighted trends rather than individual circumstances. Therefore, the reports became increasingly vague as they traveled up the bureaucratic hierarchy. In the process, many district leaders attempted to cover their mistakes, which led to what historians

12

INTRODUCTION

have dubbed "beautification" (Verschonung) of the reports, whereby the authors simply did not write about negative events or glossed them over by emphasizing positive achievements. 25 While documents from the central authorities provided a general understanding of events and of decision makers' views, sources found in local archives presented a more detailed and candid description of events. Access to sources from these arenas of state power at the local, regional, and national levels enhanced my view of the dynamic interactions among the central agencies, the local leadership, and the individual citizenry and helped me construct a more nuanced account of the campaign. It is in these personal accounts that the true nature of the dictatorship is revealed.

ORGANIZATION

This book is divided into two parts to better understand the use of campaigns throughout the forty years of the GD R. Part 1 consists of the first four chapters. This section takes both a chronological and a thematic approach to understanding how campaigns were used in the period in which the communist state sought to gain power in the countryside and carry out the collectivization of agriculture. The focus of part 1 is on IaL, one of the largest campaigns carried out in the GDR, to illustrate the successes and failures of the campaign state during the period in which the party sought to construct a communist state in both the city and countryside. Part 2 concentrates on the use of campaigns after collectivization had been completed and the Berlin Wall built. The Berlin Wall provided internal stability, which created a different approach to policy implementation. This section evaluates two campaigns designed to improve the party's standing and agricultural production in the context of broader economic development. Part 2 also illustrates the gradual ritualization of the form of governance that ultimately worked to undermine the regime's credibility. Starting with the end of the Second World War, chapter 1 traces the development of campaigns to transform the countryside. I begin my examination by explaining the context in which the GDR was founded, including the Soviet occupation, the installation of local leaders, and the relationship between Soviet and East German leaders. While the Soviet leadership clearly drove the pace of agricultural collectivization, East

Campaigns in Context

13

German leaders made the decisions to launch these campaigns to address domestic problems. I trace the conditions that influenced the Politburo's decision to begin these agrarian campaigns and the goals that the central leadership envisioned for them. This chapter uses a chronological narrative to best illustrate the decisions made by the central leadership. With the start of agricultural collectivization in 1952, campaigns became more critical to state policy throughout the countryside. Chapter 2 traces the relationship of central planning to campaign administration throughout the period of collectivization (1952-1963). From 1952 to 1963, tens of thousands of workers were recruited to take jobs in the countryside. This chapter shows the difficulties faced by officials overseeing this large-scale mobilization and examines how incomplete planning, inept management, and ignorance of rural conditions hampered early campaign efforts. I include descriptions of the two defining events in East German history-namely the June 17 Uprising of 1953 and the subsequent creation of the Berlin Wall eight years later. I show how the party adjusted the campaign to new situations after the uprising and trace the campaign through the forced collectivization of 1959-60. The increased pressure to collectivize compelled many peasants and farmhands to immigrate to the Federal Republic and ultimately contributed to the regime's decision to build the Berlin Wall. Chapter 3 takes a thematic approach to understanding communist mass mobilizations. It concentrates on the campaign IaL from 1953 to 1963. I analyze the process of recruiting workers for the countryside. The party and state employed many of the traditional forms of mass mobilization-newspaper stories, radio announcements, posters, and even films and newsreels-in order to recruit volunteers. I evaluate these propaganda methods (examining both the medium and message), which were an important foundation for further recruitment efforts. I also focus on recruitment drives in factories, where government officials personally addressed workers, a technique that ultimately elicited greater participation. I analyze the types of individuals who enlisted for the campaign with the assistance of a statistical database that presents personal profiles for these individuals. Many recruits had recently married and chose to join the campaign in order to get housing to start a life together. Their efforts to fit in contrasted with the regime's goals to create change and thereby undermined the campaign's effectiveness.

14

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 4 continues this thematic approach to evaluating IaL by focusing on efforts in two critical districts, Leipzig in Saxony and Schwerin in Mecklenburg. Here I analyze how recruits adjusted to the countryside, in some cases learning new agricultural technology, and in many cases moving to new locations. The relatively easy transition in Saxony contrasts with the difficulties that participants faced in moving to distant Schwerin. Most participants knew very little about Schwerin and were often surprised by how primitive the area was. I illustrate the struggles newcomers encountered, both in coping without many amenities and seeking to find a niche in communities that often viewed outsiders with suspicion. Social and economic hardships that participants experienced had an effect on the campaign's development. This chapter outlines the different experiences of male and female participants, youths and families. Finally I discuss unintended consequences resulting from these formal contacts established by the campaign leading to informal arrangements, e.g., the development of illicit trading. This grassroots approach affords an opportunity to highlight many of the difficulties that state planners faced in implementing policy. The building of the Berlin Wall marked what many historians term the second founding of the GDR. Part 2 starts with an evaluation in chapter 5 of what party and state leaders learned from the partial successes of their campaigns. I set this evaluation in the context of rapid sociopolitical changes wrought by the construction of the Berlin Wall and the economic reform efforts of the 1960s, known collectively as the New Economic System. In 1964 the SED launched a new campaign called Northern Lands, which focused on placing young, energetic, technically qualified individuals in Mecklenburg. The goals were similar to IaL, in that they sought to improve political and economic success throughout the hinterland. In my description of this campaign, I illustrate how the regime made important adjustments, concentrating the direction under the leadership of the FDJ and greatly limiting the scale to better support participants. Northern Lands was the last great campaign carried out in the countryside as the regime turned to traditional governance methods to implement policies. Chapter 6 shows the changes that occurred in Erich Honecker's rule from 1971 to 1989, indicating both continuity and change from the past. Honecker continued to rationalize agriculture to make it more like industrial production. East Germany split crop and livestock farms from one another, leading to greater disparities in farm income. In response, the

Campaigns in Context

15

FDJ launched another succession of campaigns throughout the 1980s to improve production in specific livestock collectives. The chapter contrasts the public memory of previous campaigns with this effort. State officials celebrated former campaigns and continued to employ the rhetoric of agrarian transformation, all the while discarding campaigns as a means of governance. Campaigns became ritualized forms of celebration that neither achieved new policies nor truly mobilized the support of the populace. These policies thus undermined the regime's legitimacy by exposing the difference between the rhetoric of societal transformation and the reality of, at best, incremental improvement that paved the way for calls for real social change through regime change.

CoNCLUSION

This study reconceptualizes communist rule by focusing on campaigns, which were targeted mobilization efforts. I analyze both the ambitious goals of the communist regime and the grassroots reactions that helped to demarcate the extent of civil society in the former GDR. Campaigns themselves represent both the power of the state to mobilize the population and the state's inability to shape policy exactly as it wanted. Over time campaigns became more targeted and smaller in scale creating a discontinuity between the rhetoric of campaigns (creating societal change) with the far more limited goals reinforcing a divide between policy makers and the populace that undermined the state's legitimacy. The regime needed campaigns because the communist system did not function effectively without them. Over the course of the history of the GDR, it became increasingly more difficult to hide this reality and to mobilize East Germans for substantially less significant tasks. Communist leaders were caught between their rhetoric and East German reality. Still, campaigns remained one of the few solutions available to party officials. Unable to change the broader economic structures, communists fell back on the well-trod rhetoric and ritual of campaigns as a means of political survival. In this sense the campaign state was a symptom of the continuing problems that the East German regime faced. My book illustrates both how the regime managed to stay in power for so long through qualified successes as well as how it lost all legitimacy with its citizenry through exaggerated claims.

CHAPTER

ONE

Out of Ruin ? CREATING AN EAST GERMAN STATE, 1945-1952

W

alter Ulbricht woke up early on April 30, 1945, to begin his long journey from Moscow to Berlin. A leader of the German Communist Party before the war, he had survived both Adolf Hitler's rule and Josef Stalin's purges. Throughout most of his adult life he had sought to create a truly communist society in his German homeland. The destruction of the Second World War afforded Ulbricht the unique opportunity to construct a new Germany on the ruins of the Third Reich. On this spring morning he had his chance to start that effort together with a group of communist leaders that he led back to Germany. What they saw as they entered the city certainly indicated the difficulty of the task ahead of them. Berlin was a city that looked little like the one Ulbricht had left twelve years before as the Nazi regime had first taken power. No longer were the streets bustling with Nazi supporters in a global capital. As he rode into Berlin on May Day 1945, Ulbricht was instead greeted with "flaming ruins and starving people shambling about in tattered clothing:' 1 Because of the smoke he "could barely find his way through the rubble" when he arrived. Both Anglo-American bombing from the air and the Soviet invasion on the ground had destroyed much of Germany's productive capacity. Although Berlin had been especially targeted by the Allies, this destruction extended throughout Germany, with all major cities in ruins and villages in disrepair. The fall of the Nazi regime also left Germany without civil authorities. 2

20

CHAPTER ONE

In order to oversee the reconstruction of the German state after the Second World War, the victorious Allied powers (France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union) divided Germany and the capital of Berlin into four administrative sections. The eastern sector came under the rule of the Soviet Military Occupation Authority. Each of the occupation powers sought to change and reshape German society in its own image. However, none of them instituted changes of the magnitude attempted in the east. 3 This area was the stage of a massive communist attempt at state planning; communist leaders (both German and Soviet) aimed not only to rebuild lost productive capacity but also to create a new society. When all the occupation governments could not agree on a plan for German reunification, this zone later formed the borders for the GDR. This chapter examines those early efforts, from the return of Ulbricht through the formation of the GDR in 1949 to the structural reform three years later that prepared the way for the "Construction of Socialism" formalized at the Second Party Conference. These years saw dramatic changes throughout East Germany but nowhere were the transformations as deep as in the countryside. Starting almost immediately after the Second World War with the land reforms and ending with the outright collectivization of farms, communist rulers, both Soviet and German, used campaigns to undermine property rights and eliminate traditional authorities within the village milieu. The ultimate goal was to build new economic and political structures to support the communist state, but the means were limited both by the destruction of the war and the inability of state policies to spur enough production. Campaigns became a focused, affordable way of creating these changes.

GERMAN COMMUNISM

Although the Red Army ultimately brought a communist regime to Germany, German communism had firm roots in the working-class tradition that had propelled the socialists to power in the Weimar Republic during the 1920s and allowed the communist party to gain more than 15 percent of the votes in the last free elections before the Nazi seizure of power. The Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the largest in Europe outside the Soviet Union, sought to balance Communist International directives

Out of Ruins?

21

with its own Marxist practices and traditions. For those like Ulbricht, who joined the KPD, it was a life decision filled with many risks and few rewards. They faced discrimination in the Weimar period for their politics and persecution under the Nazis for their leftist beliefs. Even those who fled to the Soviet Union faced Josef Stalin's purges that, in the end, killed more KPD leaders than the Nazis. After surviving such serious challenges, these leaders had become even more convinced of the righteousness of their cause and dedicated to bringing a functioning communist system to Germany. It is important to remember this key fact when evaluating the role of Marxist-Leninist ideology in the GDR. All leaders drew upon communist ideology. Even if they differed in their interpretations, they were aware of certain core principles of Marxism-Leninism and referenced these fundamental ideas in conceptualizing policy. Such concepts provided a common language and structure for politicians. 4 Thus this ideology, even if chosen selectively and interpreted differently by various leaders, formed the basis of policy discussions and often decisions. In many cases the primary interpretations of this ideology came from Soviet officials who directly instituted local German policy until the formation of the GDR in 1949 and indirectly influenced policies thereafter through their interventions. This section discusses critical ideological underpinnings-namely, the role of the party in the transformation of society, the development of an alliance between workers and peasants, and belief in large-scale collective farms. When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto they sought to highlight the nature