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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 14, 3 April 1950, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Russian-controlled East Germany is not behind an Iron Curtain. Internal resistance is so strong and widespread that the totalitarian authorities cannot cope with it. The border is as full of holes as a sieve.
Reports from various directions insist that this is the state of affairs in the westernmost satellite of the Kremlin, latest being a detailed story in U.S. News & World Report for March 24.
Strongest and best organized of the resistance forces is that of the German Social-Democratic Party. In 1946 this party was officially merged with the Stalinist party to form the present “Socialist Unity Party” (SEP), but actually its forces simply went underground. General staff headquarters for the Socialist underground is in Hannover (West Germany) but it has an advance post in Berlin, with agents throughout East Germany.
An anti-Stalinist weekly newspaper, The Little Telegraph, is distributed weekly all over the Russian zone, published by Arno Scholz, a member of the Berlin City Council. All work of propaganda and press distribution is enormously facilitated by the fact, especially bewildering for the Moscow power, that resistance agents have infiltrated the Stalinist apparatus, reportedly to the very tops of the “people’s police” and the SED. So an episode as the U.S. News reports is possible:
“Recently a Telegraph correspondent was arrested on suspicion, but the police could find no underground evidence in his apartment ... Upon his arrest another correspondent was instructed to flee the city and leave incriminating evidence behind. The Russians then were tipped off that the second reporter was the man they were after. They raided his apartment, found papers he had left behind, and released the first correspondent, who was promptly smuggled out of the Soviet zone. Now both are back at work on the resistance newspaper.”
Berlin acts as a protected base for the underground, 100 miles deep inside the Russian domain. Along the 500-mile border between East and West Germany, thousands of refugees, smugglers, travelers, couriers and agents of the underground go back and forth illegally every day in the week. Resistance agents in the police force send out a steady stream of tips on coming raids and arrests. Police deserters frequently take political prisoners along with them as new recruits.
The organized underground does not favor terrorist methods and discourages them, but violent sabotage is growing nevertheless, it is reported that there are from a dozen to 40 anti-Stalin terrorist groups active, with numerous industrial and political dynamitings to their credit.
To counter the resistance forces, the satellite government recently set up a new Ministry of State Security with Moscow-trained Wilhelm Zaisser at its head, closely linked with Russian MVD forces. Special anti-sabotage sections have been set up in police districts, and police controls tightened everywhere. But at the same time whatever mass support the Stalinist regime had has been, dissipating, and it becomes harder to sweep back the flood.
“Allied observers” are reported to believe that Russia may even be forced to recognize its setback and. withdraw its troops from the zone – an admission of defeat which would be primarily due to the unflagging resistance of the German people.
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Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 5 February 2024