Socialist Unity Party of Germany - A Monopoly of Power

A Monopoly of Power

By the late 1940s, the SED began to purge most recalcitrant Social Democrats from its ranks, and it began to develop along lines similar to other Communist parties in the Soviet bloc. Although other parties nominally continued to exist, the Soviet occupation authorities forced them to join in the National Front of Democratic Germany, a nominal coalition of parties that was for all intents and purposes controlled by the SED. By ensuring that Communists predominated on the list of candidates put forward by the National Front, the SED effectively predetermined the composition of legislative bodies in the Soviet zone, and from 1949 in East Germany.

Over the years, the SED gained a reputation as one of the most hardline parties in the Soviet bloc. When Mikhail Gorbachev initiated reforms in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the SED held to a Stalinist line.