Socialist Unity Party of Germany

The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (, ; SED, ), informally known in English as the East German Communist Party, was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany) from the country's foundation in October 1949 until its dissolution after the Peaceful Revolution in 1989. It was a Marxist–Leninist communist party, established in April 1946 as a merger between the East German branches of the Communist Party of Germany and Social Democratic Party of Germany. The GDR was a de facto one-party state. Other institutional popular front parties were permitted to exist in alliance with the SED; these parties included the Christian Democratic Union, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Farmers' Party, and the National Democratic Party. These parties were largely subservient to the SED, and had to accept the SED's "leading role" as a condition of their existence. Long one of the most rigidly Stalinist parties in the Soviet bloc, the SED rejected the liberalisation policies of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, such as perestroika and glasnost in the 1980s, which would lead to the GDR's isolation from the restructuring USSR and the party's downfall in the autumn of 1989. The SED was officially organized on the basis of democratic centralism. Theoretically, the highest body of the SED was the Party Congress, convened every fifth year. When the Party Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body, but since the body normally met only once a year most duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo and its Standing Committee. Members of the latter were the top leadership of both the party and the state, with the party's general secretary effectively having the authority of a dictator. From 1960, many of them concurrently served on the State Council of East Germany, replacing the President of the German Democratic Republic. Ideologically, the party, from its foundation, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, and pursued state socialism, under which all industries in East Germany were nationalized, and a command economy was implemented. The SED made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools. Walter Ulbricht was the party's dominant figure and effective leader of East Germany from 1950 to 1971. In 1953, an uprising against the Party was met with violent suppression by the Ministry of State Security and the Soviet Army.