Inside Job

Before 50 people crowded into the back room of a corner beer hall in Communist East Berlin, a Socialist from West Berlin made a violently anti-Communist speech last week. "The U.S.S.R. has not given up its hope to rule the world," said Socialist Deputy Chairman Josef Braun. "The occupation rights of our Western friends in Berlin are our only protection. We must remain firm." An owlish man in the audience rose to criticize West Germany's Socialist Leader Erich Ollenhauer for talking to Nikita Khrushchev fortnight ago. "It's wrong to go hat in hand to aggressors," agreed another man. "The Russians pursue their ends with absolute brutality."

That such kind of talk could be heard in East Berlin is one of the continuing anomalies of the original four-power agreement made almost 14 years ago, which divided the city into east and west sectors. The Socialist Party is banned in East Germany itself, but it operates in East Berlin, just as the Communists are allowed to operate in West Berlin, where last December they got 1.9% of the vote. But the East Berlin Communists do all they can to frustrate the 8,000 registered Socialists in their midst.

The Socialists are not allowed to publish a newspaper, and have a hard time recruiting new members. Kurt Neubauer, perhaps the ablest of their leaders--who is a member of the West German Bundestag--operates out of an office in two stove-heated rooms on the ground floor of an old apartment house in East Berlin. A Socialist mass meeting that he got Communist permission to hold back in 1954 was such a success that the People's Police have since rejected applications for anything bigger than back-room rallies. And though the party is officially tolerated, members have been squeezed out of factory jobs and often find it difficult to get apartments or pay increases. But from their neighbors the Socialists get quiet encouragement. "Our fellow workers, the vegetable woman, the people down the block, all smile at us and come to tell us their troubles," says one.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.