The Disciple Departs

Disciple Departs

If Lenin has become a kind of Communist Christ, Walter Ulbricht, 77, is the self-appointed St. Peter. The oldest and most durable of the Soviet bloc party leaders, Ulbricht alone can lace his speeches with references to what he personally heard Lenin say, and he has used his disciple status to lecture the Soviets and East Europeans interminably on the need for political orthodoxy and extreme caution in dealing with the West. Last week Walter Ulbricht lost the bedrock of his power, the leadership of the East German Communist Party, which he helped found in 1946 and has headed since 1950.

To the assembled 131-member East German Central Committee Ulbricht explained that he was retaining his seat in the Politburo and his post as chief of state, which may now become largely ceremonial. But for reasons of health, Ulbricht continued, he was giving up the position of party first secretary. As his replacement, Ulbricht named the party's long-time No. 2 man, Erich Honecker (see box). Willi Stoph, 56, who has been Honecker's rival, remains premier in charge of government affairs. "To be honest, the decision did not come easily," said Ulbricht of his retirement. "Unfortunately," he added, "no cure has been invented for old age."

Soviet Nudge. East Germans took the news calmly. Other Eastern Europeans, who blame Ulbricht for frustrating their desires for closer economic and cultural ties with the West, were delighted. Some Western analysts argue that he was pressured by the Soviets into moving aside. According to that line of reasoning, Moscow grew weary of Ulbricht's obstructionist tactics, which hampered Soviet attempts to capitalize on Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik in order to secure Russia's western flank. Wolfgang Leonhard, a visiting professor at Yale and former ranking East German ideologue, who knows both Ulbricht and Honecker, leans toward the theory that old "Spitzbart" (meaning pointed beard) was nudged. Leonhard, a former aide of Ulbricht's, notes that the Soviet press has recently slighted Ulbricht to an astonishing degree. An article on the 25th anniversary of the founding of the East German party in Kommunist, the leading Soviet ideological journal, totally ignored Ulbricht's role in establishing the party. At the same time, the Soviet press has recently given great prominence to Honecker's speeches.

Hard-Line Successor. Though a measure of impatience in Moscow was most likely a factor in Ulbricht's exit, many analysts attributed his resignation chiefly to ill health. Ulbricht is an ardent health faddist who used to do rigorous daily exercises and still quaffs great quantities of a carrot-colored health drink. But for some time he has been unable to put in a full ten-hour day at his desk. He departed more gracefully than any East bloc party boss so far. He was able to hand-pick a successor whose views are as hard-line as his own.

In his first speech as the new party leader, Honecker stressed the necessity of "completely shielding" East Germany from contacts with the West. He also called on Bonn to ratify the renunciation-of-force agreements with the Soviet Union and Poland without waiting for the successful conclusion of the current Big Four talks about improving the status of isolated West Berlin. Brandt refuses to submit the Moscow and Warsaw treaties to the Bundestag until the allied custodians of Berlin--Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the U.S. --guarantee the untrammeled passage of people and goods between West Berlin and West Germany.

Ulbricht and the Russians want West Germany to negotiate directly with East Germany over access to the divided city on the grounds that the autobahns, barge canals and rail lines cross East German territory. But the three Western powers insist that before the two Germanys talk about modalities of access, the Russians must sign an agreement that would be binding on the East Germans. This is one of the central issues that have snarled progress toward a relaxation of tensions in central Europe.

Ugly Scar. Ulbricht took a poor, unstable part of Germany and turned it into a relatively prosperous, tightly ruled state. Having spent World War II in Russia, he and a handful of aides, including Leonhard, were flown to Berlin during the last days of the war as part of a Soviet plan to impose Communism on defeated Germany. Ulbricht succeeded only in that area where Soviet troops could enforce his orders. Even then, the East Germans in 1953 staged the East bloc's first abortive rebellion. In 1956, as the Soviet bloc was swept by the wave of destalinization, Ulbricht stubbornly refused to relax even slightly his rigid, autocratic rule. His decision proved correct, from a Communist viewpoint, when Hungary and Poland exploded in revolts. In 1961, after more than 3,600,000 East Germans had fled Ulbricht's fiefdom, he built the Wall that cut off the escape route for his remaining 17 million people.

A decade later, it still remains--an ugly, 25-mile scar across the face of Berlin. But the Wall stanched the drain of talented people, enabling him to stabilize and develop East Germany into the world's ninth largest industrial power, with a gross national income of $29.5 billion. That, in turn, gave Ulbricht great leverage within the East bloc. He shared none of the Soviet desire for technological help from the West; he has access to West German aid anyhow through various trade arrangements. Ulbricht's consuming fear was that closer ties with the West could undermine Communist rule in Eastern Europe. Now that he has stepped aside, that message may be preached with less apostolic force.

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