Word: politburo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...last meeting of the East German Politburo, then Deputy Premier Fred Oelssner. whom Ulbricht put in charge of production and distribution of consumer goods in 1955, bluntly declared that as things were going "the country can expect a total collapse of its economy by 1960." The whole Ulbricht philosophy of export-at-any-price, and of imposing impossible production goals upon industry, had led "to an economy of permanent crisis." The country was grievously short of raw materials, can not even depend on the cheap coal that Poland now sells to the West...
...long considered Ulbricht's heir apparent, rose to back up Oelssner. What had Ulbricht's policies actually accomplished, he asked, but the alienation of "the bourgeoisie, the youth, the intelligentsia, the housewives, and 2,000,000 refugees?" Ulbricht replied by kicking Oelssner and Schirdewan out of the Politburo...
...prospective heir as Communist boss of East Germany. When Ulbricht visited Moscow last year, Schirdewan sat in for him as First Secretary. Schirdewan was charged with "advocating a safety-valve policy akin to that applied in Hungary and Poland." In an indictment that was also an unconscious admission, a Politburo spokesman explained: "Had we followed [Schirdewan's] opinions, very probably we would have had to suppress a counterrevolution with use of arms...
...Friends Threatened. The evidence of a split in China's Politburo is the off-again-on-again confusion of the current "counter-rectification" campaign, which has caused a vast wave of discontent among China's intellectuals. Originally it was Mao who promulgated the "let all flowers bloom" thesis; in pushing it so diligently, he was mindful of Budapest and the need for some guarded outlet for intellectual ferment (as shown by his many worried references to Hungary in his secret February speech). But no sooner had the flowers of discontent begun to appear as shoots than they were...
...success of Kerala has created a new surge of confidence in the Indian Communist Party. Ajoy Ghosh, the party's general secretary, came out of a Politburo meeting in Trivandrum last week smiling happily. "The small party we have had until now," he declared, "is unsuitable. What we need is to develop a truly national character. We want a big party with a big membership." He seemed well on the way to getting just that...