Word: sed
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...Dear Child." With such sarcastic editorials, Berlin's non-Communist newspapers last week ridiculed the cure-all campaign promises made by SED (the Communist-run Socialist Unity Party) in a desperate attempt to win votes for Berlin's municipal elections Oct. 20. Sedists (as Berliners have begun to call SEDers) personally took credit for such timely Russian favors as last week's distribution of cigarets and liquor to Berliners, and the special allotment of clothing and shoes to 60,000 children. SED distributed notebooks to children with the inscription: "Instead of using this paper for a campaign...
...puts it, "Es geht um die Wurst" ("The sausage is at stake," meaning: this is it)..The elections (at which Berliners will choose 130 city councillors and 805 district assemblymen) are Germany's first to be supervised jointly by all four occupying powers. This means that, for once, SED will have to compete honestly with its rival parties (the Liberals, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats). Even without joint central control, in Russian zone elections last month SED polled only a bare 52% majority...
Worst of all, the Russians are getting impatient. They are beginning to suspect that their heavy investment of monetary and moral support for SED has been unsound. In addition to the Sedists' relatively poor performance at the polls, several political divergencies have appeared. Foreign Minister Molotov recently had to slap down a suggestion by SED Leader Otto Grotewohl that Poland might give up some of the German territory she got at Potsdam. Grotewohl also objects mildly to Russia's super-combine of German industries in the Russian zone (TIME, Aug. 26) and to her peace-delaying tactics (cried...
Holiday Ahead. Some of these disagreements may well be faked in order to persuade Germans that SED is really not Soviet-controlled. But there could be no doubt that the Russians no longer relied on SED as an instrument of control. They were tightening their grip through other means, such as the top-secret creation of a German zonal police organization (reportedly including a new German secret police...
...Saxony the German vote was less decisive and the result completely different. Result: victory for the SED. But the SED had polled only 48% of the total votes cast. The other 52% was shared among the Liberal and Christian Democratic parties. Most striking fact: the center of SED support had shifted to the country; the land reform program had pulled an unexpectedly heavy leftist vote. In industrial cities like Dresden, Leipzig, Plauen, Zwickau, traditional cradles of German leftism, the labor vote split wide open. But power remained in the hands of the Russians and their pet party, which, will control...