Day X: Fascists, Spies and Thugs

Abstract

With the dust barely settled on the demonstrations of 17 June 1953, the SED began its attempt to shape citizens’ memories and interpretations of the uprising through creation of an official version (and thus an ‘official memory’) of the events. The Party feared that if citizens evaluated the events as an uprising against the regime (an interpretation propagated by West German politicians and the West German media), then this might hold the potential to inspire further unrest in the GDR. The SED constructed an account of the uprising that rejected any claims that problems within the country, as well as mistakes on the part of the Party, had provoked unrest amongst citizens. Instead, the official account depicted the uprising as an attempted ‘fascist-counterrevolutionary putsch’ instigated by West German and American ‘imperialists’ with the aim of bringing down the SED regime and triggering a Third World War. The Party claimed that it was only under its leadership that citizens were able to restore order with some help from the Soviet armed forces. This official version of events appeared in newspapers, propaganda texts, history books and school textbooks. It remained more or less unchanged until the demise of the regime in 1989.