Reluctant revolutionaries: Anti‐fascism and the east German opposition

Abstract

The leaders of the East German uprising were reluctant revolutionaries who refused to seize power from a collapsing regime, instead helping communist reformers survive societal rebellion. However critical these dissidents were of communist rule in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a commitment to anti‐fascism led them to enter into a dialogue with the regime in an effort to make it live up to its own ideals. The ideology of communist anti‐fascism was much stronger in the GDR than in any other eastern European country because it universalised the causes of fascism. Once demonstrators began demanding unification, oppositionists found they had more in common with communist reformers who wanted to save the GDR than with popular opinion. While much of the membership of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS, the successor party of the ruling communist party) continues to invoke anti‐fascism, most former opposition leaders have abandoned this form of political self‐justification. The end of the ‘myth of anti‐fascism’ has contributed to a strengthened commitment to parliamentary democracy by the former GDR opposition.