A new broom for Gregor Gysi ...

This is the front page from 11 December 1989 of Neues Deutschland - the central organ of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) - except that the special party congress has just decided that the party should not be called the SED any more. The new broom is for the newly-elected party chair Gregor Gysi to clean up what the newspaper calls the party's "Stalinist ideas and structures". The front page articles summarises Gregor Gysi, lawyer and son of the former GDR state secretary for church affairs - as appealing for hard work to save "our country and our party". The special congress was called as the collapse of the GDR continued amid ever new revelations of corruption. Gysi was elected by 95.32 percent of votes from delegates (a pretty respectable score for a "post-Stalinist" politician) who then continued to debate whether the as yet-without-a-name party should continue to exist or be dissolved. ND reports:

Opposing resolutions proposing the continuance or the dissolution of the party led to the debates being suspended, meetings of the district delegations and the acting presidium, and then to the next session of the party congress being beld in closed session. In this fateful hour Hans Modrow [the GDR prime minister] appeals for the parts'y capacity to act to be maintained. Then - according to delegates - there were several votes ... The "Report about the discussion on the first days of the extraordinary party congress" was presented on behalf of the drafting committee by Lothar Bisky. In this document to be presented for discussion at the basis of the party, delegates stated it is their duty "in the name of the party to apologise profoundly to the people that the former leadership of the SED has brough out country to this crisis that threatens its very existence".

The party congress was adjourned for a week to meet again in Berlin. But today's Die Linke party is a direct descendant of that fateful decision in Berlin. Today Gregor Gysi is the chairperson of the parliamentary group of Die Linke, and Lothar Bisky is chairperson of the party.