Enemy of the people

The term class enemy is derived from the class theory of Marxism, according to which classes are groups of people who face each other in their economic and political objectives in the class struggle. According to this theory there are in the presence of two classes: the owner of the material means ( means of production, namely land and capital) and those who have only their labor power, the working class, the proletariat. Class enemy can be used as a term for a person or group of persons. He may be a reproach which seeks to identify an enemy and how to overcome or destroy, but can also be used purely analyzing. The term does not appear in the work of Marx and Engels.

Word usage in the Soviet Union

Class enemy or enemy of the working people was in the first years of Soviet history, the central concept in the pursuit of unpopular people, dissidents and opposition members. In 1927 he was in the Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic ( RSFSR ) was added, which provided counterrevolutionary crimes punishable. As the " most severe measure of social protection " after the shooting saw this law before the " Declaration on the enemy of the working people, coupled with confiscation of property, deprivation of citizenship of the Union Republic and [ ... ] permanent expulsion from the territory of the USSR ". When dekulakization the years 1929 to 1932, the term provided the rationale for mass arrests, mass executions and deportations to the so-called special settlements of the Gulag: As Kulak and therefore an enemy of the working people often was on, who had only one cow. With the beginning of the Great Terror in 1936, the concept of " enemy of the people " was used instead amplified, which allowed now also the persecution and extermination of members of the Communist Party itself.

Word usage in the GDR

In the GDR, the term was used differently. Since there was only the " friendly classes " of workers and collective farmers after the nationalization of medium-sized private enterprise, the class struggle of the SED and the media of the GDR was locates at the international level: Now the capitalist states and their governments were designated as class enemies, namely that of the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States. The Ministry for State Security ( Stasi) used the term class enemy to define the object of his " vigilance" and operational activities, namely, " all of the working class and socialism antagonistic opposing class forces hostile ". To distinguish internal and external class enemies, the latter were often provided imperialistic with the attribute. Against internal class enemies who were internally designated by the Stasi as Hostile -negative persons was the task: fast detection, suppression of acts, where appropriate " liquidation in no time " or application of the so-called " decomposition ". GDR citizens who differed in their thinking, speaking and acting from the given political opinion and action, found themselves so as a class enemy or hostile - negative person again, just be emigrants.