Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment
The Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment (German: ''Wachregiment "Feliks E. Dzierzynski"'') was the paramilitary wing of the Ministry for State Security (''Stasi''), the security service of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment was called a regiment, however the elite formation gradually grew to the size of a motorized infantry division with its constituent ''Kommandos'' made up of battalions. Its role in the Stasi was the protection of buildings and high-ranking officials of the GDR government and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. It was composed of experienced and ideologically reliable men separate from the National People's Army that could be deployed to suppress rebellion and unrest.Forester, Thomas M., The East German Army; Second in the Warsaw Pact, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1980. History The Guards Battalion A at the MfS (''Wachbataillon A beim MfS'') was founded on January 1, 1951 as an armed force to complement the Min ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stasi
The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990. The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maintaining state authority, i.e., the "Sword and Shield of the Party" (). This was accomplished primarily through the use of a network of civilian informants. This organization contributed to the arrest of approximately 250,000 people in East Germany. The Stasi also conducted espionage and other clandestine operations abroad through its subordinate foreign intelligence service, the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, Office of Enlightenment, or Head Office A (german: Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung). They also maintained contacts and occasionally cooperated with West German terrorists. The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Lichtenberg (locality), Berlin-Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities throughout the c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Communist State
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Comintern after Bolshevisation and the communist states within the Comecon, the Eastern Bloc and the Warsaw Pact. Marxism–Leninism currently still remains the ideology of a few parties around the world. After its peak when many communist states were established, the Revolutions of 1989 brought down most of the communist states, however, it is still the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. During most of the 20th century, before the Revolutions of 1989, around one-third of the world's population lived under communist states. Communist states are typically authoritarian and are typically administered through democratic centralism by a single centralised communist party apparatus. These parties are usually M ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Major General
Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of a lieutenant general outranking a major general, whereas a major outranks a lieutenant. In the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth and in the United States, when appointed to a field command, a major general is typically in command of a Division (military), division consisting of around 6,000 to 25,000 troops (several regiments or brigades). It is a two-star general, two-star rank that is subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the rank of brigadier or brigadier general. In the Commonwealth, major general is equivalent to the navy rank of rear admiral. In air forces with a separate rank structure (Commonwealth), major general is equivalent to air vice-marshal. In some countries including much of Eastern Europe, major ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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German Reunification
German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the German Reunification Treaty entered into force dissolving the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: link=no, Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR, or East Germany) and integrating its recently re-established constituent federated states into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: link=no, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, BRD, or West Germany) to form present-day Germany, has been chosen as the customary ''German Unity Day'' () and has thereafter been celebrated each year from 1991 as a national holiday. East and West Berlin were united into a single city and eventually became the capital of reunited Germany. The East Germany's government led by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) (a communist party) started to falter on 2 May 1 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wandlitz
Wandlitz is a municipality in the district of Barnim, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated 25 km north of Berlin, and 15 km east of Oranienburg. The municipality was established in 2004 by merger of the nine villages ''Basdorf'', '' Klosterfelde'', ''Lanke'', '' Prenden'', '' Schönerlinde'', ', ', ''Wandlitz'' and '' Zerpenschleuse''. The communal government of the Great municipality has its seat in Wandlitz directly. It consists of deputies from the several parts of the commune and in accordance with the election results of the existing parties here. Demography The post-war influx of refugees from eastern regions led to a rise in the population. The population growth stagnated during the communist era. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the population began a rising tendency again. File:Bevölkerungsentwicklung Wandlitz.pdf, Development of Population since 1875 within the current Boundaries (Blue Line: Population; Dotted Line: Comparison to Population Developm ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Waldsiedlung
Waldsiedlung (German for "Forest settlement") was the secure housing zone for the leaders of the German Democratic Republic in Bernau bei Berlin, Brandenburg from 1960 to 1989. Waldsiedlung housed the most senior party members of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany in relative luxury near Wandlitz, north of East Berlin, with surrounding areas off-limits to all ordinary citizens. Security was provided by soldiers of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment. Nowadays, the community is treated by Germans as a symbol of the elite in the SED party when it ruled East Germany. History The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was established in 1949 as a communist state from the Soviet Zone of Occupation. The GDR was ''de facto'' ruled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), whose leadership lived in mansions on the upscale Majakowskiring in the Pankow district of East Berlin. After the events of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the SED party leadership decided to build th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated as VChK ( rus, ВЧК, p=vɛ tɕe ˈka), and commonly known as Cheka ( rus, Чека, p=tɕɪˈka; from the initialism russian: ЧК, ChK, label=none), was the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations. Established on December 5 (Old Style) 1917 by the Sovnarkom, it came under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat-turned-Bolshevik. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had sprung up in the RSFSR at the oblast, guberniya, raion, uyezd, and volost levels. Ostensibly set up to protect the revolution from reactionary forces, i.e., "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, it soon became the repression tool against all political opponents of the communist regime. At the dir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky ( pl, Feliks Dzierżyński ; russian: Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович Дзержи́нский; – 20 July 1926), nicknamed "Iron Felix", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and official, born into Polish nobility. From 1917 until his death in 1926, Dzerzhinsky led the first two Soviet state-security organizations, the Cheka and the OGPU, establishing a secret police for the post-revolutionary Soviet regime. He was one of the architects of the Red Terror and decossackization. Early life Felix Dzerzhinsky was born on 11 September 1877 to ethnically Polish parents of noble descent, at the Dzerzhinovo family estate, about from the small town of Ivyanets in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Belarus). In the Russian Empire, his family was of a type known as " column-listed nobility" (russian: столбовое дворянство, stolbovoe dvorianstvo),Igor Kuznetsov. The Chekist No.1. The life of terror parent (Чекист № ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government of the GDR on 13 August 1961. It included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" from building a socialist state in the GDR. The authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as the ''Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart'' (german: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, ). The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame", a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt in reference to the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stalinism
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality, and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, deemed by Stalinism to be the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time. After Stalin's death and the Khrushchev thaw, de-Stalinization began in the 1950s and 1960s, which caused the influence of Stalin’s ideology begin to wane in the USSR. The second wave of de-Stalinization started during Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Glasnost. Stalin's regime forcibly purged society of what it saw as threats to itself and its brand of communism (so-called "enemies of the people"), which included ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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East German Uprising Of 1953
The East German uprising of 1953 (german: Volksaufstand vom 17. Juni 1953 ) was an uprising that occurred in East Germany from 16 to 17 June 1953. It began with a strike action by construction workers in East Berlin on 16 June against work quotas during the Sovietization process in East Germany. Demonstrations in East Berlin turned into a widespread uprising against the Government of East Germany and the Socialist Unity Party the next day, involving over one million people in about 700 localities across the country. Protests against declining living standards and unpopular Sovietization policies led to a wave of strikes and protests that were not easily brought under control and threatened to overthrow the East German government. The uprising in East Berlin was violently suppressed by tanks of the Soviet forces in Germany and the ''Kasernierte Volkspolizei'', while demonstrations continued in over 500 towns and villages for several more days before dying out. The 1953 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Political Opposition
In politics, the opposition comprises one or more political parties or other organized groups that are opposed, primarily ideologically, to the government (or, in American English, the administration), party or group in political control of a city, region, state, country or other political body. The degree of opposition varies according to political conditions. For example, in authoritarian and democratic systems, opposition may be respectively repressed or desired. See also * His Majesty's loyal opposition (other) * Leader of the Opposition * Parliamentary opposition * Political dissent * The Establishment * Ruling party The ruling party or governing party in a democratic parliamentary or presidential system is the political party or coalition holding a majority of elected positions in a parliament, in the case of parliamentary systems, or holding the executive ... References Political terminology {{Poli-term-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |