East Germany's post- war position within the Soviet sphere of influence stands out for several reasons. First, it was the German nation that gave rise to National Socialism and wreaked the havoc and devastation that raged across Europe, especially Eastern Europe, during World War II. Even if East German political leaders and intellectuals had struggled for 12 years underground and in exile on behalf of the ‘other’, the ‘better’ anti- fascist Germany, the burden of National Socialism weighed heavily on their efforts to eradicate vestiges of the past that still lingered in the post- war present. Secondly, the anti- fascist vision of a demilitarized, united Germany was not realized. The burgeoning Cold War quickly led to the Soviet Zone's isolation within the post- war occupation, its demonizaton in the West German media and, in 1949, the division of Germany. This new geopolitical scenario opened up yet another hostile front with which East German political leaders and intellectuals would have to contend for years to come.

A third factor was more favourable. The Soviet Union, its infrastructure ravaged by the invasions of its territories, was reluctant to commit itself to Germany's politicaleconomic recovery and, indeed, promoted the idea of a demilitarized, politically neutral Germany for another 10 years. In the meantime, its demand for war reparations and confiscation of industrial plants, equipment and resources took a toll on the fledgling East German economy. Yet the Soviet Union's initial reticence towards Germany expressed itself as a more or less tolerant attitude in the cultural sphere, as East Germans were allowed a certain autonomy in realizing their vision of an anti- fascist socialist culture. The Soviet cultural imprint in East Germany, be it the Russian language, culture or artistic conventions in literature and the other arts, was in fact far less remarkable than the introduction into West Germany of cultural trends from the Western democracies, especially Americanization in the way of abstract art, popular culture and media.

The East German version of socialist culture would be essentially German, that is to say, a reliance on plebeian traditions since the peasant wars and reformation movements of the sixteenth century, the humanistic bourgeois heritage of Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, and liberal and working- class traditions since the nineteenth century.