ABSTRACT
During the early spring of 1952, the SED leadership left Berlin for conferences with Stalin and his top officials in Moscow. In the meeting on April 7, the agriculture of the GDR was a central point on the agenda, and Stalin laid out clear goals for the further socialist development of the land. In October 1953, the Schleiz County SED reported that the enemies of the party had struck again. In the staff room of a county post office, a large chalkboard hung on the wall. Someone had written quotations of a "provocative character" across the board. At the Fifth Party Congress in East Berlin in July 1958, the decision was made to name the strengthening of the East German economy as the "primary task" for the upcoming year. After the closing of Fifth Party Congress, the Schleiz County SED identified twelve "focus points" in the county where "the expansion of the socialist sector of agriculture still has no success".
