Socialist Unity Party of Germany

The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from the country’s establishment in 1949 until the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. Formed in 1946 through a forced merger of the East German branches of the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the SED built and ruled East Germany as a one-party Marxist–Leninist state. The SED had, at last official count in late November 1989, 2,129,250 members, or about 17% of the entire East German adult population.