Workers' Party of Ethiopia
에티오피아 노동자당
A Marxist–Leninist party in Ethiopia from 1984 to 1991. It was founded by the military government, the Derg, as the vanguard party of a future socialist state, with Mengistu Haile Mariam as general secretary. With the founding of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in 1987 it became the sole legal ruling party, and it was dissolved after the regime fell in May 1991.
In depth
The Derg, the military committee that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, abolished the monarchy and declared itself socialist the following year. The Soviet Union pressed it to create a civilian-based vanguard party; Mengistu, chairman of the Derg from 1977, at first argued that the revolution had succeeded without one, but changed course as armed opposition grew. In December 1979 the Commission for Organizing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia (COPWE) was formed. By 1983 it had about 50,000 members and some 6,500 cells, and 79 of the 123 members of its Central Committee were soldiers.
The party was founded to mark the tenth anniversary of the revolution. The English-language source gives the founding date as 12 September 1984, while the Russian-language source dates the founding congress to 6–10 September. The congress elected a Central Committee of 183 and a Politburo of 11, seven of whom were surviving members of the Derg, and Mengistu became general secretary. The 1987 constitution defined the party as "formulator of the country's development process and the leading force of the state and in society", dissolved the Derg and renamed the country the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
According to the Russian-language source, the ruling party fought not only the anti-communist Ethiopian Democratic Union but also forces that professed Marxism, such as the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Drought, mismanagement, the end of Soviet support in 1990 and defeats in the civil war combined against it. At the 11th plenum of the Central Committee in March 1990 Mengistu declared that the socialist path had not produced the expected results and set the task of market reforms; the party abandoned Marxism–Leninism and was to become the "Ethiopian Democratic Unity Party". In May 1991 Mengistu fled the country, and the transitional government dissolved the party and imprisoned many of its leaders.