If the party split, Kroker said, "we would also destroy the hope for a free and cohesive society that we and the others want."

The Socialist Unity Party, as the Communist are officially known, was created in 1946 through the forced merger of the German Communist Party and the Social Democrats.

Party leader Walter Ulbrich ruled until 1971, when he was replaced by Erich Honecker.

As hundreds of thousands of East Germans began taking to the streets in October to demand free elections and other democratic reforms, the hard-line Honecker was forced to resign on October 18.

He was replaced by Egon Krenz, who opened the Berlin Wall and gave the East Germans the freedom to travel they had not enjoyed since the wall was built in 1961.

The party has lost nearly all of its authority and public trust and more than 10 percent of its two million members have turned in their cards in recent weeks.

The party issued a broad new platform Thursday, aiming for an "alternative democratic socialism" to recover some role in the East German power structure.