BERLIN -- Responding to longstanding calls that it address the sins of its past, the former Communist Party of East Germany voted to distance itself from the "Stalinist model of socialism" during a widely watched three-day congress here.


The weekend's voting underscored the Party of Democratic Socialism's desire, five years after it nearly vanished, to become a full-fledged player within the German political opposition. In western Germany, the PDS is deeply suspect because nearly 90 percent of its members once belonged to the Communist Party and because some members are known to have collaborated with the East German secret police.


In resolving "to reject ideals of socialism with a dictatorial, anti-freedom, anti-democratic, illiberal and centralized character," the party explicitly shunned its former policies. But it did not expel old-style Communists still in its ranks.