The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945-1989 PDF Download
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Author: Jeffrey Kopstein
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807862592
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
Jeffrey Kopstein offers the first comprehensive study of East German economic policy over the course of the state's forty-year history. Analyzing both the making of economic policy at the national level and the implementation of specific policies on the shop floor, he provides new and essential background to the revolution of 1989. In particular, he shows how decisions made at critical junctures in East Germany's history led to a pattern of economic decline and worker dissatisfaction that contributed to eventual political collapse. East Germany was generally considered to have the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc, but Kopstein explores what prevented the country's leaders from responding effectively to pressing economic problems. He depicts a regime caught between the demands of a disaffected working class whose support was crucial to continued political stability, an intractable bureaucracy, an intolerant but surprisingly weak Soviet patron state, and a harsh international economic climate. Rather than pushing for genuine economic change, the East German Communist Party retreated into what Kopstein calls a 'campaign economy' in which an endless series of production campaigns was used to squeeze greater output from an inherently inefficient economic system. Originally published in 1996. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Author: Jeffrey Kopstein
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807862592
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Get Book Here
Book Description
Jeffrey Kopstein offers the first comprehensive study of East German economic policy over the course of the state's forty-year history. Analyzing both the making of economic policy at the national level and the implementation of specific policies on the shop floor, he provides new and essential background to the revolution of 1989. In particular, he shows how decisions made at critical junctures in East Germany's history led to a pattern of economic decline and worker dissatisfaction that contributed to eventual political collapse. East Germany was generally considered to have the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc, but Kopstein explores what prevented the country's leaders from responding effectively to pressing economic problems. He depicts a regime caught between the demands of a disaffected working class whose support was crucial to continued political stability, an intractable bureaucracy, an intolerant but surprisingly weak Soviet patron state, and a harsh international economic climate. Rather than pushing for genuine economic change, the East German Communist Party retreated into what Kopstein calls a 'campaign economy' in which an endless series of production campaigns was used to squeeze greater output from an inherently inefficient economic system. Originally published in 1996. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Author: Steven Pfaff
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
DIVA critical and comparative reexamination of the East German revolution of 1989 and its aftermath, suggesting which causal mechanisms account for the collapse of the East German state and German reunification./div
Author: Hartmut Berghoff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107030137
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
The contributors to this volume consider the economic history of East Germany within its broader political, cultural and social contexts.
Author: André Steiner
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 178238314X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
The establishment of the Communist social model in one part of Germany was a result of international postwar developments, of the Cold War waged by East and West, and of the resultant partition of Germany. As the author argues, the GDR’s ‘new’ society was deliberately conceived as a counter-model to the liberal and marketregulated system. Although the hopes connected with this alternative system turned out to be misplaced and the planned economy may be thoroughly discredited today, it is important to understand the context in which it developed and failed. This study, a bestseller in its German version, offers an in-depth exploration of the GDR economy’s starting conditions and the obstacles to growth it confronted during the consolidation phase. These factors, however, were not decisive in the GDR’s lack of growth compared to that of the Federal Republic. As this study convincingly shows, it was the economic model that led to failure.
Author: Arvid Nelson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300130309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
East Germany, its economy, and its society were in decline long before the country’s political collapse in the late 1980s. The clues were there in the natural landscape, Arvid Nelson argues in this groundbreaking book, but policy analysts were blind to them. Had they noted the record of the leadership’s values and goals manifest in the landscape, they wouldn’t have hailed East Germany as a Marxist-Leninist success story. Nelson sets East German history within the context of the landscape history of two centuries to underscore how forest and ecosystem change offered a reliable barometer to the health and stability of the political system that governed them. Cold War Ecology records how East German leaders’ indifference to human rights and their disregard for the landscape affected the rural economy, forests, and population. This lesson from history suggests new ways of thinking about the health of ecosystems and landscapes, Nelson shows, and he proposes assessing the stability of modern political systems based on the environment’s system qualities rather than on political leaders’ goals and beliefs.
Author: Hope M. Harrison
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840724
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War. For the first time, this path-breaking book tells the behind-the-scenes story of the communists' decision to build the Wall in 1961. Hope Harrison's use of archival sources from the former East German and Soviet regimes is unrivalled, and from these sources she builds a highly original and provocative argument: the East Germans pushed the reluctant Soviets into building the Berlin Wall. This fascinating work portrays the different approaches favored by the East Germans and the Soviets to stop the exodus of refugees to West Germany. In the wake of Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviets refused the East German request to close their border to West Berlin. The Kremlin rulers told the hard-line East German leaders to solve their refugee problem not by closing the border, but by alleviating their domestic and foreign problems. The book describes how, over the next seven years, the East German regime managed to resist Soviet pressures for liberalization and instead pressured the Soviets into allowing them to build the Berlin Wall. Driving the Soviets Up the Wall forces us to view this critical juncture in the Cold War in a different light. Harrison's work makes us rethink the nature of relations between countries of the Soviet bloc even at the height of the Cold War, while also contributing to ongoing debates over the capacity of weaker states to influence their stronger allies.
Author: N. F. R. Crafts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521499644
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 636
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Book Description
This compelling volume re-examines the topic of economic growth in Europe after the Second World War. The contributors approach the subject armed not only with new theoretical ideas, but also with the experience of the 1980s on which to draw. The analysis is based on both applied economics and on economic history. Thus, while the volume is greatly informed by insights from growth theory, emphasis is given to the presentation of chronological and institutional detail. The case study approach and the adoption of a longer-run perspective than is normal for economists allow new insights to be obtained. As well as including chapters that consider the experience of individual European countries, the book explores general European institutional arrangements and historical circumstances. The result is a genuinely comparative picture of post-war growth, with insights that do not emerge from standard cross-section regressions based on the post-1960 period.
Author: Tony Judt
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780143037750
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1000
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Book Description
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award • One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “Impressive . . . Mr. Judt writes with enormous authority.” —The Wall Street Journal “Magisterial . . . It is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive, authoritative, and yes, readable postwar history.” —The Boston Globe Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy.
Author: Russel Lemmons
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813140919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 383
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Book Description
“Fascinating material . . . This book will likely be the last word and the standard work on the Thälmann myth and its role in East German history.” —Catherine Epstein, author of Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths Throughout the 1920s, German politician and activist Ernst Thälmann (1886–1944) was the leader of the largest Communist Party organization outside the Soviet Union. Thälmann was the most prominent left-wing politician in the country’s 1932 election and ran third in the presidential race after Hitler and von Hindenberg. After the Nazi Party’s victory in that contest, he was imprisoned and held in solitary confinement for eleven years before being executed at Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944 under the Führer’s direct orders. Hitler’s Rival examines how the Communist Party gradually transformed Thälmann into a fallen mythic hero, building a cult that became one of their most important propaganda tools in central Europe. Author Russel Lemmons analyzes the party intelligentsia’s methods, demonstrating how they used various media to manipulate public memory and exploring the surprising ways in which they incorporated Christian themes into their messages. Examining the facts as well as the propaganda, this unique volume separates the intriguing true biography of the cult figure from the fantastic myth that was created around him. “Lemmons analyzes in great detail the myth and legend that formed around Ernst Thälmann, who became the leader of the German Communist Party in 1925 and was a dominant politician in Weimar Germany until imprisoned by the Nazis in 1933. This comprehensive study, which treats the years before the war ended for the first time, is thoroughly researched and well written; it will be a standard work on the subject.” —G. P. Blum, Professor Emeritus, University of the Pacific
Author: Samuel P. Huntington
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806186046
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
Between 1974 and 1990 more than thirty countries in southern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe shifted from authoritarian to democratic systems of government. This global democratic revolution is probably the most important political trend in the late twentieth century. In The Third Wave, Samuel P. Huntington analyzes the causes and nature of these democratic transitions, evaluates the prospects for stability of the new democracies, and explores the possibility of more countries becoming democratic. The recent transitions, he argues, are the third major wave of democratization in the modem world. Each of the two previous waves was followed by a reverse wave in which some countries shifted back to authoritarian government. Using concrete examples, empirical evidence, and insightful analysis, Huntington provides neither a theory nor a history of the third wave, but an explanation of why and how it occurred. Factors responsible for the democratic trend include the legitimacy dilemmas of authoritarian regimes; economic and social development; the changed role of the Catholic Church; the impact of the United States, the European Community, and the Soviet Union; and the "snowballing" phenomenon: change in one country stimulating change in others. Five key elite groups within and outside the nondemocratic regime played roles in shaping the various ways democratization occurred. Compromise was key to all democratizations, and elections and nonviolent tactics also were central. New democracies must deal with the "torturer problem" and the "praetorian problem" and attempt to develop democratic values and processes. Disillusionment with democracy, Huntington argues, is necessary to consolidating democracy. He concludes the book with an analysis of the political, economic, and cultural factors that will decide whether or not the third wave continues. Several "Guidelines for Democratizers" offer specific, practical suggestions for initiating and carrying out reform. Huntington's emphasis on practical application makes this book a valuable tool for anyone engaged in the democratization process. At this volatile time in history, Huntington's assessment of the processes of democratization is indispensable to understanding the future of democracy in the world.
