Dictatorship State Planning And Social Theory In The German Democratic Republic

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Dictatorship, State Planning, and Social Theory in the German Democratic Republic

Author : Peter C. Caldwell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2003-03-27
Category : History
ISBN : 0521820901

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Dictatorship, State Planning, and Social Theory in the German Democratic Republic by Peter C. Caldwell Pdf

The introduction of state planning and party dictatorship dramatically altered the environment for social theory in the German Democratic Republic. But social thought did not disappear. By the mid-1950s, East German social theorists discovered the basic contradictions of state socialism that would eventually lead to its collapse: the inability of the plan to function without markets and its inability to permit markets; the inability of the party-state to guarantee the rule of law and yet also the need for a regular system of rules in a modern industrial society; and the contradictory philosophical claims of a Marxist-Leninist philosophy that rejected idealism, and Marxist-Leninist dogma with its idealistic claim to know the laws of social modernization. Making use of archival sources, Caldwell examines the articulation of these analyses, their subsequent suppression by party authorities in the late 1950s, and their return under the guise of cybernetics in the 1960s.

Germany Since 1945

Author : Peter C. Caldwell,Karrin Hanshew
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2018-08-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9781474262439

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Germany Since 1945 by Peter C. Caldwell,Karrin Hanshew Pdf

Peter C. Caldwell and Karrin Hanshew's Germany Since 1945 traces the social, political and cultural history of Germany from the end of the Second World War right up to the present day. The book provides a narrative that not only explores the histories of East and West Germany in their international contexts, but one that also takes the significantly different world of the Berlin Republic seriously, analyzing it as a distinct and significant period of German history in its own right. Split into three parts roughly devoted to a quarter-century each, this book guides students through contemporary Germany from the catastrophe of war, genocide and the country's division to the very different challenges facing the reunified Germany of the 21st century. There are key primary source excerpts integrated throughout the text, as well as 32 images, numerous maps, charts and tables and a detailed bibliography to further aid study. The book is complemented by online resources which include sample syllabi and a pedagogical supplement. Germany Since 1945 underscores both the particularities of German history and the international trends and transactions that shaped it, giving good coverage to key aspects of post-1945 German society and politics, including: * East and West German paths to reconstruction * The development of consumer society and the welfare state * The politics of memory and coming to terms with the Nazi past * The Cold War * New social and political movements that opposed the postwar status * Immigration and the move toward a multicultural society This is an essential text for any student of contemporary German history.

The East German Dictatorship

Author : Corey Ross
Publisher : Bloomsbury Academic
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2002-03-29
Category : History
ISBN : 0340762667

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The East German Dictatorship by Corey Ross Pdf

When the Berlin Wall came down, historians found themselves unexpectedly challenged to reassess the nature of the German Democratic Republic. The period since the transformational changes of 1989-90 has seen feverish activity in the archives, as historians have sought to deepen understanding of how the regime functioned and to move beyond earlier views inescapably conditioned by Cold War antagonisms. No historical consensus has emerge and the controversy about the GDR is undiminished, in part because of the continuing importance of interpretations of the GDR's history to German political culture. The proliferation of published research has shifted the contours of debate and given rise to new issues, not always in clear-cut fashion. This study of the East German dictatorship is the first detailed mapping of the area, identifying key interpretational issues, describing the evolution of different approaches to them, and providing the author's own evaluation. A wide range of themes is covered, from state/society relations to the role of opposition to the GDR's place in the longer sweep of German history, and central aspects of the regime's foundation, internal organization, social and economic system, collapse, and 'after-life' receive close attention.

Dictatorship as Experience

Author : Konrad Hugo Jarausch
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : History
ISBN : 1571811826

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Dictatorship as Experience by Konrad Hugo Jarausch Pdf

A decade after the collapse of communism, this volume presents a historical reflection on the perplexing nature of the East German dictatorship. In contrast to most political rhetoric, it seeks to establish a middle ground between totalitarianism theory, stressing the repressive features of the SED-regime, and apologetics of the socialist experiment, emphasizing the normality of daily lives. The book transcends the polarization of public debate by stressing the tensions and contradictions within the East German system that combined both aspects by using dictatorial means to achieve its emancipatory aims. By analyzing a range of political, social, cultural, and chronological topics, the contributors sketch a differentiated picture of the GDR which emphasizes both its repressive and its welfare features. The sixteen original essays, especially written for this volume by historians from both east and west Germany, represent the cutting edge of current research and suggest new theoretical perspectives. They explore political, social, and cultural mechanisms of control as well as analyze their limits and discuss the mixture of dynamism and stagnation that was typical of the GDR.

Uncivil Society

Author : Stephen Kotkin
Publisher : Modern Library
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2009-10-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781588369178

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Uncivil Society by Stephen Kotkin Pdf

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded–and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs, Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross, drawing upon two decades of reflection, revisit this crash. In a crisp, concise, unsentimental narrative, they employ three case studies–East Germany, Romania, and Poland–to illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be swept away in political bank runs. This is less a story of dissidents, so-called civil society, than of the bankruptcy of a ruling class–communism’s establishment, or “uncivil society.” The Communists borrowed from the West like drunken sailors to buy mass consumer goods, then were unable to pay back the hard-currency debts and so borrowed even more. In Eastern Europe, communism came to resemble a Ponzi scheme, one whose implosion carries enduring lessons. From East Germany’s pseudotechnocracy to Romania’s megalomaniacal dystopia, from Communist Poland’s cult of Mary to the Kremlin’s surprise restraint, Kotkin and Gross pull back the curtain on the fraud and decadence that cashiered the would-be alternative to the market and democracy, an outcome that opened up to a deeper global integration that has proved destabilizing.

Moving Images on the Margins

Author : Seth Howes
Publisher : Camden House (NY)
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : History
ISBN : 9781640140684

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Moving Images on the Margins by Seth Howes Pdf

Documents the rich allusiveness and intellectual probity of experimental filmmaking-a form that thrived despite having been officially banned-in East German socialism's final years.

The Films of Konrad Wolf

Author : Larson Powell
Publisher : Screen Cultures: German Film a
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781640140721

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The Films of Konrad Wolf by Larson Powell Pdf

This is the first book in any language on the films of Konrad Wolf (1925-1982), East Germany's greatest filmmaker, and puts Wolf in a larger European filmic and historical context.

Embracing Democracy in Modern Germany

Author : Michael L. Hughes
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2021-01-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9781350153769

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Embracing Democracy in Modern Germany by Michael L. Hughes Pdf

Across the modern era, the traditional stereotype of Germans as authoritarian and subservient has faded, as they have become (mostly) model democrats. This book, for the first time, examines 130 years of history to comprehensively address the central questions of German democratization: How and why did this process occur? What has democracy meant to various Germans? And how stable is their, or indeed anyone's, democracy? Looking at six German regimes across thirteen decades, this study enables you to see how and why some Germans have always chosen to be politically active (even under dictatorships); the enormous range of conceptions of political culture and democracy they have held; and how interactions among various factors undercut or facilitated democracy at different times. Michael L. Hughes also makes clear that recent surges of support for 'populism' and 'authoritarianism' have not come out of nowhere but are inherent in long-standing contestations about democracy and political citizenship. Hughes argues that democracy – in Germany or elsewhere – cannot be a story of adversity overcome which culminates in a happy ending; it is an ongoing, open-ended process whose ultimate outcome remains uncertain.

Socialist Modern

Author : Katherine Pence,Paul Betts
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : 0472069748

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Socialist Modern by Katherine Pence,Paul Betts Pdf

This book explores the ways in which modernity shaped the relationship between socialist state and society in East Germany. The reunification of Germany in 1989 may have put an end to the experiment in East German communism, but its historical assessment is far from over. Where most of the literature over the past two decades has been driven by the desire to uncover the relationship between power and resistance, complicity and consent, more recent scholarship has tended to concentrate on the everyday history of East German citizens. experience of life in East Germany, with a particular view toward addressing the question: what did modernity mean for East German state and society? As such, the collection moves beyond the conceptual divide between state-level politics and everyday life so as to bring into sharper focus the specific contours of the GDR's unique experiment in Cold War socialism. What unites all the essays is the question of how the very tensions around socialist modernity shaped the views, memories and actions of East Germans over four decades. the Cold War, Eastern Europe, the history of communism, European social history and the history of everyday life, gender history, as well as modernity and socialist popular culture.

Working in East Germany

Author : J. Madarász
Publisher : Springer
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2006-11-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780230625662

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Working in East Germany by J. Madarász Pdf

Working in East Germany explores economic tendencies, political relationships and social situations that combined to create a specific socio-political habitat in East Germany after the building of the Berlin Wall. Conditions were peculiar to say the least, especially if compared to Western standards. Nevertheless, the majority of the population perceived their lives as part of a 'socialist normality' that most East Germans adjusted to successfully. This book writes the people back into the history of East Germany.

German Unification

Author : P. Caldwell,R. Shandley
Publisher : Springer
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2011-10-10
Category : History
ISBN : 9780230337954

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German Unification by P. Caldwell,R. Shandley Pdf

This wide-ranging collection brings together contributions from historians, political scientists, policymakers, and others to provide much-needed perspective on the unification of Germany as it actually played out in real historical time.

The Human Rights Dictatorship

Author : Ned Richardson-Little
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2020-04-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108424677

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The Human Rights Dictatorship by Ned Richardson-Little Pdf

Richardson-Little exposes the forgotten history of human rights in the German Democratic Republic, placing the history of the Cold War, Eastern European dissidents and the revolutions of 1989 in a new light. By demonstrating how even a communist dictatorship could imagine itself to be a champion of human rights, this book challenges popular narratives on the fall of the Berlin Wall and illustrates how notions of human rights evolved in the Cold War as they were re-imagined in East Germany by both dissidents and state officials. Ultimately, the fight for human rights in East Germany was part of a global battle in the post-war era over competing conceptions of what human rights meant. Nonetheless, the collapse of dictatorship in East Germany did not end this conflict, as citizens had to choose for themselves what kind of human rights would follow in its wake.

Socialism with a Human Face

Author : Gary B. Magee,Wayne Geerling
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2022-03-31
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9789811906640

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Socialism with a Human Face by Gary B. Magee,Wayne Geerling Pdf

East Germany’s economic history is typically told as a story of the unravelling of an inherently flawed system. Yet, while the system’s inefficiency is undeniable, its economic history was much richer than its comparatively poor economic performance suggests. For many who lived there, it was a system that, over its forty years, was capable of achievements and generally functioned at bearable levels. This book combines the insights of behavioural economics with archival research to peel away layers of rhetoric and assumptions about the East German economy and explore aspects of that underlying functionality. Through a series of cases studies that examine the establishment of socialist workplaces, the searches for productivity growth and efficiency, and the emergence of financial crisis, the book considers the system from the perspective of the humans who operated it and made the decisions that made it work. Unencumbered by political preconceptions, it offers a more realistic understanding of East German economic history than that derived from stagnant debates about the clash of systems. The new perspectives and approaches presented demonstrate that, extracted from its Cold War context, East Germany’s economic history can be analysed for what it was, rather than for what it symbolised.

Power and Society in the GDR, 1961-1979

Author : Mary Fulbrook
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2009-05-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781845459130

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Power and Society in the GDR, 1961-1979 by Mary Fulbrook Pdf

The communist German Democratic Republic, founded in 1949 in the Soviet-occupied zone of post-war Germany is, for many people, epitomized by the Berlin Wall; Soviet tanks and surveillance by the secret security police, the Stasi, appear to be central. But is this really all there is to the GDR1s history? How did people come to terms with their situation and make new lives behind the Wall? When the social history of the GDR in the 1960s and 1970s is explored, new patterns become evident. A fragile stability emerged in a period characterized by 'consumer socialism', international recognition and détente. Growing participation in the micro-structures of power, and conformity to the unwritten rules of an increasingly predictable system, suggest increasing accommodation to dominant norms and conceptions of socialist 'normality'. By exploring the ways in which lower-level functionaries and people at the grass roots contributed to the formation and transformation of the GDR from industry and agriculture, through popular sport and cultural life, to the passage of generations and varieties of social experience the contributors collectively develop a more complex approach to the history of East Germany.

Communist Planning versus Rationality

Author : János Matyas Kovács
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 425 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2022-04-14
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781793631787

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Communist Planning versus Rationality by János Matyas Kovács Pdf

This volume examines concepts of central planning, a cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies. It revolves around the theory of “optimal planning” which promised a profound modernization of Stalinist-style verbal planning. Encouraged by cybernetic dreams in the 1950s and supporting the strategic goals of communist leaders in the Cold War, optimal planners offered the ruling elites a panacea for the recurrent crises of the planned economy. Simultaneously, their planning projects conveyed the pride of rational management and scientific superiority over the West. The authors trace the rise and fall of the research program in the communist era in eight countries of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, and China, describing why the mission of optimization was doomed to fail and why the failure was nevertheless very slow. The theorists of optimal planning contributed to the rehabilitation of mathematical culture in economic research in the communist countries, and thus, to a neoclassical turn in economics all over the ex-communist world). However, because they have not rejected optimal planning as “computopia,” there is a large space left behind for future generations to experiment with Big Optimal Plans anew—based, at this time, on artificial intelligence and machine learning.