Oppression and Scarcity: The History and Institutional Structure of the Marxist-Leninist Government of East Germany and Some Perspectives on Life in a Socialist System

(Hardback)

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Imagine being forced to adopt an ideology that strips you of your political rights and plunges you into a life of despair and unending shortages. After the Second World War, the people of East Germany endured just such an appalling fate when socialism was forced upon them. Examining the effects of an oppressive and economically incompetent system, Sperlich presents a systematic review of post-war German history, with an emphasis on the founding of a communist state on German soil: the German Democratic Republic. He traces the imposition of communist rule, discussing the suppression of free elections and opposition to the infliction of a dictatorial one-party regime. Sperlich demonstrates how East Germans suffered under the restraints of socialism, and recounts the peaceful revolution of 1989, which led to the reunification of the two German states.

Reviews

According to the American newsreels and TV shows, life under Marxist-Leninist governments was composed primarily of wearing drab clothing, standing in long lines for survival rations, and being thrown into gulags at various points in the life-cycle. In this second volume in his series, Sperlich replaces these rather simple-minded perceptions with the realities and practicalities of life in East Germany before reunification. He explains how Germany was partitioned and how allied policies moved from the four-zone to the two-state systems, the beginnings of government structure, politics in terms of the party, the state and citizenship, reforms and failure in economics due to rigidity, and the influence of public opinion and public discourse. He closes with reflections on life under socialism, including the practice of religion, cultural life, and how the customer is always wrong, and closes with an analysis of the end of the socialist experiment. * Reference & Research Book News *

Author Bio

Peter W. Sperlich is Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Rotten Foundations: The Conceptual Basis of the Marxist-Leninist Regimes of East Germany and Other Countries of the Soviet Bloc.