Stasi State Or Socialist Paradise

Author : Bruni De la Motte
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780955822865
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Stasi State Or Socialist Paradise? written by Bruni De la Motte and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Much has been written about how awful the German Democratic Republic supposedly was: a people imprisoned by a wall and subjugated by an omnipresent Stasi security apparatus. Such descriptions are based largely on prejudice, ignorance and wilful animosity. This book is an attempt to provide a more balanced evaluation and to examine GDR-style socialism in terms of what we can learn from it. The authors, while not ignoring the real deficiencies of GDR society, emphasise the many aspects that were positive, and demonstrate that alternative ways of organising society are possible. This volume is an updated and much expanded edition of the authors' booklet first published in 2009. Thee have added more detail on how the GDR came into being as a separate state, about how society functioned and what values determined the every-day life of its citizens. There is also a whole new section on what happened in the aftermath of unification, particularly to the economy. While unification brought East Germans access to a more affluent society, freedom to travel throughout the world and the end to an over-centralised political system, it also brought with it unemployment, social breakdown and loss of hope, particularly in the once thriving rural areas." -- From back cover.

Author : Victor Grossman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Crossing the River written by Victor Grossman and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with an accusation from the US Army's highest legal authority in 1952, Grossman left his unit stationed in Bavaria and swam the Danube to East Germany. He traces his childhood and experiences as a student, worker, and soldier; then describes life in his new home among a surprisingly large community of defectors. There is no index. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Author : Quinn Slobodian
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1782387064
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Comrades of Color written by Quinn Slobodian and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In keeping with the tenets of socialist internationalism, the political culture of the German Democratic Republic strongly emphasized solidarity with the non-white world: children sent telegrams to Angela Davis in prison, workers made contributions from their wages to relief efforts in Vietnam and Angola, and the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, and Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired public memorials. Despite their prominence, however, scholars have rarely examined such displays in detail. Through a series of illuminating historical investigations, this volume deploys archival research, ethnography, and a variety of other interdisciplinary tools to explore the rhetoric and reality of East German internationalism.

Author : Brunhild De La Motte
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780955822834
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Stasi Hell Or Workers' Paradise? written by Brunhild De La Motte and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Albert Szymanski
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781387499038
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Is the Red Flag Flying? written by Albert Szymanski and published by . This book was released on 2022-11-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the October Revolution of 1917 there has been considerable debate among both socialists and enemies of socialism on the class nature of the Soviet Union. This debate waxed and waned over time in good measure as a function of the international policies of the Soviet Union and its enemies. We have seen a great revival of interest in the question among sympathizers of Cultural Revolution era of the People's Republic of China, which in 1967 had claimed that capitalism has been restored in the Soviet Union. Many of the issues and arguments raised by various branches of the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s and 1940s are once again being discussed and supported by the Maoist camp in response to this debate. On the other hand defenders of the Soviet Union continue to claim that the country was socialist, and this book expounds in detail just why socialism was indeed still prevailing in the Soviet Union at the time of it's publication in the late 1970's and early 80's.

Author : Victor Grossman
Publisher : Monthly Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1583677380
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Socialist Defector written by Victor Grossman and published by Monthly Review Press. This book was released on 2019-02-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The circumstances that impelled Victor Grossman, a U.S. Army draftee stationed in Europe, to flee a military prison sentence were the icy pressures of the McCarthy Era. Grossman – a.k.a. Steve Wechsler, a committed leftist since his years at Harvard and, briefly, as a factory worker – left his barracks in Bavaria one August day in 1952, and, in a panic, swam across the Danube River from the Austrian U.S. Zone to the Soviet Zone. Fate – i.e., the Soviets – landed him in East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic. There he remained, observer and participant, husband and father, as he watched the rise and successes, the travails, and the eventual demise of the GDR socialist experiment. A Socialist Defector is the story, told in rare, personal detail, of an activist and writer who grew up in the U.S. free-market economy; spent thirty-eight years in the GDR’s nationally owned, centrally administered economy; and continues to survive, given whatever the market can bear in today’s united Germany. Having been a freelance journalist and traveling lecturer – and the only person in the world to hold diplomas from both Harvard and the Karl Marx University – Grossman is able to offer insightful, often ironic, reflections and reminiscences, comparing the good and bad sides of life in all three of the societies he has known. His account focuses especially on the socialism he saw and lived – the GDR’s goals and achievements, its repressive measures and stupidities – which, he argues, offers lessons now in our search for solutions to the grave problems facing our world. This is a fascinating and unique historical narrative; political analysis told with jokes, personal anecdotes, and without bombast.

Author : Roger Keeran
Publisher : iUniverse
ISBN 13 : 1450241727
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Socialism Betrayed written by Roger Keeran and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2010-10-20 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A fresh multi-faceted look at the overthrow of the Soviet State, the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, and the campaign to introduce capitalism from above. Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny have given us a clear and powerful Marxist analysis of the momentous events which most directly shaped world politics today, the destruction of the USSR, the 'Superpower' of socialism." -Norman Markowitz, author of The Rise and Fall of the People's Century "I have not read anything else with such detailed and intimate knowledge of what took place. This manuscript is the most important contribution I have read." -Phillip Bonosky, author of Afghanistan-Washington's Secret War "A well-researched work containing a great deal of useful historical information. Everyone will benefit greatly from the mass of historical data and the thought-provoking arguments contained in the book." -Bahman Azad, author of Heroic Struggle Bitter Defeat: Factors Contributing to the Dismantling of the Socialist State in the USSR

Author : Alec Nove
Publisher : IICA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. written by Alec Nove and published by IICA. This book was released on 1969 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Study in historical perspective of developments in economic policy in the USSR - covers economic structures and economic administration prior to and during the 1st world war, the position during the 50 years of the communist regime, political leadership of the country, the collective economy, industrialization, political problems, economic growth, etc. Bibliography pp. 389 to 391, and statistical tables.

Author : Mary Fulbrook
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300176384
Total Pages : 470 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The People's State written by Mary Fulbrook and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-02 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was life really like for East Germans, effectively imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain? The headline stories of Cold War spies and surveillance by the secret police, of political repression and corruption, do not tell the whole story. After the unification of Germany in 1990 many East Germans remembered their lives as interesting, varied, and full of educational, career, and leisure opportunities: in many ways “perfectly ordinary lives.” Using the rich resources of the newly-opened GDR archives, Mary Fulbrook investigates these conflicting narratives. She explores the transformation of East German society from the ruins of Hitler's Third Reich to a modernizing industrial state. She examines changing conceptions of normality within an authoritarian political system, and provides extraordinary insights into the ways in which individuals perceived their rights and actively sought to shape their own lives. Replacing the simplistic black-and-white concept of “totalitarianism” by the notion of a “participatory dictatorship,” this book seeks to reinstate the East German people as actors in their own history.

Author : John O. Koehler
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0786724412
Total Pages : 478 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Stasi written by John O. Koehler and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this gripping narrative, John Koehler details the widespread activities of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or "Stasi." The Stasi, which infiltrated every walk of East German life, suppressed political opposition, and caused the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of citizens, proved to be one of the most powerful secret police and espionage services in the world. Koehler methodically reviews the Stasi's activities within East Germany and overseas, including its programs for internal repression, international espionage, terrorism and terrorist training, art theft, and special operations in Latin America and Africa. Koehler was both Berlin bureau chief of the Associated Press during the height of the Cold War and a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His insider's account is based on primary sources, such as U.S. intelligence files, Stasi documents made available only to the author, and extensive interviews with victims of political oppression, former Stasi officers, and West German government officials. Drawing from these sources, Koehler recounts tales that rival the most outlandish Hollywood spy thriller and, at the same time, offers the definitive contribution to our understanding of this still largely unwritten aspect of the history of the Cold War and modern Germany.