My Account Wish List
Advanced Search
Print - Close Window
www.greenwood.com/catalog/C4261.aspx
All Greenwood Products
The Collapse of East German Communism The Year the Wall Came Down, 1989
(Click to Enlarge)
This book is not currently available for purchase Online. Please call 1-800-225-5800 to backorder.
David M. Keithly
Book Code: C4261
ISBN: 0-275-94261-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-94261-8
256 pages, figures
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 8/30/1992
List Price: $72.95 (UK Sterling Price: £41.95)
Availability: Out of stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • The Collapse of East German Communism is awell researched, well documented scholarly work. . . . As it is, it's an excellent single source overview of the history of the German Democratic Republic's forty-one year journey into the dustbin of history.
    —The Friday Review of Defense Literature
Description: This book focuses on a key aspect of the "German question"--the problem of German national identity and communist ideology in their historical perspective since 1945 and their immediate clash in the downfall of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1989. The book's theme might be summarized as German identity recovered. The book is unique in that it is in part an eyewitness account of one of Europe's most startling transformations. In the four decades of its existence, the GDR did not succeed in fostering a separate political or social identity, and thus an underlying difficulty of the state was never resolved. The overriding objective of the political socialization process in the GDR was to instill socialist political culture into the citizenry. This political culture had not only to be uniform with ideological imperatives and aspirations, but had to stand on its own because of the absence of a broader-based national culture. Given the newness of the state and its political institutions, and the continual challenge on the national question presented by the mere existence of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the East German Communist Party (SED) always faced an uphill task. This book should be of interest to students and scholars interested in Germany, in Europe, and in the fate of communism.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
  • Backdrop to Revolution
  • The Nature of East German Communism
  • Legitimacy Deficit
  • The Debate on the Nation
  • Economic Difficulties in the GDR
  • The West German Connection
  • Upheaval and Revolution
  • Winds of Change
  • The Iron Curtain Corrodes and Shakes
  • Marx and God
  • The SED Alone
  • The Dam Bursts
  • People Without Fear
  • The Wall Opens
  • Dwindling Options
  • The Synthesis
  • Into the Dustbin
  • Bibliography
LC Card Number: 92-2686
LCC Class: DD289
Dewey Class: 320.9431
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1999-2008 Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
88 Post Road West, Westport CT 06881, (203) 226-3571