Popular Protest in the East German Revolution is an incisive new study of dissent and protest in the German Democratic Republic, focusing on the upheaval of 1989-1990.

"Popular Protest in East Germany, 1945-1989 is a history of public protest in East Germany from the end of World War Two until the demise of the GDR in 1990. This narrative history will be of particular interest to students of German Politics/History, European Politics and International Studies."--BOOK JACKET.

An incisive new study of dissent and protest in the German Democratic Republic, focusing on the upheaval of 1989-1990. The author, an active participant both in the 'Citizens' Movement' and in the street protests of that year, draws upon a vast array of sources including interviews, documents from the archives of the old regime and the Citizens' Movement and his own diary entries, to explore the causes and processes of the East German revolution. The book is at once a lucid and vibrant narrative history and a pioneering contribution to research in this field.

Winner of the Social Science History Association President’s Book Award East Germany was the first domino to fall when the Soviet bloc began to collapse in 1989. Its topple was so swift and unusual that it caught many area specialists and social scientists off guard; they failed to recognize the instability of the Communist regime, much less its fatal vulnerability to popular revolt. In this volume, Steven Pfaff identifies the central mechanisms that propelled the extraordinary and surprisingly bloodless revolution within the German Democratic Republic (GDR). By developing a theory of how exit-voice dynamics affect collective action, Pfaff illuminates the processes that spurred mass demonstrations in the GDR, led to a peaceful surrender of power by the hard-line Leninist elite, and hastened German reunification. While most social scientific explanations of collective action posit that the option for citizens to emigrate—or exit—suppresses the organized voice of collective public protest by providing a lower-cost alternative to resistance, Pfaff argues that a different dynamic unfolded in East Germany. The mass exit of many citizens provided a focal point for protesters, igniting the insurgent voice of the revolution. Pfaff mines state and party records, police reports, samizdat, Church documents, and dissident manifestoes for his in-depth analysis not only of the genesis of local protest but also of the broader patterns of exit and voice across the entire GDR. Throughout his inquiry, Pfaff compares the East German rebellion with events occurring during the same period in other communist states, particularly Czechoslovakia, China, Poland, and Hungary. He suggests that a trigger from outside the political system—such as exit—is necessary to initiate popular mobilization against regimes with tightly centralized power and coercive surveillance.

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.

An incisive new study of dissent and protest in the German Democratic Republic, focusing on the upheaval of 1989-1990. The author, an active participant both in the 'Citizens' Movement' and in the street protests of that year, draws upon a vast array of sources including interviews, documents from the archives of the old regime and the Citizens' Movement and his own diary entries, to explore the causes and processes of the East German revolution. The book is at once a lucid and vibrant narrative history and a pioneering contribution to research in this field.

For roughly the first decade after the demise of the GDR, professional and popular interpretations of East German history concentrated primarily on forms of power and repression, as well as on dissent and resistance to communist rule. Socio-cultural approaches have increasingly shown that a single-minded emphasis on repression and coercion fails to address a number of important historical issues, including those related to the subjective experiences of those who lived under communist regimes. With that in mind, the essays in this volume explore significant physical and psychological aspects of life in the GDR, such as health and diet, leisure and dining, memories of the Nazi past, as well as identity, sports, and experiences of everyday humiliation. Situating the GDR within a broader historical context, they open up new ways of interpreting life behind the Iron Curtain – while providing a devastating critique of misleading mainstream scholarship, which continues to portray the GDR in the restrictive terms of totalitarian theory.