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.
Автор: Michael, Franz Название: China and the Crisis of Marxism-Leninism ISBN: 0367014610 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780367014612 Издательство: Taylor&Francis Рейтинг: Цена: 148010.00 T Наличие на складе: Невозможна поставка. Описание: Is the failure of communism in China inevitable? So argue the authors of China and the Crisis of Marxism-Leninism, who believe that Mao’s programs were utopian fantasies that greatly aggravated the incurable flaws of the Stalinist order, now eroding worldwide. At the time of the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 China was in a state of disarray, and the new leadership believed that only drastic economic and institutional reforms could salvage the communist order. Thus, Deng Xiaoping, without abandoning Marx’s value system nor Lenin’s totalitarianism, introduced a reform program that outlined the parameters of acceptable changes. In the economic sphere, the government would maintain party-state control but permit contractual relationship with producers of goods, first in the agricultural and then in the industrial sector. In the political sphere, it would decentralize control within the party between central and local authority and between policy decisionmaking and execution. Deng’s measures not only failed but finally sparked a protest by students, who were soon joined by factory workers, office employees, newspaper staff, and other urbanites–all told over a million demonstrators in Beijing and eighty other cities and towns throughout China. Even some soldiers and police joined the uprising, many of them communists who wanted a genuine break with the past–“freedom and democracy” was their key slogan. However, the protesters, with their peaceful demands for change, were brutally suppressed by military forces armed with tanks and machine guns. The failure of Deng’s policies is the focus of China and the Crisis of Marxism-Leninism, written by four authorities on Chinese communism. The book is of foremost importance not only for China specialists but for all Westerners who seek to understand the world-shaking events that originated in China. Although the first bloody confrontation took place in Beijing, its impact has now spread to the rest of the communist worl
Автор: Michael, Franz Название: China And The Crisis Of Marxism-leninism ISBN: 0367164485 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780367164485 Издательство: Taylor&Francis Рейтинг: Цена: 42870.00 T Наличие на складе: Невозможна поставка. Описание: This book explores whether the Marxism-Leninism system could actually be salvaged by a new approach to the economic and political problems of a communist country. It examines the policy of production by contract that would deal not only with economies but also with changes in the political order.
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