Sozialistisch arbeiten, lernen und leben—Die Brigadebewegung in der DDR (1959-1989) by Thomas Reichel (review)

In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), brigades, or collectives, were small units of one to two dozen workers toiling together to fill and exceed production quotas. As instruments in meeting the goals of the central economic plan, they represented one of the lowest links in the hierarchical chain that made up the power structure of the regime. Throughout their history, brigades remained primarily a vehicle to mobilize the workers' productive efforts. But the East German regime also bestowed upon them a responsibility to develop "new" types of men and women—as coined by the brigades' famous motto enjoining workers to "work, learn, and live in a socialist way." In the eyes of the East German leadership, brigades would have ideally competed to exceed production quotas, served as channels for continued vocational training and education, and ensured that workers fill their leisure time with culturally meaningful activities. Reichel's monograph assesses the extent to which these goals were achieved.

The brigades' lowly position in the East German power structure is one reason they have become a focus of research on the GDR. Historians have often turned their attention to brigades when trying to assess the regime's flexibility, its capacity for reaching arrangements with the workforce, as well as the degree of acceptance and rejection of "socialist" rule on the part of the working-class population. In the 1990s, ideas suggesting that the East German regime was involved in continuous trade-offs and compromises with that population were revitalizing and inspiring. At a time when most historians were consulting the central archives of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) and the Stasi to answer almost all of their questions, the turn to lower institutions such as brigades potentially provided a much more vivid account of social relationships in the GDR. Such studies demonstrated that the SED regime never managed to crush all forms of independent social life.

Thomas Reichel's study is firmly anchored in this historiography. It makes sense, he writes, to approach the history of the brigades using notions of "domination as a social practice" and Eigen-Sinn, both made popular by the German historian Alf Lüdtke. The concept of Eigen-Sinn suggests that a structure of domination is mediated, appropriated, and interpreted by individuals who do so with their own interests in mind. Uncovering manifestations of Eigen-Sinn at the workplace may have sufficed a dozen years ago to reveal the limits of top-down perspectives that were based only on the holdings of the central East German archives. It is now insufficient, given that the idea of the "limits of the East German dictatorship" is broadly accepted. Reichel shows how some brigades managed to shape quotas and bonus policies to their own benefit—a practice he misleadingly refers to as Mitbestimmung ("codetermination"). Yet he never attempts to assess the outcomes of such practices on the East German economy as a whole. He dismisses as exaggerations past studies that have argued that the cumulative effects of such behavior were disruptive, that they undercut the regime's capacity for planning effectively. But he does not propose an alternative interpretation of this phenomenon.

The author has a keen eye for details and the monograph is certainly a rich and nuanced study. Yet it fails to highlight where the brigades fit in the broader picture of GDR history and what their particular contribution to that history might have been. Reichel traces fluctuations in the numbers of brigades in the GDR; he also shows the way in which the SED and the state umbrella union (Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, or FDGB) oscillated between allowing greater autonomy to the brigades in 1959-60—in the hope that the promise of better pay would boost production—and the subsequent reduction of this autonomy in the 1960s, when authorities felt it was a threat to their own power. He contends that workers were at times distrustful...