Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic (review)

When our thoughts turn to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), its demise may well be what comes to mind. Yet the events of 1989 followed more than four decades of relative stability. Why did the GDR survive for so long? Andrew Port explores this question, drawing on his research regarding events in Saalfeld, a district of 60,000 inhabitants, from 1945 to 1971.

One possible explanation, that the GDR's stability attested to the passivity and obedience of its citizens, is summarily dismissed. Saalfeld experienced mass revolts in 1951, 1953, and 1989. At other times its inhabitants openly criticized the policies of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) and repeatedly resisted the demands placed on them by the authorities. Port documents farmers refusing to cooperate with collectivization, SED members avoiding meetings, workers shirking, and young people exiting the country or refusing to join the army.

A weightier factor was the fear of state repression, and Port incorporates this into his explanation: for example, traumatic memories of Soviet tanks on the streets in 1953 made Saalfelders less willing to engage in public protest thereafter. However, this factor is not sufficient: The fact that two vigorous challenges to the SED regime "took place at the peak of Stalinist terror suggests that neither repression nor the fear of repression could alone stifle popular protest" (p. 111).

Port's analysis of the East German state is balanced. He reports numerous baneful episodes—for example, the local authority that drew up lists of dozens of "asocial elements" for expulsion from the district. Yet he rejects the notion that the GDR was constructed on the basis of arbitrary power and an omnipotent security service. The Stasi displayed "a surprising concern for legality" and "often exhibited remarkable caution before taking punitive action" (p. 106). For instance, Stasi officers refused to arrest a railway worker "who had purportedly told political jokes about the regime: Because they could not find conclusive proof, officials explained, they could not prosecute him for conspiratorial activities." The GDR under Ulbricht "was not a 'nation of spies,' and the Stasi's popular image as a 'ubiquitous and highly efficient intelligence-gathering agency' deserves revision, at least for this earlier period" (p. 107).

Port makes short work of the notion that the SED and East German state possessed boundless power. "Proponents of totalitarian theory" have failed to grasp "the wide-ranging ability of those living under Soviet-style regimes to defy the dictates of those in power." As a result, SED policy did not always translate into reality—Port cites the party's inability "to prevent wages from rising faster than productivity, to enforce shop-floor discipline in the factories and collective [farms], to mobilize sociopolitical participation, even on the part of low-level functionaries and rank-and-file party members" (p. 282). The publication of archive-based research, as this study exemplifies, tends to expose the weaknesses of totalitarianism theory even as the political climate keeps the mindset alive.

As regards Port's own explanation of stability, it is "reminiscent of the work done by those who have looked at autocratic regimes of the nonsocialist variety" (p. 284), such as James C. Scott. The keywords are clientelism, competition, cleavages, and compromise. Following Andrew Walder, Port emphasizes the deployment of privileges to divide the workforce and to reinforce individual action at the expense of collective action. Favoritism and material disparities promoted envy and mutual resentment, undermining solidarity and strengthening dependency on officialdom. These mechanisms could function because East Germany was—despite Sigrid Meuschel's thesis—a class-divided society in which some enjoyed preferential access to scarce goods and services and received markedly higher incomes than others did.

Clientelism belonged to a package of techniques that contributed to "ongoing social disintegration." (Port prefers this term to "atomization," which understates the cooperation and camaraderie that did exist within many workplace collectives and personal consumption networks.) Whereas similar effects are enacted in market-capitalist societies through the labor market, in Soviet-style societies the...