Onto the Slippery Slope: East Germany and East-West Détente under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1965–1975

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 60-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Bange
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
East German ◽  
Fundamental Shift ◽  
East West

This article identifies and explains the fundamental shift of political and ideological paradigms that drew the Soviet Union's close ally, East Germany, into the détente process. Although economic and political influences and pressures, including from the Soviet Union itself, pushed the East German Communist regime to participate in this era of “peaceful coexistence,” officials in East Berlin were well aware of the dangers this posed to the Communist society in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the long term. Even at this early stage of East-West interaction, détente left the GDR with the unenviable task of squaring ideology with realpolitik—a task that East German leaders found increasingly hard to cope with.

scholarly journals Stalin's German Policy After Stalin

Slavic Review ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Baras
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
East Germany ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
German Reunification ◽  
German State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
East German ◽  
The Stability

Stalin's “last word” on German reunification was contained in the Soviet diplomatic note of March 10, 1952, which proposed a peace treaty with Germany. Until the middle of 1953, Stalin's heirs continued to press for reunification on the basis of the 1952 note. The East German uprising of June 17, 1953 (which is commemorated in West Germany, with unintended irony, as the “Day of German Unity“) marked the de facto termination of the Soviet reunification initiative. As a result of the uprising, the rulers of the Soviet Union and East Germany were forced to place greater emphasis on the consolidation of the Communist regime in the GDR—that is, the stability of East Germany required policies explicitly directed toward the development of a separate, socialist East German state. Thus, the uprising and the subsequent Soviet intervention further undermined the credibility of an already questionable Soviet reunification initiative.

“Reenacting the Story of Tantalus”: Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Failed Rhetoric of Liberation

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Tudda
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines Dwight Eisenhower's and John Foster Dulles's publicly declared goal to achieve the “liberation” of Eastern Europe, a goal that they claimed would replace the Truman administration's “passive” containment policy.But the evidence shows that Eisenhower and Dulles were unwilling to risk war with the Soviet Union and believed that liberation, if actually pursued, would induce the Soviet Union to react violently to perceived threats in Eastern Europe. Hence, in top-secret meetings and conversations, Eisenhower and Dulles rejected military liberation, despite their public pronouncements. Instead, they secretly pursued a tricky, risky, and long-term strategy of radio broadcasts and covert action designed to erode, rather than overthrow, Soviet power in Eastern Europe. In public, they continued to embrace liberation policy even when confronted with testimony from U.S. allies that the rhetorical diplomacy of liberation had not worked. This reliance on rhetoric failed to deter the Soviet Union from quashing rebellions in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956. If anything, the Eisenhower administration's rhetorical liberation policy may have encouraged, at least to some degree, these revolts.

“At War with Israel”: East Germany’s Key Role in Soviet Policy in the Middle East

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 129-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herf
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Global Cold War ◽  
State Of Israel

The Middle East was one of the crucial battlefields of the global Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West; it was also a region in which East Germany played a salient role in the Soviet bloc’s antagonism toward Israel. From 1953, when the German Democratic Republic (GDR) signed its first trade agreement with Egypt, until 1989, when the Communist regime in the GDR collapsed, East Germany opposed the state of Israel and supported Israel’s enemies in the Arab world, providing arms, training, and other support to countries and terrorist groups that sought to destroy Israel. From the mid-1960s until 1989, but especially from 1967 to the mid-1980s, both the Soviet Union and the GDR were in an undeclared state of war against Israel.

Workers under Communism

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuong Vu
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
System P ◽  
Over Time

This essay compares the experience of workers and workplace politics under communism in the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, China, and Vietnam. State–labour relations in these contexts were fraught with tension from the start. Workers’ experience varied widely over time and space. Nevertheless, all workers were subject to state-imposed forms of domination at the workplace and in society at large. This domination was the effect of a powerful ideology, dense organizations, and social hierarchies that were mutually reinforcing. Many workers actively supported communist goals and were rewarded, but the system failed to motivate enough workers to make it work in the long term. Against the background of stagnant or declining living standards, propaganda failed to enlighten most workers while coercion could not produce disciplined and efficient ones. Socialist workers were disempowered but not powerless to manipulate and resist the system.

scholarly journals Industrial and Chinese: Exhibiting Mao’s China at the Leipzig Trade Fairs

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 845-870
Author(s):  
Jennifer Altehenger
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Economic Significance ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Local Decision ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German

Between 1951 and 1965, the People’s Republic of China regularly exhibited at the international trade fairs in the East German city of Leipzig. One of the major attractions of the fairs, China’s grand pavilion was second in size only to the pavilion of the Soviet Union. This article examines the planning and execution of China’s exhibitions, illustrating how the young communist regime displayed its products and political system abroad and how citizens of other socialist and capitalist countries experienced China through objects, materials, images and narratives. Because the People's Republic of China was a new revolutionary state of enormous political and economic significance and yet also a state that other socialist regimes deemed too poorly developed to transition to socialism, these exhibitions were the site of constant negotiations and tension between Chinese and East German organizers and other local decision-makers and participants. As such, the People's Republic of China’s engagement with the fairs sheds further light on its international activities after 1949 and on the local history of the Sino-Soviet split. It is also a case study that calls attention to the historical significance of materiality that underpinned China’s interactions with the wider world, from minute quotidian things to grand gifts and major export goods.

Cooperative Empires: Provincial Initiatives in Imperial Austria

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 128-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Osterkamp ◽  
Jaime Hyland
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Workers ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
Soviet Empire ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
East German ◽  
To Come ◽  
Divide And Rule

The title “Cooperative Empires” may seem contradictory—or even provocative—to many historians of empire. It is widely believed that one of the defining characteristics of an empire is the presence of little or no cooperation among its individual provinces. More than that: there is a deliberate separation between the provinces that can go so far as to become a prohibition against cooperation. In theory, at least, each province must communicate with the imperial center, but not with other provinces. This contradiction between empire and cooperation is neatly illustrated by a true family story. The story is set in the 1970s in Prague, on the western edge of that space that historians today describe as the Soviet Empire. My mother, an East German from East Berlin, was then working as an interpreter in Prague. She was sitting on the tram on the way to visit some Czech friends who shared her love of jazz music. A queasy feeling began to come over her as she recalled that she was in fact forbidden to visit Czech friends, precisely because she was working in the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) embassy in Prague. It suited both the Soviet Union and the GDR that their foreign workers should not come into private contact with other nationalities, even if they belonged to allied fraternal countries. This was a sort of socialist version of the “divide and rule” principle as it was practiced in the nineteenth century.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

scholarly journals Frontier Dynamics: Reflections on Evangelical and Tablighi Missions in Central Asia

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-241
Author(s):  
Mathijs Pelkmans
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Kyrgyz Republic ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Successes And Failures

AbstractMissionaries have flocked to the Kyrgyz Republic ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Evangelical-Pentecostal and Tablighi missions have been particularly active on what they conceive of as a fertile post-atheist frontier. But as these missions project their message of truth onto the frontier, the dangers of the frontier may overwhelm them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork amongst foreign and local Tablighis and evangelical-Pentecostals, this article formulates an analytic of the frontier that highlights the affective and relational characteristics of missionary activities and their effects. This analytic explains why and how missionaries are attracted to the frontier, as well as some of the successes and failures of their expansionist efforts. In doing so, the article reveals the potency of instability, a feature that is particularly evident in missionary work, but also resonates with other frontier situations.

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