Stasi Hell Or Workers' Paradise? PDF Download

Author: Brunhild De La Motte
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780955822834
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Colin Turbett
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1399087533
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Between the closing battles of the Second World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War cast a shadow over the lives of people throughout the world. while open conflict was avoided between the ideologically competing superpowers and their principal allies, millions died in battlegrounds in parts of the world that were usually far from Moscow, Washington and London. The threat of nuclear annihilation was omnipresent, but at the same time mutually assured destruction tempered conflict and focused minds. Subtle (and not so subtle) attempts to influence popular opinion either way were apparent in everyday life on both sides of the divide. while the power of the dollar and the burgeoning costs of the arms race eventually broke the Soviet economy, the idea that capitalism ‘won’ the the Cold War seems misplaced, especially if one considers events that have happened since, including very recent armed conflict. The book takes the reader through main events of the period, but focuses on the impact on ordinary citizens East and West and the view of events from their perspective. This is a story of how economies on both sides were built around war preparations and the advance of destructive technologies that had no social benefits apart from the provision of employment. Sources used are unusual in not fitting the western-based narratives that pervade both academic histories and popular accounts. However, this book is not an apology for the more oppressive aspects of Soviet policy as the USSR struggled to build ‘really existing socialism’ within its own borders and the Eastern Bloc countries under its immediate influence. Instead, it brings a people’s perspective from both sides onto this important period of recent history, whose consequences are very much still with us as we face modern challenges around climate change and growing inequality across our world. A People’s History of the Cold War – Stories from East and West captures the mood of the times with its extensive contemporary illustrations.

Author: Simon Winlow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317909984
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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The years 2008 to 2013 saw a new generation of political protestors take to the streets. Riots disrupted many Western cities and new protest movements emerged, keen to address a bleak context of economic collapse and austerity politics. In this groundbreaking new study, Winlow, Hall, Briggs and Treadwell push past the unworldly optimism of the liberal left to offer an illuminating account of the enclosure and vacuity of contemporary politics. Focusing on the English riots of 2011, the ongoing crisis in Greece, the Indignados, 15M and Podemos in Spain, the Occupy movement in New York and London and the English Defence League in northern England, this book uses original empirical data to inform a strident theoretical critique of our post-political present. It asks: what are these protest groups fighting for, and what are the chances of success? Written by leading criminological theorists and researchers, this book makes a major contribution to contemporary debates on social order, politics and cultural capitalism. It illuminates the epochal problems we face today. Riots and Political Protest is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of political sociology, criminological theory, political theory, sociological theory and the sociology of deviance.

Author: Bruni De la Motte
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780955822865
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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"Much has been written about how awful the German Democratic Republic supposedly was: a people imprisoned by a wall and subjugated by an omnipresent Stasi security apparatus. Such descriptions are based largely on prejudice, ignorance and wilful animosity. This book is an attempt to provide a more balanced evaluation and to examine GDR-style socialism in terms of what we can learn from it. The authors, while not ignoring the real deficiencies of GDR society, emphasise the many aspects that were positive, and demonstrate that alternative ways of organising society are possible. This volume is an updated and much expanded edition of the authors' booklet first published in 2009. Thee have added more detail on how the GDR came into being as a separate state, about how society functioned and what values determined the every-day life of its citizens. There is also a whole new section on what happened in the aftermath of unification, particularly to the economy. While unification brought East Germans access to a more affluent society, freedom to travel throughout the world and the end to an over-centralised political system, it also brought with it unemployment, social breakdown and loss of hope, particularly in the once thriving rural areas." -- From back cover.

Author: Ernesto Che Guevara
Publisher: Ocean Press
ISBN: 0987228331
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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“If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are troubled as to why, how and by whom political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good intellectual reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wishing to act with others, to ‘do something,’ you already have much in common with the writers of the three essays in this book.” — Adrienne Rich With a preface by Adrienne Rich, Manifesto presents the radical vision of four famous young rebels: Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution and Che Guevara’s Socialism and Humanity.

Author: William Blum
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781842778272
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Rogue State and its author came to sudden international attention when Osama Bin Laden quoted the book publicly in January 2006, propelling the book to the top of the bestseller charts in a matter of hours. This book is a revised and updated version of the edition Bin Laden referred to in his address.

Author: Norman Harding
Publisher: Indexreach Limited
ISBN: 9781871518252
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Author: John Griffith Urang
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801476532
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Through close readings of a diverse selection of films and novels from the former GDR, Urang offers an eye-opening account of the ideological stakes of love stories in East German culture.

Author: Greg Mitchell
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1101903864
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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A thrilling Cold War narrative of superpower showdowns, media suppression, and two escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall. In the summer of 1962, the year after the rise of the Berlin Wall, a group of young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture, and even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the Wall. Then two U.S. television networks heard about the secret projects and raced to be first to document them from the inside. NBC and CBS funded two separate tunnels in return for the right to film the escapes, planning spectacular prime-time specials. President John F. Kennedy, however, was wary of anything that might spark a confrontation with the Soviets, having said, “A wall is better than a war,” and even confessing to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “We don’t care about East Berlin.” JFK approved unprecedented maneuvers to quash both documentaries, testing the limits of a free press in an era of escalating nuclear tensions. As Greg Mitchell’s riveting narrative unfolds, we meet extraordinary characters: the legendary cyclist who became East Germany’s top target for arrest; the Stasi informer who betrays the “CBS tunnel”; the American student who aided the escapes; an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English channel; and the young East Berliner who fled with her baby, then married one of the tunnelers. The Tunnels captures the chilling reach of the Stasi secret police as U.S. networks prepared to “pay for play” but were willing to cave to official pressure, the White House was eager to suppress historic coverage, and ordinary people in dire circumstances became subversive. The Tunnels is breaking history, a propulsive read whose themes still reverberate.

Author: Leonard B. Scott
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780345377531
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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"Leonard Scott's extraordinary first novel, Charlie Mike, was hailed by The Washington Post as "one of the finest novels yet written about the war in Vietnam." With several more highly praised novels to his credit, Leonard Scott now moves beyond Vietnam with a daring story of war and revenge that carries us from the second World War to the present. Centered on Berlin, The Iron Men tells of men who wear the Iron Cross and uphold the tradition of duty and honor." "It is the end of WWII and Germany is falling. Axel Mader and Jorn Furman are young paratroop officers and recipients of the Knight's Cross, Germany's highest class of Iron Cross. Axel and Jorn's unit is falling back to defend Berlin before the advance of the Russian army. But a unit of the SS has been ordered to shoot any German soldiers who retreat and SS Captain Horst Volker gives the order to open fire. Axel and Jorn escape but vow to avenge the comrades they loved, now dead." "As Germany enters its tumultuous post-war era, we follow Horst Volker as he becomes the most powerful and ruthless leader within Stasi, the infamous East German secret police. We also follow the lives of Axel and Jorn, one in West Germany and one caught in the East." "But their fates will be entangled with a soldier of the new generation. Jake Tallon, a washed-up American lieutenant colonel, is assigned to Berlin with the hope that he can save his career. When he falls in love with Kris, Axel Mader's daughter, he finds that he has something else in common with her father. Jake too, is an iron man, for he wears the Distinguished Service Cross he earned for valor as a platoon leader in Vietnam." "It will now be three iron men who join together in Berlin just before the fall of the Wall, to confront Horst Volker and the legacy of the past...." "Filled with the superbly described action and understanding of the fighting man that have won Leonard Scott both wide critical acclaim and a huge readership, The Iron Men is an exciting breakthrough, a stirring novel about men and honor."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved