Jeffrey Kopstein offers the first comprehensive study of East
German economic policy over the course of the state's forty-year
history. Analyzing both the making of economic policy at the
national level and the implementation of specific policies on the
shop floor, he provides new and essential background to the
revolution of 1989. In particular, he shows how decisions made at
critical junctures in East Germany's history led to a pattern of
economic decline and worker dissatisfaction that contributed to
eventual political collapse. East Germany was generally considered
to have the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc, but
Kopstein explores what prevented the country's leaders from
responding effectively to pressing economic problems. He depicts a
regime caught between the demands of a disaffected working class
whose support was crucial to continued political stability, an
intractable bureaucracy, an intolerant but surprisingly weak Soviet
patron state, and a harsh international economic climate. Rather
than pushing for genuine economic change, the East German Communist
Party retreated into what Kopstein calls a 'campaign economy' in
which an endless series of production campaigns was used to squeeze
greater output from an inherently inefficient economic system.
Originally published in 1996.
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