
See Related
History JournalsEmail Newsletters
Sign up for our email newsletters to get customized updates on new Berghahn publications.
Inside the Party Headquarters
Organizational Culture and Practice of Rule in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany
Rüdiger Bergien
Translated from the German by David Burnett
576 pages, 8 illus., 10 tables, 8 figs., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80539-048-0 $179.00/£132.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (August 2023)
eISBN 978-1-80539-049-7 eBook Not Yet Published
Description
Everyday life in the East German Socialist Unity Party revolved heavily around maintaining the “party line” in all areas of society, whether through direct authority or corruption. Spanning a long period of the GDR’s history, from 1946 through 1989, Rüdiger Bergien presents the first study that examines the complexities of the central party’s communist apparatus. He focuses on their role as ideological watchdogs, as they fostered an underbelly and “inner life” for their employees to integrate the party’s pillars throughout East German society. Inside the Party Headquarters reviews not only the party’s modes power and state interaction, but also the processes of negotiation and disputation preceding formal Politburo decisions, advancing the available detail and discourse surrounding this formative and volatile stretch of German history.
Rüdiger Bergien is a lecturer (Privatdozent) at the Humboldt University Berlin and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam. His publications include “Activating the ‘Apparatchik’: Brigade Deployment in the SED Central Committee and Performative Communist Party Rule,” in Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 4 (2012): 793–811 and the edited volume with Jens Gieske Communist Parties Revisited: Socio-Cultural Approaches to Party Rule in the Soviet Bloc, 1956-1991 (Berghahn Books, 2018).