Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment

by Stephen Kotkin, Jan Tomasz Gross (Contributor)

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded–and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs, Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross, drawing upon two decades of reflection, revisit this crash. In a crisp, concise, unsentimental narrative, they employ three case studies–East Germany, Romania, and Poland–to illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be swept away in political bank runs. This is less a story of dissidents, so-called civil society, than of the bankruptcy of a ruling class–communism’s establishment, or “uncivil society.” The Communists borrowed from the West like drunken sailors to buy mass consumer goods, then were unable to pay back the hard-currency debts and so borrowed even more. In Eastern Europe, communism came to resemble a Ponzi scheme, one whose implosion carries enduring lessons. From East Germany’s pseudotechnocracy to Romania’s megalomaniacal dystopia, from Communist Poland’s cult of Mary to the Kremlin’s surprise restraint, Kotkin and Gross pull back the curtain on the fraud and decadence that cashiered the would-be alternative to the market and democracy, an outcome that opened up to a deeper global integration that has proved destabilizing.

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction, Politics, European History, Poland, Russian History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Stephen Mark Kotkin is an American historian, academic, and author. He is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. For 33 years, Kotkin taught at Princeton University, where he attained the title of John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs, and he took emeritus status from Princeton University in 2022. He was the director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the co-director of the certificate program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy. He has won a number of awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He is the husband of curator and art historian Soyoung Lee.
Kotkin's most prominent book project is his three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin, of which the first two volumes have been published as Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014) and Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (2017), while the third volume remains to be published.

Reviews

[Charles Haywood · Rating 5 out of 5]

How will our current regime fall? That’s what we all want to know. For those who have eyes to see, it is obvious the American regime is extremely fragile. It awaits only the inevitable crisis for it to collapse. I am staking my reputation, such as it is, on this claim. But because we cannot see precisely how this will come to pass, many believe, against all evidence, that our regime can grind on for decades. Reading Stephen Kotkin’s analysis of how Communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989 offers us insights into our own immediate future. Uncivil Society does not offer total clarity about the future, for nothing can do that, but it confirms many of my own thoughts, and so it must be an excellent book.

Kotkin is known primarily for his recent two volumes (with a third to come) of Stalin biography. This book, published in 2009 for the twentieth anniversary of the fall of Communism, analyzes the collapse of three Communist regimes: East Germany, Rumania, and Poland. (Kotkin also wrote an earlier book, Armageddon Averted, that analyzes the dying years and collapse of the Soviet Union, a matter tied to, but not exactly the same as, the collapse of satellite Communist regimes.) The author wrote this book to answer a key question—how is that Communist regimes fell, not only unexpectedly and basically overnight, but, except in Poland, without the prior existence of any organized opposition whatsoever? His short answer to his question is a cascading failure of confidence, a “political bank run.”

Kotkin’s thesis is that, contrary to what is often said by uninformed Westerners, it is completely false that Communism fell as the result of a parallel civil society, which opposed and ultimately displaced the regime when it stumbled. Rather, except in Poland, an alternate civil society was utterly and completely absent. Widespread formal, organized opposition simply did not exist under Communist regimes, and it could not and did not form the core of the new civil society which sprang to life in 1989. A few dozen writers circulating samizdat was not opposition or any type of parallel society; disgruntled intellectuals are in no way autonomous or represent the masses. Instead, the only actual society, the only organized set of social structures, of Communist Eastern Europe was that of the ruling class, the establishment, the “uncivil society,” which dictated every aspect of life for its own benefit—until, one day, it didn’t.

This uncivil society was the operating society, containing millions of real people (Kotkin estimates five to seven percent of the population), who interacted with each other professionally and socially, and formed a coherent whole that had actual power and presence. They lived in a parallel world, even with special shops (which I remember, because as a foreigner, I visited them as a child and as a very young man). And if you were not in the uncivil society, you were not really in any society at all, because Communist repression ensured you could not coordinate openly and honestly with more than a handful of people, and not even that safely. Nor did you have access to state-level institutions such as the courts; in effect, outside the uncivil society, you existed as a type of social ghost. (Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless, not mentioned here, famously explicated how the uncivil society kept the rest of the populace in check.) It was the uncivil society that collapsed in 1989; without its collapse, nothing would have changed. Why and how that happened is what Kotkin explores.

None of this is to imply that any Communist uncivil society was in the least competent. Aside from the insane economics, baked into the cake at the beginning were numerous perverse incentives, to lie to one’s superiors, to take no corrective action, to become intellectually dull, to promote incompetents, and to engage in endless worthless and pointless surveillance of those outside the uncivil society. Certainly, in extremis Communist societies could sometimes assemble small teams of competent men and act ruthlessly—but by 1989 they mostly lacked the will, and as seen most dramatically in Nicolae Ceausescu’s downfall in Rumania, if they lacked the will to push back, they were easily overthrown by the snowball effect of mass protest action by normal citizens, combined with the failure of the military to support the regime in its hour of need.

Kotkin wrote this book at the very end of the golden post-Communist era, when it was still, barely, possible to pretend that what had replaced Communism in Eastern Europe was what the people in 1989 had wanted, and that the new ruling class was in any way better than the old ruling class. That myth has, in the past fifteen years, been completely exposed as a lie, and we are now seeing the playing out in Europe (and in North America) of conflict between a new ruling class, a new uncivil society, and the oppressed masses. The new ruling class is not the only civil society, but it does its best to marginalize politically, and in fact destroy, any elements of society not completely under its thumb, aiming for the same type of control that the old Communist rulers maintained in Eastern Europe. (The Wuhan Plague, for example, has recently been used as a key part of this ongoing project.) But none of these concerns appear here; Kotkin assumes, without argument, that Communism was merely the “alternative to the market and a liberal order,” and that those are unalloyed goods, when it is now clear the market as it is instantiated in the West today operates primarily for the benefit of the few, and that the liberal order is a thing that does not exist—rather, we have the order of Left dominance. We can debate whether the liberal order of political theorists such as John Stuart Mill is a good thing, but it is something we most definitely do not have, in these days of widespread persecution by combined state and corporate power of anyone not toeing the Left line.

None of this changes that knowing what happened in 1989 is important. The crucial event for the overthrow of all Communist governments was street protests. All repressive governments fear street protests, because they know, either from history or from instinct, that protests are extremely dangerous for their rule. This, not any of their stated reasons, is why the current American regime foams at the mouth with rage, based in existential fear, against the heroes of the January 6th Electoral Justice Protest. In the past week we have seen the very mild protests of the Freedom Convoy send the Canadian regime into similar spasms of hysteria, and the Convoy appears to have gained some success in its anti-regime goals, which tends to prove Kotkin’s thesis.

But street protests had taken place before in these Communist countries. What was different this time was extreme regime fragility, and the two immediate drivers of that, other than simple incompetence and sclerosis, were the refusal of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev to backstop a violent crackdown, and the economic Ponzi scheme in which all these Communist regimes had engaged. As their economies fell farther and farther behind the West in the 1960s, leading to popular dissatisfaction and, just as importantly perhaps, ideological humiliation, the solution the Communist rulers all hit on was borrowing hard currency from a West eager to prop up Communist countries. (Why they were eager is another story for another day. And for you kids out there, “hard currency” means a currency that is convertible into others on the free market, which no Communist currency was, making it worthless outside its own borders.) These loans had to be paid back with hard currency, which could only be obtained by selling goods to the West.

The theory was that the loans would improve productivity and the ability to make goods desirable in the West, making it possible to both pay back the loans and to use hard currency to import consumer goods to keep the people from grumbling. But I traveled in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, and I can assure you nothing made there was in any way desirable in the West. This failure of the experiment, combined with oil price increases, another essential commodity that had to be bought with hard currency or begged from the Soviet Union, meant that all these countries fell into an inescapable financial hole. They could not pay back the money without extreme austerity. That’s the route the Rumanians took, as we’ll see; the Poles and East Germans just kept borrowing, ending up spending most of their new borrowing on paying interest. To this economic failure Kotkin attributes the generalized lack of confidence that overcame Communist societies—the economic crisis disproved Communist dogma and further humiliated the regime. (Kotkin notes in passing that archives show that all the Communist rulers in Eastern Europe were definitively Communist believers, not just using Communism as a front to control the masses.)

The West saw none of this. It is strange to us, but as Kotkin points out, in the 1970s, and even into the 1980s, not only did all Western analysts, including intelligence agencies, grossly overestimate the economic and political strength of Communist regimes, but common wisdom among the Western elite was that the West was facing more of a crisis than Communism. Many influential observers saw Communism as creating a successful technocratic elite, which was of course wish fulfilment, not analysis. Thus, the events of 1989 utterly astonished the entire West.

Kotkin begins with East Germany. He narrates how on October 9, 1989, 100,000 protestors marched around Leipzig, an East German showcase town with a long history of leftism and worker activism, beginning and ending at the St. Nicholas Catholic church. This was a sudden expansion of small weekly candlelight “peace” vigils that had gone on for several years. (They were called “peace” vigils because the regime constantly trumpeted its desire for peace, and using the word was a symbol of non-defiance towards the regime.) By June, 1989, the vigils were attracting a thousand people, probably pulled by seeming change fermenting in the Soviet Union. Open calls began to be made during the vigils for permission to emigrate, though not for the end of Communism as such—that would have been far too dangerous.

East Germany had experienced unrest before, notably in 1953, when Soviet troops killed hundreds of workers protesting food shortages, wage cuts, and Communism in general. These events made the East German regime keenly aware of the need for consumer goods to keep the people from crossing the red line of unhappiness. At the same time, the regime operated a huge secret police organization, the Stasi, whose full-time employees, relative to population, were nearly a hundred times more numerous than Hitler’s Gestapo, and that’s not counting the innumerable paid informants also used. All this, even though the Stasi identified, in 1989, only 2,500 “opposition activists,” with 60 of those being “hard core.”

While the relatively small vigils continued, Hungary had opened its border with Austria (less on principle and more because of expense), and East Germans began to flee through Hungary. The vigils, which had morphed into marches, grew during September, attracting more Stasi attention, more arrests, and more water cannon and beatings. Marches began in Dresden as well. Erich Honecker, the East German communist dictator, authorized a collection of force more than adequate to, and designed for, a Tiananmen Square-type crackdown. Yet he did not order an assault, and nobody below him would take responsibility independently, so nothing was done. Abortive attempts were made to identify and neutralize ringleaders—but there were none. Thus, nobody could or would stop the bank run, and the state collapsed, quite literally overnight. Communists either got jobs in the new economy, or they retired and were pensioned off. (As Anna Funder points out in Stasiland, almost none of them were punished for actual crimes. And instead of all those who were not overt criminals, but simply part of the regime, being lustrated and rusticated, they were allowed to keep the privilege of participation in a society they had actively and voluntarily terrorized for decades. This was a great error. I intend to make sure a similar error does not occur in future America.)

This spontaneous organization of an opposition in Leipzig was accomplished through what Kotkin labels “niches”—small circles of like-minded friends and associates, communicating in person. While a dissident organization formed in September, New Forum, received press attention in the West, it had no relevance whatsoever to what was happening on the ground. Many of the Leipzig niches revolved in some way around St. Nicholas, but some were not religious at all. Such nimble, informal groups were essentially immune to attack, infiltration, or any kind of counter-measure, and through these information about what was actually happening, as opposed to what could be heard in the regime media, could be found. The Communist regime, of course, just like our current American regime, spent a great deal of time and resources trying to make sure its opponents felt they were alone and isolated. Niches were, for the regime, a big problem, and are similarly a problem for the American regime—though the internet has so atomized society that forming them is more difficult and less likely, something also compensated for to some degree by the internet’s technological capabilities, even with the massive censorship campaigns constantly being conducted.

The niches needed information to convey among themselves, to know what was happening and what to do, which shows the existence of media outside of regime media is crucial to overthrowing any fragile regime. In Eastern Europe, this was radio and television from the West. In America today, it is the myriad alternative sources available on the internet, giving the lie to regime propaganda, which the regime cannot shut wholly down, so it merely hinders them as much as possible, chants “misinformation” as a magic incantation to dispel the evil spirits drifting in through the cracks, and hopes it all goes away. Spoiler alert—it won’t.

The feared Stasi did nothing. As Malcolm Kyeyune has pointed out, in all regimes, the secret police operate to inform the regime, not to actively prop it up when it is falling. If the regime will not listen to the secret police, or direct them to action, even a huge secret police force has no impact whatsoever, and will quickly dissolve. So it happened here.

The collapse of the Rumanian regime followed a similar path, although with more violence and with the Communists ultimately keeping much power, under a different branding. Ceausescu was among the most brutal Communist tyrants, and his solution to having to repay huge loans of hard currency was to save money by literally turning off the power for much of the time, including in winter. (Kotkin, throughout the book, quotes various of the jokes told by the people under Communism. One Rumanian joke went, “What’s small, dark, and knocking at the door?” Answer: “The future.”) As in East Germany, no organized opposition whatsoever existed in Rumania; the regime collapsed as the result of a Hungarian pastor in Temesvár, László Tőkés, protesting his eviction from his church. (Rumania has a large Hungarian minority, all in Transylvania, the result of having being given Transylvania, which had been part of Hungary for more than a thousand years, after World War I, because, as they also did in World War II, the Rumanians switched sides when they saw who was going to win.)

The bank run in Rumania was even faster, and had a greater fall for the dictator, than in East Germany. Protests over the eviction of Tőkés took place on December 15; by December 25, Ceausescu (and his equally evil wife) had been executed after a brief trial, with soldiers clamoring to be permitted to be part of the firing squad. In an prequel of 2022 America (and Canada), the regime labeled all opposition “fascism” and the result of “fringe elements” opposed to real Rumanians, whom the regime informed the nation all supported the regime without reservation. (We laugh at this when done in Rumania, but strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, many Americans, and Canadians, actually take our regime’s exactly parallel statements on the Electoral Justice Protest and the Freedom Convoy—self-contradictory obvious falsehoods—as anything but total lying propaganda. No doubt many Rumanians thought the same, however, until reality hit them over the head, and bullets soon after tore through Ceausescu.) Kotkin discusses, and if you have not seen it you should find and watch it, the famous moment when Ceausescu, giving a speech along these lines to workers bussed in, becomes the target of abuse and realizes that his reign is over. (It would be nice to see Justin Trudeau have a similar moment.) As in East Germany, the regime had prepared for a violent crackdown, but will was lacking, and so no crackdown occurred. The bank run accelerated as people lost their fear.

In Rumania, existing niches were less common, but workplace meetings called by the authorities during the crisis in order to instruct the workers on what was really happening quickly served the same function. This shows that people oppressed by a regime will adopt nearly any situation to set up mechanisms to communicate the truth and discuss action. Most important of all, the military turned on Ceausescu, while again the secret police did nothing (although mysterious men with weapons, apparently from hidden caches, did fight battles in the streets, famously with the Olympic shooting team, a set of events that Kotkin says will never be fully unraveled). Kotkin says that ultimately “the Securitate [the Rumanian secret police] was a state of mind.”

As Kotkin points out . . . [review completes as first comment].

[Sud666 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kotkin is an eminent historian of the Soviet Era. This book is a look at the "uncivil society" that forms the basis of the Communist nations and how they imploded. He closely analyzes the cases of East Germany, Romania, and Poland.

What is the "uncivil Society"? It is the name for the Establishment Communists and their levers of power. At its core, the case studies show how Communist imbeciles tried to use the opposition to help push stringent economic measures (because ALL leftists suck at economics of any kind) to save their moribund and bankrupt economic system and found that this would lead to their dissolution.

You will read a tale of fools, morons, corrupt imbeciles, ideological lunatics, and kleptocrats. This is the usual make-up of any leftist society, but in a Communist system (peak leftism) they are the dross that greases the creaky wheel of their murderous and stupid ideology. Perhaps if more people were familiar with the ACTUAL evil and ENORMOUS stupidity of Leftism then we wouldn't have so many blinkered fools clamoring for it (usually bourgeoise college types who have never worked a real job).

[Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for a modern political economy course. It is a succinct study of the collapse of Communism in the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and its causes. His underlying argument is that the economic failures of the centrally planned, communist economies and their massive debts to the capitalist West along with the poor governance of the communist leadership are ultimately responsible for the fall of communism. Kotkin narrows his approach to three case studies: East Germany, Romania, and Poland.

This book was an excellent introduction to the subject. It is clear that such a short book (the text is just over 140 pages long, not including notes and the index) cannot be an authoritative study of the collapse of communism. Nevertheless, the book was packed with details and evidence. The writing suffers as a result, but is quite easy to read regardless.

Overall, I would recommend this book , especially to those who are unfamiliar with the details of the collapse of communism (like myself, before reading this book and taking the class). I'm rating this book four stars for its value as a resource and because Kotkin succeeds in his arguments, in my opinion. Based on the writing alone, I would give this three stars, but I think this book fulfills the role of a primer on the collapse of communism very well.

[John David · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the west, we are often regaled with unquestioned stories of the fall of communism, most often the one in which the triad of Margaret Thatcher, John Paul II, and Reagan collectively conjure the World-Spirit of neoliberalism and capitalism to defeat the Reds. It’s an account that speaks to our need for heroism. Stephen Kotkin’s account, however, is a revisionist one in that he claims the downfall of the Soviet Union (especially the bloc states in Eastern Europe) was much less exciting than we’ve been led to believe. It ended, he tells us, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Kotkin’s approach is interesting in that it doesn’t focus nearly as much on western intervention or containment strategies, but simply on the inner dynamics of the countries themselves, of their “civil” (that body of extra-governmental institutions including unions, churches, and universities) and “uncivil” societies (the bloated communist states). The core of the argument is that in each of the three states with which is he concerned – East Germany, Romania, and Poland – the leadership was so decadent, so blissfully unaware, and so inept that they didn’t need much outside intervention to fall. They brought themselves down without much help.

The establishment of communism promised a better life for everyone, yet it was obvious how much they economically lagged behind the capitalist countries. In an effort to jumpstart technological innovation, they borrowed money from western countries, but soon realized that there was no market for the cheap, shoddy products that they were making. In no time, they were barely even able to make the interest payments on their loans. Debt skyrocketed, and most of the time, the answer was to put austerity measures into place – for people whose lives, they would tell you, were already quite austere already. To aggravate matters, hardliners were completely unreceptive to change. To admit that reform was needed was to admit that the ideological tenets of the state religion were somehow flawed. The extreme myopia and utter denial of the party heads only further catalyzed the downfall of the eastern bloc states.

The one egregious exception to the inefficacy of civil society is the case of Poland’s Solidarity movement. Marx’s reference to Poland as “indigestible” should have been a clue that it would be an outlier: it had an economy that had many heavily privatized parts (compared to other bloc states), which very well may have made way for union opposition and Solidarity ascendancy. John Paul I’s timely death, to be followed by the election of John Paul II, was also fortuitous. Included in the section on East Germany, Kotkin’s coverage of the St. Nicholas protests in Leipzig are especially good.

In a little-known piece called “On the Freedom of the Press” written in 1842, Marx said that often “government hears only its own voice … It knows it hears only its own voice and yet it deceives itself that it hears the people’s voice.” That, in a phase, is the story of Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, and the story which Kotkin renders so well here.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this look at the revolutionary events of 1989, Kotkin reviews the causes of what unfolded in three countries--East Germany, Romania and Poland. It is a revisionist text in that he disagrees with what has become a predominant argument that the arms race is what lead to the fall of the Soviet Union. Economics played a large role but it was debt, he thinks, more than spending on weaponry, that did in the communist regime. For instance, Eastern European countries thought they could produce inexpensive goods and sell them to the West for hard currency. Unfortunately, at the same time the Asian "Tigers" began to do the same thing, only better and cheaper. So the USSR ended up buying shoddy Eastern European goods just in order to keep their satellites going. The countries all began to borrow from the West in order to keep things going, to prevent the food shortages and price increases, for instance, that led to civil unrest. Soon, they were borrowing just to pay the interest on their previous loans. It was the worst in East Germany since they could easily see how much better their Western neighbors were faring. Gorbachev finally decided that Russia had its own financial problems and would stop intervening. Each of the countries has its own unique story but some things were true across the board.

[Marcus Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book presented a convincing argument for economics as the cause for the collapse of communism. He covers many communist countries but focuses on East Germany, Romania, and Hungary. He also shows the role of the church in the fall of communism.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is much oversimplification on what led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. This book gets specific while focusing on East Germany, Romania and Poland (while touching on the Baltic States, Ukraine and Russia itself). While reading about the specifics, it's pretty astounding that this happened so quickly and definitively. The communist block was blind to the changing world economy and borrowed heavily from the western world. Gorbachev's policy of perestroika stopped propping up failed states in Eastern Europe through military might. Very different things happened in these countries. In East Germany, where western media was freely available from over the wall, it was not possible to disguise the difference in standard of living and the incompetent yes-men of the party blundered into destroying themselves. In Romania, the communists seemed to recognize the threat but a 40 person protest by elderly church-goers trying to stop the eviction of a priest led to mass protest which was violently retaliated against by the party and ultimately led to the killing of the dictator and the fall of the regime. In Poland, the Solidarity trade union was underestimated and by nonviolent popular support toppled a regime that overconfidently allowed a free election in which they lost almost every seat to roofers, electricians and plumbers who by acting free became so. It is quite interesting how the anti-communist revolution occurred. It was a mix of large scale policy changes and incompetence on the part of the rulers and deep resentment on the part on a population recently freed of crackdown on dissent. I would like to read more on the Lithuanian environmental movement that led to its independence as I'm sure after reading this book that each former soviet country had an equally interesting story.

[John Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable read for CUNY class of Germany post WW2.

[Ionut Iamandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nu există un scenariu comun după care au avut loc toate revoluţiile anticomuniste est-europene. Dar după cum se vede, cîteva ingrediente, în dozaje diferite, au intrat constant în reţeta fiecărei naţiuni. Kotkin însă mai are o observaţie înainte de a-și prezenta concluziile. La aceeaşi dată, pe 4 iunie 1989, în Polonia aveau loc alegeri libere iar în China erau zdrobite manifestaţiile din Piaţa Tiananmen. În mod simbolic, în estul Europei comuniştii depuneau armele, în vreme ce în China se arătau decişi să rămînă la putere, păstrînd ideologia partidului unic dar acceptînd deschiderea economiei şi unele reforme de piaţă. De ce tocmai în China comuniştii au arătat aşa o „flexibilitate” şi nu şi în estul Europei? „Soluția chinezească”, scrie Kotkin, nu a fost chiar așa o necunoscută pentru societatea necivilă din estul Europei. Dar vasalitatea față de URSS, dimensiunea modestă a economiilor, orgoliul de clasă (”cum adică, două Germanii capitaliste, una RFG-istă și alta RDG-istă, cine a mai pomenit așa ceva?!”), cultura de tip european, dar și faptul că în 1989 în estul Europei era deja vremea revoluțiilor și nu a semireformelor, au condus probabil la un alt deznodămînt al comunismelor din zonă.

Mai multe în Dilema Veche: https://dilemaveche.ro/sectiune/dilem...

[Stephen Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong thesis on the weakness of the soviet government structure and how/why this specific Lu related to their collapses

[Andrew Humphrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

These Eastern Bloc states make for a good case study, but the overall thesis is a little muddled. It doesn’t help that Kotkin’s sentences are far too complicated, running on and on until I lose focus.

Also, this is not nearly long enough.

[Matt Silverman · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How did the Eastern Bloc collapse?"

"Suddenly, then all at once."

Stephen Kotkin's "Uncivil Society" gave me a much better appreciation for this story than I've ever had.

First, the role debt played: as soon as the Eastern Bloc countries and Russia went into debt to keep up with their Western counterparts' consumer economies, their fates were essentially sealed.

Second, it would be hard, if not impossible, to replicate this situation today. For as frail as our current system can sometimes appear, there simply isn't as clear of an ideological alternative as the Eastern Bloc countries faced in their time. The success of the capitalist West (especially West Germany) illustrated a clear and present alternative path to daily life that people living under communism could easily comprehend.

Third, opposition doesn't always have to be organized to be successful. Except in the case of Poland, Kotkin makes a compelling case that there was no "civil society" outside the regime to speak of. The success of these revolutions was mostly due to the failing of the communists rather than the proactive activities of any capitalist opposition.

[Aric Broderick · Rating 2 out of 5]

For masters. It was okay.

[Sean Keeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smart, succinct and clear look at the factors underlying the communist collapse, with helpful disdain for the conventional wisdom that it was all about people power.

Now, to get to Kotkin's Stalin tomes...

[Chase Parsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Stephen Kotkin writes a decent book about the end of the Cold War in three Eastern bloc countries: East Germany, Romania, and Poland. It was enlightening to learn about how different each country's version of communist life was, and also how quickly everything collapsed. I liked the section on Romania the best. The author repeatedly points out that there was a "civil" society (the in crowd government workers who had all of the perks) and the "uncivil" society (everyone else). It reminds me of when Brezhnev's mother once told him that the Reds might not like how him and his cronies were living, when of course Brezhnev was the leader of the USSR!

If there was a .5 rating, I would rate this book 3.5/5 stars because for me the writing was not as crisp as it could have been. Also the title was a bit misleading; I wanted to learn about the overall fall of communism but the book was set up to discuss only the three bloc countries. Still, a good book and an important one!

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book covers three Eastern European Soviet satellites - East Germany, Romania and Poland - and the very different ways that Communism fell and they broke away from the USSR. Economic failure resulting in ever expanding debt to Western nations in E. Germany and Poland and extreme austerity to avoid borrowing in Romania was central, but it was the decision of the USSR to no longer enforce socialism by armed force that allowed the governments to fall. I enjoyed reading this book, especially in comparison with Armageddon Avoided.

[Anderson Paz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Após a Segunda Guerra, a União Soviética consolidou ainda mais sua ditadura socialista brutal. Uma das principais marcas do regime foi a destruição da sociedade civil. O Estado reduziu as demais esferas a seu poder e vontade.

Essa “sociedade incivil” – sem esferas sociais livres – ruiu. A elite socialista formava “a sociedade” que mantinha o regime: funcionários, membros do partido, militares e a inteligência. Esse establishment incompetente, obtuso e falido inviabilizou o regime.

Essa “sociedade incivil” manteve policiamento do pensamento, sistema de desinformação, corrupção, política de compadrio, repressão violenta que resultou em desmantelo econômico, endividamento, baixa produtividade, racionamento do básico para sobreviver. Obviamente, a elite era rica, enquanto o povo, pobre.

E a igreja? A igreja sofreu exponencialmente com perseguições. Mas, já no período final do regime, a igreja foi fundamental para a queda do socialismo soviético.

Em 1982, a Igreja Luterana de São Nicolau na Alemanha Oriental em Leipzig iniciou “orações pela paz”. Estudantes de teologia e funcionários da igreja começaram a se reunir às segundas-feira para orar pela paz do país.

Entre 1987 e 1988, as vigílias da igreja ficaram lotadas pedindo abertura e liberdade. Eles cantavam: “Senhor, concede-nos a paz”. Apesar de ameaças do regime, não foi possível reprimir o movimento espontâneo. A igreja se tornou o centro de uma resistência moral e não violenta que desconcertou o regime com orações, velas e cantos.

Em 1989, o chefe de propaganda do regime, Schabowski, se confundiu em uma entrevista e deu a entender que os cidadãos da Alemanha Oriental poderiam deixar o país livremente. Em seguida, 20 mil pessoas pressionaram os portões e fugiram, ao passo que outros começaram a destruir o Muro de Berlim.

[Merricat Blackwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

hmmm ... some interesting stuff here but it's just too short to make an argument in convincing detail. Also, no surprises from a Hoover Institute guy but some of the anti-communist rhetoric in here is overheated to the point of silly. E.g., a section heading refers to the formation of East Germany as "Hitler and Stalin's Joint Venture" because "Whereas back in 1923 wild Bolshevik schemes to help German Communists seize power in a coup had ended in a debacle, Adolf Hitler had managed at unprecedented cost to implant Soviet overlords in Berlin." Come on! There's also the standard thing of describing very normal government functions in sci-fi ways: "[The state] could further dial up the ZOMO (Motorized Reserves of the Citizens' Militia), paramilitaries who rode in armored personnel carriers, threw tear gas, and wielded Plexiglas riot shields and truncheons." omg that's crazy ... can't imagine living in a country where cops spray tear gas at protesters ... sorry I'm not trying to be dismissive, I know that the Polish Communist surveillance state was bad. But you should document why it was bad instead of just summoning a scary communist vibe!

[AndrewMillerTheSecond · Rating 4 out of 5]

In punchier prose than his Stalin biography Kotkin offers 3 case studies (East Germany, Romania, Poland) of how the Eastern Bloc fell. It wasn’t “civil society” and organized oppositions—excepting Poland to a degree—that took down Communism; it was just that they fell under their own weight. Kotkin is downright funny when he’s taking the fight to biased authors who are inserting normative thinking into history… there’s nothing funnier than a tremendously upset writer. He loses me a bit with some of the political economy talk, which makes this less accessible to the average reader. The basic point is easy to grasp, which is that you can’t expect to win the battle against capitalism if you’re taking out loans from the capitalists to pay off other loans from the capitalists. That, and refusing to even consider market solutions because of supreme confidence in your ideas. It was also Gorbachev’s fault, as always. The book’s only 145 pages, which I think makes it great for those curious about the fall of Communism.

[Philip Kuhn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book overall. It's not a complete history of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, but rather a long essay on why this didn't happen as a result of "the rise of civil societies" and "freedom loving Eastern Europeans."

DR Kotkin examines East Germany, Poland and Romania to show how different each country was and how there were no "civil societies" in these countries or any Eastern European countries. The authoritarian states were too brutal and systematic to all such movements. The "Solidarity" labor movement in Poland was a different animal and unique to Poland.

Kotkin points out the main cause of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was simple: the Soviet backstop was removed. The USSR wasn't going to invade with the Red Army or continue to support their economies. It was all Gorbachev.

PHILIP J KUHN

[Anthony Moreau · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, quick look at some of the collapses of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in the late eighties. Focusing on lesser known regimes like East Germany, Poland, and Romania, and spending time on what made them different form each other, is a nice touch and serves as a reminder that there was some diversity in how these monstrous, wasteful kleptocracies ran their fiefs.

Entertaining and a good supplement to literature which is often more focused on the Soviet Union.

[Micah Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book documenting the events and attitudes that led to the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe. Kotkin analyzes three countries: East Germany, Romania, and Poland. Communist regimes were coupled with command economies and dictators who made bank runs, the latter two of which led to the overall downfall. The book also documents great instances of people who rise up against authoritarian regimes and where in the bleakness of dictatorship, pluralism can topple them.

[Steve Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. He uses several case studies to show how it was not an organized opposition that caused the downfall of the Communist governments on that side of the Iron Curtain, but the governments themselves. Comparing the three different countries of East Germany, Romania, and Poland was brilliant. I believe he thoroughly made his point. Good short histories of the collapse of those three countries as well.

[Ovidiu Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Kotkin as the best post WWII expert on Eastern Europe and Russia through his interviews and seminars on Stalin and the Ukraine war. This essay on the collapse of Communism was a surprise insight on the Romanian revolution. As he studied extensively the Soviet archives, he is an excellent connoisseur of the specific subtleties of Eastern European communist establishments and the causes which led to their demise.

[Noah Worth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A work of unprecedented importance, no more relevant in anytime than now. To see the future of many Western regimes before they happen, you first need to read this piece. While brief, Kotkin dissects the collapse of the satellite Soviet regimes in 1989 and 1990, specifically East Germany, Rumania, and Poland. A wonderful companion piece to Zubok's Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union.

[Jay Hinman · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been said so many times (particularly in conservative circles) that it has ceased to lose its sense of moral outrage, but the most “underreported” story of the twentieth century was the misery, economic destruction and mass death caused by Communism - both as an idea, and certainly far more so in practice. Underreported, you ask? I’d say so. It’s not difficult to find books, articles and speeches decrying 20th-century communism’s crimes, from Stalin and Mao to famines and entire generations lost to mind-numbing conformity and repression. Yet the thumbnail view of the century is usually reduced to the two World Wars, or to some general struggle between East and West, rather than to the murderous idea that helped beget so much of that struggle to begin with. Forgotten, at some level, is just how much of the world’s people were made to suffer and stagnate for decades in the name of idea that promised a “worker’s paradise” and instead provided anything but.

Stephen Kotkin’s “UNCIVIL SOCIETY – 1989 AND THE IMPLOSION OF THE COMMUNIST ESTABLISHMENT” helps us remember a bit. Its thesis is fairly straightforward. Remember in 1989, when Communist governments were collapsing across Eastern Europe, how there was loads of talk about well-organized “civil society” movements that were bringing them down? Rubbish, says Kotkin. The sclerotic Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, propped up for decades by Moscow, were never in danger of real democratic revolution from within, and no matter how much hindsight allows us to inflate the power of nascent democratic movements, their abilities to affect true change were years away. No, it was “uncivil society” – the corrupt regimes of delusional, state-plundering Communist bureaucrats that led these countries – that paved the way to their own demise. When they fell, they didn’t all fall the same way – but they fell quickly, and in rapid succession to each other.

The book chooses to focus its lens on how the regimes unraveled in three countries – East Germany, Romania and Poland. Kotkin rightly makes the widely-shared point that the kindling for 1989 was certainly set by Mikael Gorbachev’s perestroika policies in the Soviet Union, and in his tacit guarantees that countries within Easter Europe those chose to accelerate the process of opening up their economies and societies would not be invaded, the way Hungary was in 1956 and Czechoslovakia was in 1968. Yet the three countries all had different paths to the surrender by uncivil society. In East Germany’s case, a stealthy “peace” movement, which had been marching under a vague banner of non-regime-provoking solidarity since 1982, snowballed and culminated after years of frustration in small demonstrations in the city of Leipzig during 1989. The regime fought back, and beat the protestors badly for weeks, but East German society at large was relatively unmoved and unprovoked until events began to quickly spiral, and as residents began fleeing into Austria through Hungary’s now-open borders. Once the “run on the bank” started, powerless, cornered and widely-hated East German leaders chose to not crack down, and within weeks, the Berlin Wall was being dismantled on worldwide television.

Romanian events moved even more quickly, and shocked the world when the dictator Nikolai Ceausescu was executed in extra-legal fashion toward the end of 1989. Only two weeks before, there had been zero stirrings of democratic activity, and the state was fully in the hands of Ceausescu and the Securitate, the KGB of the Romanian police state. This is the most fascinating part of Kotkin’s book, and would be inspiring to the end if not for the civil war-like ethnic killings and religious reprisals that followed the 1989 turmoil that gave Romania democracy for the first time in decades. Finally, Poland’s example seems to refute Kotkin’s premise a bit. If the Solidarity movement led by Lech Walesa since 1980, which won democratic elections in 1989 without bloodshed, did not comprise the triumph of “civil society” over the uncivil, then what did? Kotkin feels that because the Communist establishment had no idea it would lose these elections, and because in calling Solidarity’s bluff, they were certain of continued power by co-opting them, it was just as much of a “collapse” as the other examples. Not buying it.

Regardless, they all imploded in 1989 and within weeks and months of each other, and it was a head-spinning set of simultaneous events. I’d have liked a little more focus on Czechoslovakia in this book, as this is the country I most associate with the whole “civil society” trope, but the point remains. It wasn’t spontaneous uprisings of the people that brought down Soviet Communism across Eastern Europe. It was Soviet Communism’s toxicity itself. It’s important to revisit this period, recent as it is, because we are seeing it happen all over again in the Middle East this year, and it’s thrilling and more than a little painful to watch. I’m coupling my reading of this with an excellent, albeit massive, book by Orlando Figes about the birth of the Bolsheviks called “A PEOPLE’S TRAGEDY" , giving me two nice bookends to understand the ideology & deluded players that caused the world so much pain over the 1900s.

[Brett Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it in college, some 4 years ago now, and remember really enjoying the succinct comparison of these three differently situated countries (as far as how they went about their "Communism") and how they escaped that bungled up system.

[Luis Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very brief overview of the role that the communist party establishments played in their own demise. It's like a sampler history book, doesn't go too deep but it goes deep enough to give you an essence of what was happening at the time!

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for a class, enjoyed it... ish. Full of really important information but a little dry for my tastes.

[Nicolas Marrel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Broad yet insightful of the reasons why the communist regimes in Est Germany, Poland and Romania fell.
Would have liked some more though, 145 pages is a bit too short for such a topic for my taste, but the punch was there.