Where Was the Working Class?: Revolution in Eastern Germany

ISBN-13: 9780252067518 / Angielski / Miękka / 1999 / 256 str.

Linda Fuller

Opis

In six months, bridging 1989 and 1990, the German Democratic Republic underwent a transformation that took the world almost completely by surprise. Yet unlike the revolution in Poland a decade earlier, only a small percentage of workers played a politically active role in the fall of socialism in Germany. In this unprecedented study, Linda Fuller sets out to explain why the working class was largely missing from the 1989-90 revolution. Drawing on pre- and post-revolutionary visits to East German work sites and dozens of interviews, Fuller documents workers' day-to-day experience of the labor process, workplace union politics, and class. She shows how all three factors led most workers to withdraw from politics, even while prompting a handful to become actively involved in the struggle.