This comparative history of the higher education systems in Poland, East Germany, and the Czech lands reveals an unexpected diversity within East European stalinism. With information gleaned from archives in each of these places, John Connelly offers a valuable case study showing how totalitarian states adapt their policies to the contours of the societies they rule.

The Communist dictum that universities be purged of "bourgeois elements" was accomplished most fully in East Germany, where more and more students came from worker and peasant backgrounds. But the Polish Party kept...