Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist

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Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment (Modern Library Chronicles)

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern historyâ€™s most miraculous occurrences, communism implodedâ€“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 studiesâ€“East Germany, Romania, and Polandâ€“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 classâ€“communismâ€™s establishment, or â€œuncivil society.â€ 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 Germanyâ€™s pseudotechnocracy to Romaniaâ€™s megalomaniacal dystopia, from Communist Polandâ€™s cult of Mary to the Kremlinâ€™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.
Country USA
Brand Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer Modern Library
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780812966794
Color Burgundy/maroon
ReleaseDate 2010-10-12
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780812966794

Country	USA
Brand	Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer	Modern Library
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780812966794
Color	Burgundy/maroon
ReleaseDate	2010-10-12
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780812966794

Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment (Modern Library Chronicles)

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