Book Reviews
Edward Peterson, The Secret Police and the Revolution: The Fall of the German Demo- cratic Republic. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. 286 pp. $67.95.
Reviewed by Gary Bruce, University of Waterloo (Ontario)
Edward Peterson’s disappointing book is divided into eight chapters, the ªrst two of which deal with background on East Germany and on the country’s State Security Ministry (Stasi) through 1986. The remaining chapters provide a chronological treat- ment of reports that the Stasi ofªces in Schwerin and East Berlin gathered on the East German population from 1987 to 1989, with an emphasis on the events of 1989. Pe- terson contrasts the population reports from the Stasi ofªce in Schwerin, which was responsible for a largely rural population, with those of the headquarters in East Berlin. Each chapter therefore discusses both Schwerin and East Berlin. The penulti- mate chapter deals with the ªnal months of the Stasi in 1989–1990, and the last chap- ter offers conclusions. Peterson has based his account on archival materials from the regional Stasi ar- chive in Schwerin and from the main Stasi archive in Berlin, drawing mainly on situa- tion reports from both archives. The situation reports from East Berlin were produced by the Central Evaluation and Information Group (Zentrale Auswertungs- und Informationsgruppe), a key unit within the Stasi that collected and evaluated informa- tion from “unofªcial informants” among the general population. The group regularly prepared summaries and analysis for the leaders of the Stasi, the Socialist Unity Party (SED), and the government. Peterson’s account is clogged with questionable assertions and major gaffes. He claims that “Soviet soldiers prevented revolt [in East Germany] until 1989” (p. 1), leaving the informed reader to wonder about the mass uprising that swept through East Germany in the summer of 1953. On p. 2, Peterson refers to the “Berlin uprising of 17 June,” although on the next page he correctly notes that the revolt, far from be- ing limited to East Berlin, spread to at least 373 cities. He does not provide a citation for his claim that K-5 (the forerunner of the Stasi) was founded on 16 August 1947 (p. 19). A more plausible estimate for the founding of K-5, presented in Jens Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2000), p. 5, is January 1947. In addition, Peterson mentions far too many individuals and events without ªrst introducing or describing them or even giving their full names—among them, Kurt Hager, Nikolai Ryzhkov, Ivan Agrusov, Sputnik, Department III, Schlaucher, Margot (presumably Honecker), Schatta, General Siegfried Gehlert, Markus (“Mischa”) Wolf, Ehnke, Karsten Voigt, Peter Glotz, and Schoppe. There are other major problems with the text. When discussing reports from the Central Evaluation and Information Group from January 1989, Peterson makes no mention of the Luxembourg/Liebknecht demonstration (pp. 152–153), which was a key event on the path to the revolution. We know that the Central Evaluation and In- formation Group prepared a report on the demonstration, because the report appears in the documentary appendix of a well-known book on the Stasi by Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, Ich liebe euch doch alle . . . : Befehle und Lageberichte des MfS Januar–
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November 1989 (Berlin: Basisdruck, 1990). Equally confounding, Peterson seems to have come across no Stasi records of the massive demonstration on 4 November 1989 in East Berlin, even though Mitter and Wolle have identiªed numerous Stasi sources on this subject. Structurally, Peterson’s analysis of the Schwerin situation disappears from the narrative in the penultimate chapter without explanation, despite the fact that it had been (along with East Berlin) the core of the text to that point. Peterson also has been careless in his handling of documents. He refers to State Security Minister Erich Mielke’s now famous banana quotation as “we can’t afford to buy bananas,” whereas the original German actually reads: “ich konnte auch keine Bananen essen und kaufen, nicht, weil es keine gab, sondern weil wir kein Geld hatten, sie zu kaufen,” which is properly translated as “I was not able to eat and buy bananas, not because there weren’t any but because we didn’t have any money to buy them.” Apart from the inaccurate translation, Peterson’s omission of original words without using ellipses is disconcerting. To make matters worse, his citation for this source is the undated “ZAIG [Zentrale Auswertungs- und Informationsgruppe] 8679, 1117.” Apparently, Peterson is unaware that this was a crucial meeting of Mielke with his regional leadership on 31 August 1989, when each leader reported the major de- velopments in his district. On p. 162 Peterson quotes from a Stasi document: “On 7 June we talked all day to 160 potential participants,” yet he gives the date of 5 June for the document. Most likely, the document is actually one from 8 June, which is re- printed in the documentary appendix of Mitter and Wolle’s Ich liebe euch doch alle. On this matter, Peterson really cannot be forgiven. Nowhere does he refer to Mitter and Wolle’s book, which reproduces key documents from the Central Evaluation and Information Group from 1989, many of which coincide with ones that Peterson cites. It is difªcult to imagine how he could have missed this source, especially considering that he has relied to a large degree on David Childs and Richard Popplewell, The Stasi: The East German Intelligence and Security Service (New York: New York University Press, 1996)—which Peterson consistently misidentiªes. The book by Childs and Popplewell draws heavily on Ich liebe euch doch alle. The Secret Police and the Revolution is further marred by a number of annoying German misspellings. In the list of abbreviations, the DBD is wrongly identiªed as the “Deutsche Bauernpartei Deutschlands” rather than the “Demokratische Bauernpartei Deutschlands.” There are spelling mistakes in the German for the trade union (FDGB), for the state-owned store (HO), and for the National People’s Army (NVA). Mistranslations like Teufelskreis as “Devil’s Circle” (p. 143) rather than “vi- cious circle” and Sophienkirche as “Sophien Church” (p. 162) rather than “Church of St. Sophie” occur throughout the text. All of this leads to the conclusion that the awk- ward-sounding Stasi reports presented here in English are not solely the result of awkward wording in the original. On p. 38, for example, the reader is offered these translations: “Nothing was happening, often because of conºicts of leaders” and “They must have shown enemy activity, and that you are preventing more such hostile behavior.” The quality of Peterson’s own English text is not much better. The book reads like a poor translation, with phrases like: “Although decried by anti-Communists, be-
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cause of Bonn’s Ostpolitik, treating the DDR as sovereign, the BRD was getting signiªcant concessions” (p. 43) and “The public was critical and pessimistic, with neg- ative attitudes of the various classes, in particular workers and employees” (p. 39). Readers can tolerate a few sentences like this, but not an entire book. The text is really just a string of quotations from Stasi documents tied together with the occasional bland phrase like “Communism had too much celebration” (p. 41) and “Policy led to waste” (p. 40). The following is a typical paragraph: Failures were observed at Parchim’s mechanization factory: “By taking on large contracts, without the real possibility of meeting them, it was often penalized. The leadership was not stable, the director lacked vision and was taken advan- tage of by some of his specialists, who did not fulªll their promises energetically and he didn’t keep track” (p. 95). Peterson offers almost no analysis of the documentation until the ªnal chapter. Moreover, his citations do not fulªll the requirements of historical scholarship. He generally provides a source with an extended page range after a long series of quota- tions. In some cases, he presents as many as sixteen direct quotations before citing a source. Even when he does provide a source on p. 39, the citation he gives—“Thomas Ammer and Hans Joachim Memmler, Staatssicherheit in Rostock (Köln: Deutschland Archiv, 1991), signed Mittag 2.12.77, pp. 80–84”—is confusing at best. Apparently it is some combination of a primary and secondary source. Not until the concluding chapter does the reader ªnally encounter some analysis of the documentation. Peterson suggests that the Stasi was fairly restrained in the peri- od under investigation and that its ofªcials by and large agreed with the complaints that its informants reported. He suggests, therefore, that Stasi ofªcials were also dissi- dents, but he stops short of calling them conspirators in the revolution. This point should not be exaggerated, though. The Stasi in 1989 was still a loyal servant of the Communist regime and was prepared to subdue unrest with bloodshed, a solution that was not necessarily as expedient for the SED leadership in light of the enormous size of East Germany’s foreign debt. The documents cited by Peterson touch on prac- tically every imaginable complaint—the lack of housing and telephones, the endan- gered environment, failed attempts to obtain business approval, land-ownership conºicts, factory shortages, failed agricultural collectives, and obsolete railroad equip- ment. What is missing in the conclusion is a synthesis and analysis of these popular complaints. Are certain complaints more important than others? Peterson’s discussion of the limits of the Stasi as an enforcer, in particular its heavy reliance on amateur in- formants, is the most interesting element of the book, but it is conªned to only three pages. A fuller discussion of the limitations of the Stasi in the context of the debate about the “totalitarian” nature of the East German regime would have enhanced the book. The Secret Police and the Revolution is another in a series of weak English- language books on the Stasi, including John Koehler’s The Stasi (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999) and the book by Childs and Popplewell cited above. Serious scholars would do well to consult German-language sources such as Jens Gieseke, Mielke-
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Konzern: Die Geschichte der Stasi 1945–1990 (Munich: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2001) and the other book by Gieseke cited above. The Secret Police and the Revolution was not ready for publication. It is a poorly written and sloppy regurgitation of myriad complaints recorded by the Stasi. These complaints in themselves may have been illuminating if the translations were not so poor. It is difªcult to believe that Praeger subjected the manuscript to a thor- ough external review process. If it did, it should demand the return of the reviewer’s fee.
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Jacob D. Lindy and Robert J. Lifton, eds. Beyond Invisible Walls: The Psychological Leg- acy of Soviet Trauma, East European Therapists and Their Patients. New York: Brun- ner-Routledge, 2001. xvii ϩ 251 pp. $34.95.
Reviewed by Michael Bernhard, Pennsylvania State University
This volume is a collection of reports from therapists working in six post-Communist countries: Hungary, the former German Democratic Republic, Romania, Russia, Croatia, and Armenia. It explores the effects of political violence and other forms of repression on survivors and their families. The editors are two prominent American scholars, Jacob D. Lindy, who is well known for his previous work on post-traumatic stress disorder, and Robert J. Lifton, one of the world’s foremost experts on political trauma, perhaps best known for his seminal work on the medical profession in Nazi Germany. Beyond Invisible Walls apparently is the ªrst book-length psycho- logical analysis of the aftermath of political terror and repression in the former Soviet bloc. The volume deals with what the Germans have called Vergangenheitsbewälti- gung—coming to terms with the past. This process is well under way in some coun- tries but has moved quite slowly (or not at all) in others. It has been delayed in certain cases because reopening the wounds of the past is seen as too difªcult or because key political actors have a stake in not reconsidering the past too carefully. Coming to terms with recent history is especially onerous when there is so much for the inhabi- tants of the region to face up to, including at least four major episodes of collective vi- olence. The ªrst episode is that of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Rus- sian Civil War. This was followed by mass repression in the Soviet Union under Josif Stalin, including forced collectivization, widespread famine, the Great Terror, and the deportations of nationalities. The third episode is that of World War II, which in- cludes not only the war itself but also the German and Soviet occupations of 1939–1941 and the Holocaust. (The book does not cover the further trauma inºicted on the East European countries when the Soviet troops that “liberated” them from German occupation proved exceptionally brutal in their own right, particularly with regard to women.) The fourth episode is the imposition of Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe from 1947 to 1953 and the continued repression in the Soviet Union under
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