How They Destroyed a Myth
Brand, H.
THE EAST GERMAN RISING, by Stefan Brant. Thames & Hudson, London, 202 pp. 18 shillings. The East Berlin uprising of June 17, 1953 was the first massive challenge totalitarianism met from...
...How, in the face of years of repression and deprivation, of the corruption of the workers' ranks by differential wage and bonus scales, of the presence of a corps of informers, of the demoralizing influence of the Communist Party, of the virtual absence of organized opposition groups—how was such an uprising possible...
...Wherever the demonstrations reached this point before the arrival of Russian tanks, a provisional leadership was elected by acclamation...
...He attributes their solidarity to their community of experience in the shops, but this does not explain their political cohesiveness...
...Once they did go to the streets, however, they were faced with the baffling problem of improvising such institutions for themselves...
...he fails, however, to investigate the equally important process of the crystallization of the workers' political opposition...
...It thus laid itself open to criticism...
...The pattern of the events was everywhere the same...
...The East Berlin uprising of June 17, 1953 was the first massive challenge totalitarianism met from within...
...The workers had no alternative to resorting to the streets since they, like the rest of East German society, had been deprived of all genuinely representative institu tions...
...The crisis in which the regime found itself as a consequence of its ruinous economic policies and of the consternation in the party ranks (many of the minor functionaries joined in the uprising) due to Moscow's "new course" was a necessary condition of the uprising—but it did not "cause" it...
...There was a clearly felt realization that they must present a political alternative to the regime...
...The strike actions, whose aims did not at first go beyond the modest demand for reductions in work norms, underwent a rapid and irresistible transformation into a revolutionary uprising with objectives of the broadest political significance...
...Having previously considered itself to be infallible, the party now suddenly had to admit that it could make "mistakes...
...Thames & Hudson, London, 202 pp...
...But its social and intellectual roots have not been and cannot be eradicated...
...The East German Rising is, unforfortunately, a much abridged translation of the original Der Aufstand (Stuttgart: Steingrueben Verlag, 1955...
...Brant does a good job in recounting what he calls the "pre history" of the uprising...
...This leadership was to deal with the regime in the spirit of the mandate it received from the people assembled in the central squares...
...For this uprising poses the question as to the political forms and the social content of resistance to totalitarian regimes, and the conditions of success for such resistance...
...It is, in the main, a detailed account of what happened during the three days beginning June 16, 1953 in the industrial centers of Berlin and East Germany...
...Brant shows very well how the "new course," initiated after Stalin's death, disoriented the East German Communist Party...
...The evidence Brant himself presents shows the decisive role played by socialist and trade union traditions and ideology throughout all the stages of the uprising, reflected in its slogans, program and manner of organization at the point at which a leadership emerged...
...The news of the downing of tools by the East Berlin workers and their march upon the government and party centers led to similar movements in all the other industrial districts of the Russian zone...
...Led by the workers, an entire society rose against its oppressors, thundering its demand for freedom and asserting its humanity...
...The importance of Brant's work arises from the material it provides for a discussion of this question...
...A discussion of the East German uprising remains of the greatest relevance...
...its leadership was destroyed or dispersed...
...The uprising was defeated only by the intervention of the Russian army...
...There is, to my mind, no other way of explaining the cohesiveness of action, and the similarity of the forms the uprising took throughout the Russian zone...
...It utterly destroyed the myth of the unity of state and society under Stalinism...
Vol. 4 • September 1957 • No. 4
