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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
This review evaluates two recendy published works on East German political recruitment from the vantage point of future comparative research on the role of the G.D.R. within the European postindustrial order. The conclusion presents several possible ways of providing a larger comparative framework for the future study of the East German polity.
1 For a recent article dealing with the status of American research on the G.D.R., I strongly recommend Croan, Melvin, “Zur Lage der DDR-Forschung in den USA,” Deutschland Archiv, No. 2 (February 1976), 164Google Scholar–76.
2 An important exception to this rule is seen in the comparative treatments done on West and East German politics by Heidenheimer, Arnold J. and Kom-mers, Donald P., The Governments of Germany (4th ed.; New York:Crowell 1975Google Scholar).
3 Chalmers Johnson has perceptively examined this important dichotomy in his examination of “goal” versus “transfer” culture. See “Comparing Communist Nations,” in Johnson, , ed., Change in Communist Systems (Stanford:Stanford University Press 1970), 1–32Google Scholar.
4 An outstanding example of this tendency to equate political reorganization with patterns of intra-elite conflict is found in Ludz's discussion of the role of Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorates established by the SED in early 1963. Within the context of guidance and control, the inspectorates were set up in order to check the growing influence of the institutionalized counter-elite within the economically important bureaus of industry and construction:
The penetration of the large organizational principle into the party apparatus at the beginning of 1963 encountered resistance which had been building up since the beginning of February 1954. This policy was initiated by the strategic clique, with the primary aim of restricting the sphere of decisions in central and regional bureaus of industry and construction (p. 155).
Summarizing the entire argument, Ludz concludes that the nature of intra-elite conflict is a structural problem within the East German political system:
There is no doubt that the countermeasures of the strategic clique during 1965–1967 were effective in controlling the growing power of the party experts. Indications of this trend to date include: the establishment and expansion of the ABI and the production committees; the restriction of the authority of the bureaus of industry and construction, followed by their gradual and unannounced dissolution; the reorganization and broadened power of the central Ideological Commission; and the establishment of a Commission for Party and Organization Affairs. The deletion of the passage referring to the “production principle” from the statutes of the SED at the Seventh Party Congress in April 1967 is a further sign of the present relative power situation of the SED. The conflict between functionaries and experts has not been decisively solved by these measures. On the contrary, it has become a structural conflict inherent in the system, since the strategic clique must be assured of the cooperation of the experts more than ever before (pp. 177–78).
5 The book is an elaboration of Baylis's Ph.D. dissertation, “Communist Elites and Industrial Society: The Technical Intelligentsia in East German Politics” (University of California, Berkeley 1968Google Scholar); quotation from p. 398.
6 Ludz describes this concept as follows:
The party elite must keep intact a residue of its “marginality”—or exclusiveness—in order to preserve a certain distance from its rank and file, as well as from the society as a whole. This principle is an essential ingredient of the exercise of political power. The complete social marginality originally characteristic of the leadership group derives its ultimate legitimacy from the eschatological, or Utopian, dimensions of its ideology, as has been abundantly illustrated in the history of Marxism (p. 32).
7 See particularly Kurt L. Shell's essay dealing with research on East German politics, “Totalitarianism in Retreat: The Example of the DDR,” World Politics, xvii (October 1965), 105Google Scholar–16.
8 See Barraclough, Geoffrey, “A New View of German History: Part III,” in New York Review of Books, xvii (November 16, 1972), 25–31Google Scholar, and Ralf Dahrendorfs examination of the revolutionary evolution of the G.D.R. in “The Two Germanies: The German Democratic Republic,” in Dahrendorf, , Society and Democracy in Germany (New York:Anchor 1969), 397–411Google Scholar.
9 Zapf, Wolfgang, “Wandlungen der deutschen Elite. Ein Zirkulationsmodell deut-scher Fiihrungsgruppen, 1919–1961,” in Zapf, Studien zur Soziologie, II (Munich: 1965), 11ff.Google Scholar
10 The following significantly highlight some aspects of the G.D.R.'s European identity: Christian Ludz, Peter, “The Two Germanys in Europe,” in Ludz, , Two Ger-manys in One World (Paris:Atlantic Institute for International Affairs 1973), 47–56Google Scholar; Livingston, Robert Gerald, “East Germany Between Moscow and Bonn,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 50 (January 1972), 297–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richert, Ernst, “Zwischen Eigenstandigkeit und Dependenz,” Deutschland Archiv, No. 9 (September 1974), 955Google Scholar–82.