scholarly journals The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Lichter ◽  
Max Löffler ◽  
Sebastian Siegloch
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Government Surveillance

scholarly journals The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Lichter ◽  
Max Löffler ◽  
Sebastian Siegloch
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Economic Effects ◽  
Lower Income ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Civic Capital ◽  
Government Surveillance

ABSTRACT We investigate the long-run effects of government surveillance on civic capital and economic performance, studying the case of the Stasi in East Germany. Exploiting regional variation in the number of spies and administrative features of the system, we combine a border discontinuity design with an instrumental variable strategy to estimate the long-term, post-reunification effect of government surveillance. We find that a higher spying density led to persistently lower levels of interpersonal and institutional trust in post-reunification Germany. We also find substantial and long-lasting economic effects of Stasi surveillance, resulting in lower income, higher exposure to unemployment, and lower self-employment.

East Germany

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta
Keyword(s):  
Structural Transformation ◽  
East Germany ◽  
External Factors ◽  
The Political ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
State Security ◽  
Security Service ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Church

The case of East Germany raises the question of why religion and church, which had fallen to an unprecedentedly low level after four decades of suppression, have not recovered since 1989. The repressive church politics of the SED were undoubtedly the decisive factor in the unique process of minoritizing churches in the GDR. However, other external factors such as increasing prosperity, socio-structural transformation, and the expansion of the leisure and entertainment sector played an important role, too. In addition, church activity itself probably also helped to weaken the social position of churches. The absence of a church renaissance after 1990 can be explained by several factors, such as the long-term effects of the break with tradition caused by the GDR system, the political and moral discrediting of the church by the state security service, and people’s dwindling confidence in the church, which was suddenly seen as a non-representative Western institution.

Long-Term Mental Sequelae of Political Imprisonment in East Germany

1993 ◽  
Vol 181 (4) ◽  
pp. 257-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL BAUER ◽  
STEFAN PRIEBE ◽  
BETTINA BLARING ◽  
KERSTIN ADAMCZAK
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Political Imprisonment

Playing with or without Politics: Studying the Position of East Germany within the FIS and FIFA from a Long-Term Perspective (1924–1962)

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Philippe Vonnard ◽  
Sébastien Cala
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
East Germany ◽  
International Olympic Committee ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
National Archives ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
International Sport ◽  
Combining Information

The present paper looks at the different positions two major international sport federations, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS), took with respect to East Germany during the 1950s. Because these positions were greatly influenced by FIFA’s and the FIS’s prior relations with Germany and by the challenges posed by global politics, this study begins by examining these relations during the interwar period. By combining information from the FIFA, FIS, and International Olympic Committee (IOC) archives with documents from the German national archives and articles published in Switzerland’s sporting press, the authors were able to highlight differences between the two federations’ approaches and show the need for studies to go beyond an IOC-centric approach.

“Reenacting the Story of Tantalus”: Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Failed Rhetoric of Liberation

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Tudda
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Soviet Power ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines Dwight Eisenhower's and John Foster Dulles's publicly declared goal to achieve the “liberation” of Eastern Europe, a goal that they claimed would replace the Truman administration's “passive” containment policy.But the evidence shows that Eisenhower and Dulles were unwilling to risk war with the Soviet Union and believed that liberation, if actually pursued, would induce the Soviet Union to react violently to perceived threats in Eastern Europe. Hence, in top-secret meetings and conversations, Eisenhower and Dulles rejected military liberation, despite their public pronouncements. Instead, they secretly pursued a tricky, risky, and long-term strategy of radio broadcasts and covert action designed to erode, rather than overthrow, Soviet power in Eastern Europe. In public, they continued to embrace liberation policy even when confronted with testimony from U.S. allies that the rhetorical diplomacy of liberation had not worked. This reliance on rhetoric failed to deter the Soviet Union from quashing rebellions in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956. If anything, the Eisenhower administration's rhetorical liberation policy may have encouraged, at least to some degree, these revolts.

Disenchanting Socialist Internationalism: Polish Workers in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, 1962−91

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942110578
Author(s):  
Ondřej Klípa
Keyword(s):  
Labour Force ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Global South ◽  
Foreign Labour ◽  
Limited Scale ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Economic Needs ◽  
Contemporary Writing

This article seeks to paint a more nuanced picture of the role plaid by socialist internationalism in East Germany and Czechoslovakia regarding the employment of foreign labour, focusing on Poles. The long-term cooperation with Warsaw provides a suitable perspective on how to interpret particular periods and milestones of the schemes as a whole. The article partly dissociates from contemporary writing on the subject, which perceives socialist internationalism either as an instrument of propaganda, masking ruthless exploitation, or as a genuine value that inspired and permeated foreign labour recruitment. Based on documents from archives of all three countries in focus, it is argued that the schemes were clearly driven by the economic needs from the very beginning. Except for limited-scale cooperation with countries of the Global South, socialist internationalism came largely to the fore during the 1970s as a substitutional objective, when the economic goals of the foreign labour recruitment proved unreachable, and policymakers were at pains to reshape the meaning of the schemes (running already in full gear). However, with growing and unmanageable economic difficulties, the idealist rhetoric of internationalism plaid an ever more important role in framing the labour force cooperation until the end of communist regimes.

Brewing Relations: Coffee, East Germany, and Laos

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Andrew Kloiber
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Third World ◽  
East Germany ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Trade Deals ◽  
Economics And Politics

This investigation contributes to studies of post-1945 Europe and the Cold War by examining the culture, economics, and politics surrounding the consumption of a single commodity in East Germany, coffee. Coffee was associated with many cultural values and traditions that became tied to the GDR's official image of socialism. When the regime's ability to supply this good was jeopardized in 1975–77, the government sought out new sources of coffee in the developing, so-called Third World. East Germany entered into long-term trade and development projects with countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, Laos, and Vietnam to secure sufficient beans to supply its own population – this article singles out the GDR's relationship with Laos for discussion. These trade deals connected East Germany to a much broader, globalizing economy, and led to certain lasting effects on the world coffee trade.

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