The concert given by the West German rock star Udo Lindenberg in East Berlin on 25 October 1983 links cultural, political, diplomatic and economic history. The East German regime had banned performances by the anti-nuclear peace activist and musician since the 1970s, but eventually allowed a concert, hoping to prevent the deployment of American nuclear missiles in West Germany. In allowing this event, however, East Germany neither prevented the implementation of the NATO double-track decision of 1979 nor succeeded in controlling the political messages of the impertinent musician. Desperate for economic aid from the West, East Germany decided to cancel a promised Lindenberg tour in 1984, causing widespread disillusionment among his fans in the country.

Written seven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as the shockwaves of the Yugoslav wars still reverberated through the continent, Ugrešić’s essays spoke to a period of European history in which the West's lack of familiarity with the East was particularly marked. In part owing to this Western incomprehension, the period of the 1990s were a rich one for theoretical discussions within the field of Eastern European Studies, as scholars sharing Ugrešić’s concerns turned their attention to the ways in which Eastern Europe had come to be imagined as that great blank space beyond the wall.

This article details the year 1989 in the East German District Perleberg up to the fall of the Wall as reflected in the documents of the Ministry for State Security – the Stasi. It seeks to introduce empirical evidence on the course of the revolution in the towns of East Germany, an area which has received much less scholarly attention than larger centres. The article argues that in this particular outlying district, the generally accepted key factors behind the revolution (regime implosion, the changing international situation and popular pressure) are valid, but would best be weighted away from the changing international situation to the advantage of the other two. Furthermore, the evidence from District Perleberg suggests that pervasive state control, rather than accommodation and limited spheres for manoeuvre, was the dominant feature in 1989 in East Germany

This paper is a frankly subjective effort to return to questions posed about the nature of communist rule and the sudden collapse of communism in the light of the intervening two decades. It asks, first, why feelings of elation about the transformations of 1989 faded relatively quickly, second, why the communist system collapsed so clamorously, and, third, how might we best describe its earlier operation. The paper suggests that there will always be a sense of let-down after intensely hopeful political activity. It endeavours to provide a model of social complexity that communist rule with its Marxist archetypes of social development could not really master. But it also rejects the idea that ‘society’ under communism can be judged autonomously apart from the regime that sustained and structured it. Efforts to do so will trivialise the degrees of repression and surveillance. Finally the paper proposes that the nature of communist rule in the decades after Stalin must be described in terms of a ‘life cycle’ metaphor, such as the idea of ‘late style’ provides for artistic creation. It is fruitless to describe an ideal type of transformative political regime that makes no allowance for change over time. Hence, returning to the first enquiry, the paper argues that efforts to reclaim communal fulfilment will always exist or revive alongside efforts at individual emancipation.

Western communists reflected two opposing responses to the final crisis of communism that had matured over time. The French communists represented a conservative response increasingly hostile to Gorbachev's perestroika, while the Italians were supporters of a reformist response in tune with his call for change. Thus Gorbachev was the chief reference, positive or negative, against which Western communists measured their own politics and identity. In 1989 the French aligned with the conservative communist leaderships of eastern Europe, and ended up opposing Gorbachev after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Accordingly, the PCF became a residual entity of traditional communism. On the other hand, the Italian communists agreed with all Gorbachev's choices, and to some extent they even inspired his radical evolution. But they also shared Gorbachev's illusions, including the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall would produce a renewal of socialism in Europe. Unlike the PCF, the PCI was able to undertake change in the aftermath of the 1989 revolutions, thus standing as a significant ‘post-communist’ force. However, if conservative communism was destined to become marginal, reform communism also failed in its objective of renewing the Soviet system and the communist political culture

This paper argues that crosstown traffic in the East and West German punk subculture was an essential aspect of how popular music helped to challenge the political legitimacy of the East German government. West German punks frequently crossed the border to attend Eastern punk concerts, meet with friends and trade stories and experiences, connections that helped to foster a transnational community of alternative youths. These interactions denied official claims that punk was the result of capitalist decadence while undermining the East German government's efforts at cultivating a distinctive socialist identity. Nor were border crossings unidirectional, as Eastern punks made daring attempts to connect with their Western cousins. Writing for West German fanzines, appearing in the Western press and even managing to release Eastern recordings smuggled westwards, Eastern punks crossed the Iron Curtain and in so doing, worked to present an alternative vision of Eastern youth to the world and join the global punk scene.

All four of these books are interesting additions to the corpus of historical research into European integration. Parr and Poggiolini's books are precise, document-based accounts of the trials and tribulations surrounding Britain's accession to the European Economic Community (EEC); Ludlow's book, which is based on an imposing quantity of archive research in six countries, is the most important work in English to date on the evolution of the European Community (EC) in the period that elapsed between Charles de Gaulle's veto of British entry and the Hague summit of December 1969, when the member states’ leaders ‘brought to an end a seven year struggle over its purpose, mode of operation and membership’ (p. 198). Gillingham's book reads like a 300-page op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and is largely concerned with current events rather than history, but that does not mean that it has nothing of relevance for historians, as I hope to show at the end of this review.