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² The “Whig interpretation of history” was defined and criticized by Herbert Butterfield. It referred first of all to the historiography of England. It is a “tendency in many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasize certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present.” Fisher, David Hackett, Historians Fallacies (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1970), 199Google Scholar. The term is also used as a generic synonym of “presentism,” of which Whig history, in a narrow sense, is a particular species. “The past is evaluated in terms of the present, antecedent conditions in terms of the outcome.” Cohen, Stephen, “Bolshevism or Stalinism,” in Tucker, Robert C., ed., Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York: Norton, 1977), 14Google Scholar. Carr, E. H. also discusses the Whig history syndrome in What Is History (New York: Knopf, 1962), 51Google Scholar.

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⁶ Karklins, Rasma, “Decision Calculus of Protesters and Regimes: Eastern Europe in 1989” Journal of Politics 55 (August 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Francisco, Ronald A., “Theories of Protest and the Revolutions of 1989,” American Journal of Political Science 37 (August 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Opp, Karl-Dieter, “Repression and Revolutionary Action: East Germany 1989, ” Rationality and Society 6 (January 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as the other articles in the same issue. Where the rational choice and civil-society models differ, of course, is in their interpretation of the intellectuals’ motivation. Whereas the civil-society school accepts the independent motivational force of the ethical ideal of civil society in explaining the behavior of the intellectuals, rational choice theorists interpret their behavior as a form of political entrepreneurship. These people, the finest minds of Eastern Europe, could easily have adapted to the existing system—indeed, many had—but chose to play a riskier game, for higher stakes. The price for defeat was imprisonment or exile, but the potential gain was the capture of the state.

⁷ Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), xviiGoogle Scholar. Scott's book builds on and simultaneously takes issue with Genovese's, Eugene D. work on “day to day resistance to slavery.” Genovese, , Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon, 1974)Google Scholar.

⁹ Joppke, Christian, “Intellectuals, Nationalism, and the Exit from Communism: The Case of East Germany,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (April 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹¹ Scott, James, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976)Google Scholar. Since Scott's book, moral economy studies have become a virtual subindustry of the social sciences. For a good discussion, see “Peasant Strategies in Asian Societies: Moral and Rational Economic Approaches—A Symposium,” Journal of Asian Studies 42 (August 1983)Google Scholar.

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²⁸ Dietrich Staritz cites an especially moving article that was published in Tribune, March 3, 1947: “We demanded that the enterprises conduct a medical investigation of its younger workers. We came to the conclusion that the enterprise youth is not gaining but losing weight and that the overwhelming portion of youths are considerably underweight. One of the most blatant cases recently is that of the 16 1/2 year only Liselotte W. who works in Tempelhof. She is 1.5 meters tall and weighs 26 kilos. Another youth from the same district is 1.69 meters tall and weighs 40 kilos. A fifteen year old is 1.38 meters tall and weighs 32 kilos.” Staritz, Die Grundung der DDR (Munich: DTV, 1987), 206–7.

²⁹ Klaus Ewers, “Der Konflikt um Lohn und Leistung in den volkseigenen Betrieben der SBZ/DDR” (Doctoral diss., University of Osnabruck, 1985), 24; Waltraud Falk notes that in 1947 Saxony had an absentee rate of 19.3 percent. Falk, , Kleine Geschichte einer grossen Bewegung (Berlin: Dietz, 1966), 46Google Scholar.

³⁰ Suckut, Siegfried, Die Betriebsrdtebewegung in der Sowjetisch besetzten Zone Deutschlands (1945–1948) (Frankfurt: Haag & Herchen Verlag, 1982)Google Scholar; Staritz, Dietrich, Sozialismus in einem halben Lande (Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1978), 104–6.Google Scholar

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³² Stiftung Archiv Massen- und Parteiorganisationen, Bundesarchiv (SAMPO-BA), SEDIV 2/602/85.

³³ For a theoretical treatment of this process, see Walder, Andrew, Communist Neo-Traditionalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

³⁴ Homburg, Heidurn, “The ‘Human Factor’ and the Limits of Rationalization: Personnel-Management Strategies and the Rationalization Movement in German Industry between the Wars,” in Tolliday, Steven and Zeitlin, Jonathan, eds., The Power to Manage: Employers and Industrial Relations in Comparative Historical Perspective (London: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar.

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³⁶ State Department Decimal Files, XR862b.555/6–1053.

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³⁸ Ewers (fn. 29), 45.

³⁹ SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED IV 2/2027/22; see also Roesler, Jorg, “Vom Akkordlohn zum Leistungslohn: Zu den Traditionen des Kampfes der deutschen Arbeiterldasse und zur Einfuehrung des Leistungslohnes in der volkseigenen Wirtschaft der DDR 1948 bis 1950,” Zeitschriftfur Geschichte 32 (1984), 778–95Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED iv 2/2027/22.

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⁴² SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED IV 2/602/85.

⁴³ Ibid., SED IV 2/2027/22.

⁴⁴ Ibid., SED iv 2/5/232.

⁴⁵ Ibid., SED IV 2/602/85; Ewers (fn. 29), 48.

⁴⁶ Arbeit und Sozialfiirsorge, no. 3 (1952), 494Google Scholar; SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED IV 2/602/85.

⁴⁷ Roesler, Jorg, Die Herausbildung der sozialistischen Industrie der DDR (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1985), 82Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ As Zank (fn. 31) notes, labor was scarce, not because of any objective shortage, but because of other factors, such as poor bureaucratic deployment and other labor-market inefficiencies, as well as the expansion of uranium mining in Wismut.

⁴⁹ This source of managerial motivation became more pressing after 1948, when the numbers of people leaving the Soviet zone for the West shot up dramatically. Ewers (fn. 29), 75–77.

⁵⁰ On German Taylorism, see Homburg, Heidrun, “Anfange des Taylorsystems in Deutschland vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 4 (August 1974), 170–94Google Scholar.

⁵¹ SAMPOBA (fn. 32), SED IV 2/2027/27.

⁵² Tribune, May 8, 1948, quoted in Ewers (fn. 29), 52.

⁵³ Exactly who came up with this idea remains unclear. Some discussion of it occurred among experts in the DWK in early February 1948. SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED IV 2/602/85.

⁵⁴ Ewers (fn. 29), 64–65.

⁵⁵ SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED IV 2/2027/27; SAMPOBA (fn. 32), SED NL 192/922.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED IV 2/2027/22.

⁵⁸ By the end of 1948 there were four thousand Aktivists, by the end of October 1950, one hundred forty-six thousand. Roesler (fn. 47), 85. These inflated numbers strongly suggest the dilution of what it meant to be an Aktivist.

⁵⁹ SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED NL 182/977.

⁶⁰ Niethammer, Lutz, Die Volkseigene Erfahrung, (Berlin: Rowohlt-Berlin, 1991), 132.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Bendix, Reinhard, Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), 331ff.Google Scholar

⁶² Miiller, Heiner, “Der Lohndrücker,” in Geschichte aus der Produktion 1 (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1974), 43.Google Scholar The prototype of this hero appeared for the first time in Eduard Claudius's short story from 1950 “Vom schweren Anfang,” which became the novel Menschen an unserer Seite. See the discussion in Zimmermann, Peter, Industrieliteratur der DDR: Vom Helden der Arbeit zum Planer und Letter (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1984), 83–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶⁴ Sobottka to Ulbricht, letter, April 19, 1949, SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED NL 182/977. The plan was withdrawn once the leadership understood that the remedial courses in mathematics and science would take three years to complete, followed by four years of course work in an area of specialization.

⁶⁵ By the end of 1951, only 10% of norms could be classified as “technically grounded.” Ewers (fn. 29), 119. The sensitivity of workers to the rationalization bureaus is indicated in a report from September 1950. A rationalization official arrived at an enterprise and two days later offended workers and management by starting time and motion studies “with watch in hand” before consulting Brigade leaders. SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED IV 2/5/232.

⁶⁶ The fact that the tight labor market gave workers the power to resist appears to support the strand of the rational choice argument which holds that resistance is most likely to occur when risk to workers is lowest. Everyday resistance, however, did not subside after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. In fact, it increased. Moreover, the reason for resistance, the pseudomarketization of production relations under conditions of shortage, remained unchanged.

⁶⁷ The population of the Soviet zone reached its height of 19.1 million in 1947. Thereafter it declined. Between September and December 1949, 129,000 people left; in 1950 198,000; in 1951 166,000; in 1952 over 182,000. Ammer, Thomas, “Stichwort: Flucht aus der DDR,” Deutschland Archiv 29 (1989), 1207.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ According to Roesler, in 1949,59.4 percent of the director's bonus funds were used for direct payments to employees. Only 11% was used for production bonuses. Roesler (fn. 47), 70.

⁶⁹ SAMPO-BA (fn. 32) SED NL 182/1077.

⁷⁰ News release of November 17, 1952, from the Agency Inter-Continent Correspondence, noted in Department of State file 762b.00/11–2452, November 24, 1952. In January 1953, Stefan Thomas, chief of the West German SPD Eastern Affairs Bureau told State Department officials, “At present the unrest has reached the degree where uprisings would break out if called for by the West. The unpopularity of the regime is especially evident now owing to the food shortages and to agricultural collectivization measures.” Ibid.

⁷¹ Stultz-Hermstadt, Nadija, Das Herrmtadt Dokument (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990), 82–84.Google Scholar As an indication of the continued hard line on wages, a Neues Deutschland article appearing at the end of May 1953 made the argument that even though increased labor productivity lowered production costs, this did not mean that workers should receive higher wages, at least for the foreseeable future. It concluded by pleading with workers to discard old norms so that productivity could rise more rapidly than wages. Only after this had been achieved, so the argument went, could the standard of living could be raised. Department of State, East Germany, file 762b.00/5–1953 XR 962a.61 The resolution introducing the new course was published on June 11, 1953.

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⁷³ The conception of social action as aggregated individual behavior based on the maximization of expected utility is a staple of rational choice theory. Lichbach, Mark, The Rebel's Dilemma (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Selfishness, or at least an absence of altruism in the formation of preferences, is also usually implied, although some scholars qualify their notion of rationality to include nonmaterial rewards and preferences for community. See Hardin, Russell, Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

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⁷⁶ For a detailed discussion of this point, see Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945—1989 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming), chap. 2.

⁷⁷ Posusney (fn. 14) identifies this trait as constitutive of moral economy protests.

⁷⁸ Diedrich, Torsten, Der 17. Juni 1953 in der DDR (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1991), 72–76.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Baring, Arnulf, Der 17. Juni (Cologne: Kiepenhauer and Witsch, 1956), 89.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik, V1I-011–1743. Reprinted in Wengst, Udo, “Der Aufstand am 17. Juni 1953 in der DDR: Aus den Stimmungsberichten der Kreis- und Bezirksverbande der Ost-CDU im Juni und Juli 1953,” Vierteljaharhefe für Zeitgeschichte (1993), 277–321.Google Scholar

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⁹⁶ Kiren Aziz Chaudhry argues that, more than ideology, this logic shaped the original decision to move to a command economy in the Soviet Union in 1928. Chaudhry, , “The Myths of the Market and the Common History of Late Developers,” Politics and Society 21 (September 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹⁰¹ Posusney (fn. 14).

¹⁰² On the Zwickau unrest, see Obst, Werner, DDR Wirtschaft: Modell und Wirklichkeit (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1973), 91.Google Scholar Many officials opposed the closing of the enterprises because they considered it unjust to disrupt the “brigade” and “enterprise” life of the workers, suggesting that a moral economy existed not only among workers, but among management as well.

¹⁰³ SAMPO-BA (fn. 32), SED IV 2/611/66.

¹⁰⁴ BAP (fn. 75), SPK E-l 51770.

¹⁰⁵ Steiner, Andre, “Ökonomische und soziale Effekte von Mechanisierung und Automatisierung in der Metallverarbeitenden Industrie der DDR von den fünfziger bis in die siebziger Jahre,” Deutsche Studien 115 (1990), 305.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁷ Ibid.

¹⁰⁸ On this common prescription from two politically very different points of view, see Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Blanchard, Oliver JeanFroot, Kenneth A., and Sachs, Jeffrey D., eds., The Transition in Eastern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ During the initial years of the reform in the 1960s, the GDR's economic performance improved significantly. Leptin, Gert and Melzer, Manfred, Economic Reform in East German Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).Google Scholar The upswing stalled as soon as working-class resistance impeded the broadening and deepening of the reforms. Put differently, if by 1989 East Germany's economy had been performing near the level of the West, the regime might have allowed its people to travel, secure that they would return. To extend the counterfactual, if reasonable economic parity could have been achieved, how many ordinary East Germans would have joined the pampered intellectual counterelite and risked their lives and futures by demonstrating against the regime, all in the name of an abstract political freedom that would not have altered their life chances by very much? I suspect depressingly few.

¹¹⁰ Thompson (fn. 16).

¹¹¹ For a good summary and evaluation of this literature, see Cook, Linda, The Soviet Social Contract and Why It Failed: Welfare Policy and Workers' Politics from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

¹¹² Tim Mason makes a similar argument for Nazi Germany. By 1939 the working class had the Nazi regime so paralyzed that the only way to break the back of everyday resistance and thus reimpose labor discipline was to go to war. Mason, , Social Policy in the Third Reich (Providence, R.I.: Berg, 1993), 275–331.Google Scholar Extrapolating Mason's analysis to the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe (and the Soviet Union itself), one might argue that the only possible route to imperial salvation would have been a military adventure of some sort in Western Europe or China.

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