Soviet Eastern Europe (1945 - 1989)

List of Abbreviations Preface Introduction Prelude in Albania The Kostov Trial in Bulgaria The Field Connection The Road to the Rajk Trial Preparations for the Model Trial The Rajik Trial The Unleashed Terror in Prague The Slansky Trial The Reinterpreted Show Trials in Romania The Interrupted Show Trials in East Germany The Polish Way of Show Trials Consequences and Conclusions Notes Selected Bibliography Index About the Author

This timely study analyzes the inner workings of the political and military control system used by the USSR and former communist regimes in Eastern Europe to rule the region until recent times. It then shows how these controls collapsed and were swept away by the "revolutions" in 1989. This up-to-date work describes the end of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and of Soviet power in the region, and discusses how the East European states may "depoliticize" their armed forces and "renationalize" their foreign security policies in the future.

Sperlich examines the ideological foundations of the socialist regime of the former German Democratic Republic. He provides a detailed analysis of the nature of the GDR's legitimating ideology and of the reasons why the ideology ultimately failed to legitimate the regime.

Using new archival sources--including previously secret documents of the East German secret police and Communist Party--M. E. Sarotte goes behind the scenes of Cold War Germany as East and West tried negotiation instead of confrontation to settle their differences. Sarotte explores the motives of the German Democratic Replubic and its Soviet backers in responding to both the detente initiatives, or Ostpolitik, of West Germany and the foreign policy of the United States under President Nixon.