Anatomy of a Dictatorship - Fulbrook (1995)
Book Review
Published in the decade after reunification and forty years of Soviet led dictatorship, Fulbrook’s Anatomy of a Dictatorship was released to great anticipation. Fulbrook describes the central thesis of her book to be around the idea ‘that popular discontent alone was not sufficient enough to fell the system.’ It’s clear from the outset that Fulbrook wanted to move away from the traditional historiography around the GDR, in order to concentrate on internal opposition and the paradox in a regime that fell in ‘gentle revolution’, despite being painted as a state controlled entirely through conformity, compliance and coercion. When looking at Fulbrook’s bibliography, made up almost entirely …show more content…
The majority of the sources quoted were newly released from Soviet archives. Fulbrook herself recognises that she intends her book to be a beginning point for further research, to suggest further inquiries, and to provide a ‘preliminary contribution’ to the years of study that was to come in response to the massive influx of sources that became available after the collapse of the soviet regime. Furthermore, the sources that had become available in light of the fall of the Berlin Wall must be read with political ideology and personal experience in mind, which Fulbrook recognises in the first pages of her book. Similarly, she recognises early on that it was ‘too early to attempt any sort of definitive synthesis’; she attempted only to provide interpretive hypotheses and lines of further enquiry, and at no point does she attempt to reach a conclusion that could not be supported by the somewhat contemporary nature of the subject. Fulbrook also successfully includes succinct criticism of other historians’ work on the GDR for failing to successfully ‘integrate analyses of coercion with those of consent.’ For example of Weber, who she believes failed to appropriately focus on social analysis or any ‘intrinsic relationship between the rulers’ claim nor the responses of the
Book Review
Published in the decade after reunification and forty years of Soviet led dictatorship, Fulbrook’s Anatomy of a Dictatorship was released to great anticipation. Fulbrook describes the central thesis of her book to be around the idea ‘that popular discontent alone was not sufficient enough to fell the system.’ It’s clear from the outset that Fulbrook wanted to move away from the traditional historiography around the GDR, in order to concentrate on internal opposition and the paradox in a regime that fell in ‘gentle revolution’, despite being painted as a state controlled entirely through conformity, compliance and coercion. When looking at Fulbrook’s bibliography, made up almost entirely …show more content…
The majority of the sources quoted were newly released from Soviet archives. Fulbrook herself recognises that she intends her book to be a beginning point for further research, to suggest further inquiries, and to provide a ‘preliminary contribution’ to the years of study that was to come in response to the massive influx of sources that became available after the collapse of the soviet regime. Furthermore, the sources that had become available in light of the fall of the Berlin Wall must be read with political ideology and personal experience in mind, which Fulbrook recognises in the first pages of her book. Similarly, she recognises early on that it was ‘too early to attempt any sort of definitive synthesis’; she attempted only to provide interpretive hypotheses and lines of further enquiry, and at no point does she attempt to reach a conclusion that could not be supported by the somewhat contemporary nature of the subject. Fulbrook also successfully includes succinct criticism of other historians’ work on the GDR for failing to successfully ‘integrate analyses of coercion with those of consent.’ For example of Weber, who she believes failed to appropriately focus on social analysis or any ‘intrinsic relationship between the rulers’ claim nor the responses of the