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Article: The Stasi: Myth and Reality.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Contemporary Review
- Article date:
- May 1, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Contemporary Review Company Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Stasi: Myth and Reality. Mike Dennis. Longman. [pounds sterling]19.99. xviii + 269 pages. ISBN 0-582-41422-9. The Stasi, the East German secret service, for which about one in every fifty East German adults worked as an officer or an informer in the 1980s, gave the Communist dictatorship a stability envied in other Soviet colonies. No part of East German society was free of its influence and control. It was a very effective agent of a police state, far better than the Gestapo. Yet the Stasi was also institutionally weak because it was such an 'overbloated bureaucracy' and because it was linked to the Communist Party and through that link to the 'fundamental legitimacy ...