Department I: Communism and Society

 
Heads of Department: Dr. Juliane Fürst, Dr. Jens Gieseke

In Department I, research is focused on the social practices of governance in the GDR and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and especially on the transformation processes in the last third of the 20th century including and extending beyond the turning point of 1989–91.

A key emphasis is placed on linking various national research cultures into a transnational understanding of history. Areas of specialization are the history of violence in Eastern Europe and the transformation of burgeoning civil-society movements and social structures in late and post-communism.

Forschung

1989/90 is often considered a key caesura of the twentieth century. By looking at the long-term developments surrounding this historic event from the mid-1970s to the beginning of the new millennium, this project analyses the social changes that paved the way for and shaped all three stages: the...

Forschung

Cossack military violence - Moscow and Chicago - Union crisis policy - Russian New Social Media - Heritage discourses

Forschung

Monday Demonstration in Leipzig on October 23, 1989. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1989-1023-022 / Friedrich Gahlbeck / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1989-1023-022, Leipzig, Montagsdemonstration, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Ministry of State Security Foreign Aid – East German Popular Opinion – Social History of the SED Dictatorship –  Impact of the Construction of the Berlin Wall - Transformation of the GDR state party - Political espionage and intelligence production

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The communist Paul Merker - Graduate School: History of Left-Wing Politics in Germany

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Europast - Perestroika from Below - Hippies in the Soviet Union - Gewalt in der Sowjetarmee - KGB in the Last Decade of the Soviet Union - Russia from Brezhnew to Putin - Interdisciplinary Research Network Legacies of Communism? (Project-Website:...

Forschung