The firm : the inside story of the Stasi /

Bruce (Univ. of Waterloo, UK) offers an incisive analysis of the grassroots operation of the East German Stasi (secret police) in 2 East German districts (of 217) located north of Berlin. Using archival documents and interviews with former Stasi officials and ordinary citizens, the author presents an illuminating description of how the Stasi monitored the lives of many citizens in small towns and penetrated groups and organizations through informants. Versatile and discriminating in its methods, the Stasi resorted to any means, from intensive surveillance and psychological pressure, including blackmail, to physical force and imprisonment to control and repress the citizenry. The Stasi did not constitute a state within a state, but pervaded all facets of East German society and acted as a mainstay of the totalitarian communist regime. It reported to the Socialist Unity Party a more realistic assessment of the actual conditions in the GDR than what the party actually believed. This brilliant, thoroughly researched, and highly readable account enables readers to better understand how the Stasi operated in everyday life and how its inescapable presence affected citizens. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. G. P. Blum emeritus, University of the Pacific

East Germany was perhaps the most stable satellite in the postwar Soviet bloc, and one of the main reasons was the scope and efficiency of its Ministerium f r Staatssicherheit, the secret police known as the Stasi. Bruce (history, Univ. of Waterloo) examines its operations after first discussing in his introduction the complex way that the Stasi and East Germany have been remembered and interpreted by both Germans and outsiders since 1990. To understand the functioning of the Stasi, Bruce used good archival holdings for two unexceptional local districts north of Berlin. He also makes use of personal accounts from Stasi employees and general citizens, from whom one finds the real flavor and detail of everyday life in the socialist dictatorship. Bruce notes that a vast network of (mostly male) informers was the Stasi's primary means of control because citizens understood, tolerated, and participated in the surreptitious surveillance. This book can be supplemented with Edward Peterson's The Limits of Secret Police Power and Anna Funder's Stasiland. VERDICT For specialists and academic libraries, this well-researched book is as much a cultural and sociological study as a political and bureaucratic history. (Index and photos not seen; maps would have been helpful.)-Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.