The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi
Taken from this week’s edition of PJM Political, Ed Driscoll interviews Gary Bruce, the author of the new book from Oxford University Press, The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi. In this 19-minute long interview, Bruce, an associate professor of history at University of Waterloo in Ontario explains the inner workings of the secret police of the former East Germany in the 60th anniversary year of their founding. He’ll discuss researching in their labyrinthian Kafka-esque archives, their complex web of informants, and the uneasy coexistence their surviving former members have with the now unified Germany. Click below to listen:
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May I recommend a book “Enemies of the People” by Kati Martin. Kati went back a few years ago to review the secrete police files kept on her parents during the Communist regime in Hungry. A stone would weep.
Some excerpts I recall…
-They allowed her only living grandparents to migrate out of the country… unheard of but it was done so that her parents would realize that if they were arrested their two girls would have no family to go to but would be raised by the state!
-Every friend and every enemy her father had informed on him to the police, every one!
-At one point when her parents were arrested for some months they were allowed one half hour to see each other and talk. Her father was beat down and her mother whispered the only hope she knew, “The Americans will save us.”
I wept, I did; we were the only hope tens of millions of people had for so many decades and are still today. And now we have a president afraid to name the enemy.
There was a book once, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” It could be written anew with the title, “The Enemies of Freedom with a Thousand Faces.” They are all vulgarly the same with the same methods and the same goals no matter their flag.
Thank you, Ed Driscoll, for finding and interviewing (Dr.?) Gary Bruce about this book. It was a fascinating interview. I’m quite interested in the question of how East Germany got past its communism and what the aftermath has been. I got some valuable new information on that question from the interview and am eager to read the book now that I know about it.
I was a little disappointed however to find some important information not revealed in this interview but that, I suppose, is inevitable given the time constraints inherent in most interviews.
A fact that I would have liked Bruce to have mentioned explicitly was that, once people were allowed to see their Stasi files after the East German regime evaporated in 1989, it quickly became apparent that by far the most information that was recorded against them originated not from direct surveillance by Stasi agents but by their own family members. In other words, people under surveillance by the Stasi were mostly being monitored by their own family members. Those family members had, in many cases, been coerced by the Stasi to watch the target of the surveillance and then report to the Stasi on what the individual had done. (I don’t doubt that some people came forward willingly because they genuinely supported the communist goals of the regime.)
This is rather surprising to Westerners. We tend to assume that surveillance in dictatorial states is done directly by agents of the dictatorship, either via their own actual eyes and ears, or via video or audio surveillance. But, in fact, most of that surveillance was done by family members of the target. As a result, the targets did not have freedom even within their own homes. In fact, the biggest threat to their freedom was that their own spouse or children or in-laws were spying on them and reporting to the Stasi.
I am very curious to know what percentage of East Germans actually realized or suspected that their own family members were reporting their activities to the Stasi and governed themselves accordingly. I have not seen any numbers on this. However, I have heard that there were a great many divorces in the former East Germany once people had seen their Stasi files. This is not surprising, of course. Who among us could remain happily married to someone who had informed on our thoughts and activities to the secret police? But I wonder how many of them actually suspected that this was happening before they saw their files and how many were utterly astonished when this came to light?
Shifting now to a different country that was also communist, I’d like to share the essence of a conversation I had with a co-worker in 2002. He was originally from the People’s Republic of China and was born in the early 1960s. Out of sheer curiousity, I once asked him about life there while Chairman Mao was in power. I asked him what would have happened if he had ever said something as mild as “Mao is a jerk” (NOT a murderous dictator, just a jerk!) at the dinner table when there was no one but his immediate family (parents and five brothers) present. His answer was extremely enlightening. First of all, he said, no one would ever have said such a thing [I've always assumed that he meant no one would DARE to, no matter how manifestly obvious it was but I suppose it's possible that they had all been duped to believe that Mao was godlike in his brilliance and had no shred of evil or even incompetence in him]. Second, he said that if he had dared say such a thing, one of his brothers would surely have reported him to the authorities. Third, he said that if one of his own brothers had said such a thing, he would have reported the brother himself.
We in the West are, for the most part, completely unaware of just how closely citizens of Communist countries are controlled and monitored, not just by their security forces but also by their own families and neighbors.
That is why I value articles like this one. Thanks again, Mr. Driscoll!
Henry Reardon:
Don’t you think it surprising that “we in the West are, for the most part, unaware of just how closely citizens of Communist countries are controlled and monitored”?
We in the West have, don’t we?, a “free press”, able to propagate any information interesting or educational to its population. A “free press”, unaccountable to persons injured by their “disclosures”. This is what this “free press” calls valid criticism, educational, disinterested.
Yet these information media that broadcast to the general public, in contrast to those for specialised,interested citizens, provided very little information of the STASI and their clones, KNOWN for many years to others so one assumes known to the agents, reporters, editors etc of the Western Free Press. But it seems they had other interests than to report this news.
That interest being to assist, assure, guarantee ? the ascent to power in the “lands of the free”, of persons of political persuasion acceptable to these personnel in the “free press”. Many of whom with their allies and colleagues in universities and legal institutions, personally and publicly admired and taught the governing ethos, principles and actions in which STASI and similar agencies were integral part. AND to busily “report” on any information they could get, sources always secret by Right of the “free press”, about the CIA, and the “secret police” agencies in USA and Great Britain,etc.
So successful in their imbalanced “news” and comment that even the STASI, secret police personnel, now base the rationale for their behaviours on equivalence with security measures undertaken AFTER assault on nations in the West.
The West has its own version, initiated and established by persons in politica, universities, law, society in which citizens were prudent to be very cautious what they said to others, even close friends.
Measures which, if not the intent — had the effect of pitting citizen against citizen: 1. blacks and whites against one another, 2 women and men against one another, 3.atheist and non-Christian against Christians, 4. the married and single against one another 5. university educated against those not so privileged, 6. “working” women against
housewives and mothers, 7. the police and law abiding citizens against one another, 8.those with and those without children against one another, 9.AND not least all sophisticates against patriotism and military personnel, 10 add your own experience of citizen pitted against citizen by the agents of public administration
Those who institutionalised these measures called them “political correctness” in lieu of the correct word CENSORSHIP of the entire population.
We, at least in the USA, have also as the pride of the US Republic a Congress, Court and Executive for the “representation” of the People of the nation. With restraints in law, the Constitution, as to how they are permitted, all and each to administer that representation. AND EACH AND ALL of these “representative” swear ON OATH when accepting representation to UPHOLD AND DEFEND that LAW / the CONSTITUION OF THE USA. So — HOW DID IT — HOW COULD these limits to RIGHTS held by the American population BY RIGHT, not by sufferance of these “representatives of the People” have occurred, AND HOW COULD THEY HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED / “obeyed” by FREE Americans?