The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949

Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University PRess, 1995. Presumed first edition/first printing. Hardcover. Very good in good dust jacket. DJ has tear at front flap. Advance copy slip laid in.. vv, [3], 586, [4] p. Illustrations. Sources. Notes. Index. In 1945, when the Red Army marched in, eastern Germany was not "occupied" but "liberated". This, until the recent collapse of the Soviet Bloc, is what passed for history in the German Democratic Republic. Making use of newly opened archives in Russia and Germany, Norman Naimark reveals what happened during the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany from 1945 through 1949. His book offers a comprehensive look at Soviet policies in the occupied zone and their pratical consequences for Germans and Russians alike-and, ultimately, for postwar Europe. Naimark captures the mood and the daily reality of the occupation, the chaos and contradictions of a period marked by rape and repression, the plundering of factories, the exploitation of German science, and the rise of the East German police state. The book offers a clear view of how the Russians regarded the postwar settlement and the German question, how they made policy on issues from reparations to technology transfer to the acquisition of uranium, how they justified their goals, how they met them or failed, and how they changed eastern Germany in the process. "The Russians in Germany" also examines the politics of culture as Naimark explores the ways in which Soviet officers used film, theatre and education to foster the Bolshevization of the zone.