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Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890-1990. From Popular Protests to Socialist State. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997, xviii + 445 pp. 52.50 h/b, 19.95 p/b. WEITZ HAS SET HIMSELF AN ENORMOUS TASK attempting to document and analyse German communism. One can of course question whether the different groups, movements and parties included in his survey and culminating in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) were all part and parcel of the same historical phenomenon. The founding of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1918 would seem to have been a more satisfying date for the founding of `German Communism' than 1890. Brief reference could have been made to the earlier divisions and splits within the SPD, especially those caused by the 1914-18 war.
Central to Weitz's study is the view that `communists did not operate in conditions of their own choosing ... the character of mass parties and movements is shaped not only by their ideologies and the social background of the members ... but also by the political spaces within which they operate' (p. 6). Is this not always so? However, he appears to underestimate the degree to which the KPD before 1933 took over the methods and ideology of Stalin. This prevented creative, flexible thinking which could have given the party a mixture of reformism and militancy more appropriate to German conditions. Instead, it pursued a policy divorced from German reality. So many of the early leaders came to...