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Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890-1990. From Popular Protests to Socialist State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 445 pp., US$24.95, ISBN 0 691 02682 3. With the appearance of Eric Weitz's book we now have a much-needed comprehensive historical survey and analysis of German communism from its ideological origins in the 1890s through its demise in 1990.
Weitz explicitly positions his history in opposition to the long-dominant paradigm in the historiography of European communism which interprets the nature and policies of the various national parties in terms of Stalin's personal domination of international communism. Weitz argues persuasively that this 'Stalinisation thesis' is historically inaccurate and insists that German communism can only be adequately understood within the context of German historical experience. While Soviet influence is certainly part of the story, the origins of German communism are to be found in Germany, not in Moscow. Forged in the turbulent crucible of the Weimar Republic, the German Communist Party, the KPD, developed a...