{"product_id":"uncivil-society-1989-and-the-implosion-of-the-communist-establishment-modern-library-chronicles","title":"Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment (Modern Library Chronicles)","description":"Twenty years ago  the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern historys most miraculous occurrences  communism implodedand not with a bang  but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs  Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross  drawing upon two decades of reflection  revisit this crash. In a crisp  concise  unsentimental narrative  they employ three case studiesEast Germany  Romania  and Polandto illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender  or to be swept away in political bank runs. This is less a story of dissidents  so-called civil society  than of the bankruptcy of a ruling classcommunisms establishment  or uncivil society. The Communists borrowed from the West like drunken sailors to buy mass consumer goods  then were unable to pay back the hard-currency debts and so borrowed even more. In Eastern Europe  communism came to resemble a Ponzi scheme  one whose implosion carries enduring lessons. From East Germanys pseudotechnocracy to Romanias megalomaniacal dystopia  from Communist Polands cult of Mary to the Kremlins surprise restraint  Kotkin and Gross pull back the curtain on the fraud and decadence that cashiered the would-be alternative to the market and democracy  an outcome that opened up to a deeper global integration that has proved destabilizing.","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44901348376629,"sku":"ByrdShop_0679642765","price":90.55,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/ByrdShop_0679642765.jpg?v=1767696423","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/uncivil-society-1989-and-the-implosion-of-the-communist-establishment-modern-library-chronicles","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}