The Human Rights Dictatorship
Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany

This study exposes the forgotten history of human rights in East Germany.

Ned Richardson-Little (Author)

9781108440783, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 April 2020

286 pages
22.7 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.42 kg

'One of the hallmarks of a great book is that it exposes an area that would benefit from focused future research, laying the foundations for the creation of a complex structure of work on the subject. This book does exactly that. Though Richardson-Little tackles a large and incredibly complex topic in only 250 pages, he does so thoroughly and with a great balance between overarching concepts and definitions, and specific and vivid examples from his source base.' Samantha Clarke, H-Russia

Richardson-Little exposes the forgotten history of human rights in the German Democratic Republic, placing the history of the Cold War, Eastern European dissidents and the revolutions of 1989 in a new light. By demonstrating how even a communist dictatorship could imagine itself to be a champion of human rights, this book challenges popular narratives on the fall of the Berlin Wall and illustrates how notions of human rights evolved in the Cold War as they were re-imagined in East Germany by both dissidents and state officials. Ultimately, the fight for human rights in East Germany was part of a global battle in the post-war era over competing conceptions of what human rights meant. Nonetheless, the collapse of dictatorship in East Germany did not end this conflict, as citizens had to choose for themselves what kind of human rights would follow in its wake.

Introduction. The exploitation of man by man has been abolished!
1. Creating a human rights dictatorship, 1945–1956
2. Inventing socialist human rights, 1953–1966
3. Socialist human rights on the world stage, 1966–1978
4. The ambiguity of human rights from below, 1968–1982
5. The rise of dissent and the collapse of socialist human rights, 1980–1989
6. Revolutions won and lost, 1989–1990
Conclusion. Erasures and rediscoveries.

Subject Areas: Human rights [JPVH], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]