Stasiland

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Am currently writing a uni paper on East Germany and the Stasi. Has anyone read "Stasiland" by Anna Funder? Everyone has to love a good spy yarn!

― salexander, Tuesday, 20 September 2005 07:55 (twenty years ago)

Yes, its very good. Don't know if I'd describe it as a 'spy yarn'.

― Ray (Ray), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 09:05 (twenty years ago)

All those tragicomic things they did though, like stealing people's personal scents and bottling them. One can just imagine rows upon rows of glass jars ... and the mindless banal files on ordinary people, records such as what colour socks they wear and what time they take the trash out. Of course, Foucault would say we're all being watched, we just don't know when.

― salexander, Tuesday, 20 September 2005 23:26 (twenty years ago)

In this band that I used to play in, the guy had a lyric about "remember Peter's denial/in the Stasi files." A bit of stretch, but I liked it.

― k/l (Ken L), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 23:33 (twenty years ago)

That's great. The Stasi now has extra cred for even infiltrating popular culture after its death - if it was a book that's the sign of "timeless" appeal.

― salexander, Wednesday, 21 September 2005 00:36 (twenty years ago)

It is an astonishing book which can best be described as 'women's history'- if any book features women describing the stupid things men do it's this one. The fact that Funder is from somewhere historically insignificant and cheerful and stable (Australia) and is therefore more open and shocked by such idiocies adds another layer.
But if you want to think of it as a spy yarn, go ahead.
(Also recommended, the introduction to Alexandra Richie's 'Faust's Metropolis', a huge history of Berlin. She's a right wing firebreather really, but she's spot on in pointing out how the Ossis went from Nazism to Communism without a break, and doesn't let them get away with the 'victim' defence)

― snotty moore, Thursday, 22 September 2005 23:37 (twenty years ago)

That was a joke, if but a poor one, so there's no need to get uptight about it. After reading zillions of awful morbid facts about this regime, one has to retain a sense of humour. Sometimes the most powerful discreditation is to laugh at something, which does not imply a trivialisation. Have also read some of "Faust's Metropolis" and actually thought Richie wrote very well, although am not sure of her political persuasions. I don't know if "women's history" is a particularly accurate description, as it is more a revelation of "human history"; even if the state and its institutions were patriarchal it shouldn’t be forgotten that men were also victims of the viciousness, such as Charlie Weber. Women are also capable of terrible acts; one only has to think of recent history with Thatcher. It's too simplistic to divide men and women into bad/good.

― salexander (salexander), Friday, 23 September 2005 09:00 (twenty years ago)

Much as I disliked Thatcher I'd hardly put her in the same category as the murderous old fascists who ran the GDR.
It's not at all simplistic to divide men and women into bad and good. Clearly it can be demonstrated that women are less likely to commit atrocities and start wars, though that's not to say they don't. Men are better at football though so it isn't all bad news for them.
Social history can easily reflect a masculine or feminine bias- I'm currently reading Suketu Mehta's 'Maximum City', about Bombay, and that is very definitely 'men's' history, in that he gains access to certain confidences that a woman simply would never enjoy. It's not a reference to the subject matter, but how the information is gathered and treated by the author. Did you not notice?

― snotty moore, Friday, 23 September 2005 11:01 (twenty years ago)

They were communists by the way, completely different to fascists. And it was not categorising Thatcher with the GDR, but highlighting that "women" are not innately "good". In fact, this has been one of the allegedly "natural feminine" characteristics which has been repeatedly used to subjugate women by immediately denigrating those who don't conform to this image as "whores", femme fatales or just plain "unfeminine". There is also evidence to suggest that the reason why women are assumed to be "less likely to commit atrocities and start wars" is due to the historic imbalance of power and gender stereotypes so the assumptions become self-fulfilling prophesies; ie if women were in power they would probably behave much the same as men, but because most have little access to the grey corridors of power, of course they're less likely to start wars.
Yes there obviously is gender bias in writing history and it certainly isn't a neutral discipline, but it's dangerous territory whenever people start talking in essentialist terms. I really don't think that Funder's book is "women's history" so we will have to agree to disagree.

― salexander (salexander), Saturday, 24 September 2005 02:00 (twenty years ago)

Communists aren't 'completely different' to fascists. They have a great deal in common, most obviously that in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union the interests of the party were identified with those of the nation at the expense of the individual and the independence of the judiciary was destroyed. Did you not understand that many former Nazi functionaries went on to run the GDR? I assume you're not studying history.

Women are assumed to be less likely to commit atrocities and start wars because women rarely commit atrocities and start wars. That's just a fact. I'm not saying women are 'good' and men are 'bad' because of hormonal or reproductive differences. I'm saying that their experiences and situations differ (as you obviously understand, because you say as much) and therefore so do their reactions to them. Unusually this is reflected in 'Stasiland', which is what makes it such an interesting and original work, though I may be biased due to its undeniable literary qualities.

― snotty moore, Saturday, 24 September 2005 22:50 (twenty years ago)

The Soviet Union was hardly communist.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 24 September 2005 23:12 (twenty years ago)

Re: Snotty's male vs female fascist point, good review of the [GW] 'Bush Women' book in the LRB this week - sadly not free online.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Saturday, 24 September 2005 23:43 (twenty years ago)

There are bloody well central differences between communists and fascists. That's something they teach in History 101. You are using the controversial "totalitarian" model. Yes, there are superficial similarities but for a start, they are based on opposing ideologies. Communism advocates state ownership and abolishment of private property, whereas fascists were generally supportive of big business and private enterprise. Just look at all those companies which thrived such as IG Farben, Krupp, Daimler-Benz, even IBM and Coca Cola. Communists were the first victims of the Nazis in the 1920s and 1930s and many died in the concentration camps, including Red Army POWs.
And as for Nazis running the GDR, the actual power-holders were certifiable communists, some of whom had been persecuted by the Nazis and spent time in the Soviet Union during the war. There were certainly Nazis in public positions, but not in the Party itself.

― salexander (salexander), Sunday, 25 September 2005 01:58 (twenty years ago)

five years pass...

cool she has a new book out ("historical" "novel")

― and my soul said you can't go there (schlump), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 09:47 (fourteen years ago)

Kind of unnecessarily rancourous for a short thread. I always enjoy this sort of thing though: The Soviet Union was hardly communist.

― Ismael Klata, Wednesday, 14 September 2011 10:41 (fourteen years ago)

this thread just has enough of those words you gather while skimming to make you not want to read it.

― and my soul said you can't go there (schlump), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 10:59 (fourteen years ago)

but anyway funder was on women's hour this morning (& sounded less like the ten thousand cigarette badass i'd conjured from pieces of stasiland) talking about her research. there's a guardian review that says it's v good, although raises concerns about the quantification of it as history/novel/historical novel etc.

― and my soul said you can't go there (schlump), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 11:00 (fourteen years ago)

Did either of those give any more details, like period, setting and so forth?

― Ismael Klata, Wednesday, 14 September 2011 11:01 (fourteen years ago)

http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670920396,00.html
probably worth listen-again-ing if you're interested (i was only half tuned-in), i'm just gonna pick up a library copy & see if it grabs me. the scene-setting & the confident drift of stasiland are a big part of what i remember about it, so i am assuming that if it's similarly written it'll be compelling (i think, though, that reading about history in such a recent context was part of that book's appeal; i think some of the new book remembers 1939 from the present day, so perhaps that allows for a similar take).

― and my soul said you can't go there (schlump), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 11:19 (fourteen years ago)

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