The Plans that Failed

Of all the countries in which Communist regimes emerged, the GDR was unique in that it possessed, at the time the Communists came to power, one of the main prerequisites that Marx himself had argued was necessary for socialism—an advanced industrial economy. By the 1970s, the GDR had emerged as the ‘shop window’ of the Communist world. Consumers were better off in the GDR than in any other Communist country. The level of welfare support provided to the population was so generous, in relative terms, that some historians have even referred to the GDR as a ‘welfare dictatorship’. For all these reasons, the economic history of the GDR is an important topic, not just in modern German history, but in the history of the world Communist movement. The publication of André Steiner’s book is therefore warmly to be welcomed, for it provides a competent and useful overview of the evolution of the East German economy from the Soviet occupation of 1945–9 through to the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989

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