Can I read Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany, 1945-1990 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) on EtoBox?

Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany, 1945-1990 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) by Stokes PhD, Professor Raymond G. is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany, 1945-1990 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) about?

With a cloud of blue smoke and a high-pitched whine, Trabant cars carried many East Germans westward after the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. The car's 1950s design, obvious environmental incorrectness, and all-plastic body became a symbol of the technological limitations of East German communism. Though unfair and oversimplified, the famous image from the early 1990s of the rear of a Trabi protruding from a dumpster seemed to imply that the car, like the system which had produced it, had been consigned to the dustbin of history. But as Raymond G. Stokes points out in Constructing Socialism, eastern Germany in 1945 was one of the most highly developed, technologically sophisticated industrial areas in the world. Despite the evident failings of its technology by the late 1980s, the German Democratic Republic maintained advanced technological capability in selected areas. If the system itself was fundamentally flawed, what explains successes under the very same system? Why could the successes not be repeated in other areas? And if examples of success are so isolated, how did East Germany last as long as it did? To answer these questions, Constructing Socialism examines the s

Author

Stokes PhD, Professor Raymond G.

Publisher

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Published

2000

Language

EN

ISBN

9780801872990

Subjects

Philosophy, Technology, Engineering

Rating

4.2 / 5 (2 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14