Germany's PDS and varieties of "post-communist" socialism

Problems of Post-Communism

Volumn 45, Issue 6, 1998, Pages 42-52

  Olsen, Jonathan ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0032209922     PISSN: 10758216     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10758216.1998.11655813     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. Patrick Moreau and Viola Neu, Die PDS Zwischen Linksextremismus und Linkspopulismus (The PDS: Between Left-Wing Populism and Left-Wing Extreminsm) (Sankt Augustin: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 1994), p. 84.
2. Under Rudolf Scharping this was also the SPD's official view of the PDS. However, the election of the left-leaning Oskar Lafontaine in 1995 as the SPD's party chair signaled a fundamental - although not uncontroversial -change. Lafontaine was one of the most vigorous supporters of the minority coalition in Saxony-Anhalt, where the SPD and the Greens ruled only with the "toleration" of the PDS. Although Lafontaine has continuously argued that the PDS needs to show its democratic credentials, he has nevertheless also refused to see the PDS as ipso facto an anti-democratic political party. In short, Lafontaine has argued that refusing to treat the PDS as a pariah can only strengthen those democratic elements within the party. To be sure, Lafontaine has also underlined the fact that the PDS (much like the Greens) remains a political competitor of the SPD.
3. Manfred Gerner, Partei ohne Zukunft? Von der SED zur PDS (Party Without a Future? From the SED to the PDS) (Munich: Thomas Tilsner, 1994); Gero Neugebauer and Richard Stöss, Die PDS. Geschichte. Organisation. Wähler. Konkurrenten (The PDS: History. Organization. Voters. Competitors) (Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1996).
4. Manfred Gerner, Partei ohne Zukunft? Von der SED zur PDS (Party Without a Future? From the SED to the PDS) (Munich: Thomas Tilsner, 1994); Gero Neugebauer and Richard Stöss, Die PDS. Geschichte. Organisation. Wähler. Konkurrenten (The PDS: History. Organization. Voters. Competitors) (Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1996).
5. Quoted in Richard Caplan and John Feffer, eds, Europe's New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
6. "Schröder muss sich entscheiden" (Schroeder Has to Decide), Der Spiegel (June 8, 1998), 40-44.
7. Joan Barth Urban and Valerii D. Solovei, Russia's Communists at the Crossroads (Boulder: Westview, 1997).
8. Ilya Prizel, "The Democratization of National Identity" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Seattle, November 20-23, 1997).
9. "Weg ins Nichts" (The Road to Nowhere), Der Spiegel (May 29, 1995), 76-77;
10. and "Der Lockruf des Westens" (The Siren Call of the West), Tageszeitung (March 2, 1995), 5.
11. Wayne C. Thompson, "The Party of Democratic Socialism in the New Germany," Communist and Post-Communist Studies 29, no. 4 (1996): 435-52.
12. Moreau and Neu, Die PDS Zwischen Linksextremismus und Linkspopulismus.
13. Jürgen Falter and Markus Klein, "Die Wähler der PDS bei der Bundestagswahl 1994" (The Voters of the PDS in the Federal Election of 1994), Beilage zur Wochenzeitung Das Parliament (December 23, 1994), 22-34.
14. Gerald Kleinfeld, "The Return of the PDS," in Germany's New Politics, ed. David P. Conradt et al. (Tempe, AZ: German Studies Review, 1995), p. 211.
15. Dieter Roth, "Some Empirical Findings on the Transition Process of German Parties," in Whose Party is This? Transitions in the German Party Political System, ed. Jackson Janes (Washington: American Institute for Contemporary Germany Studies, 1996), pp. 1-21.
16. Falter and Klein, "Die Wahler der PDS bei der Bundestagswahl 1994."
17. "Flüche uber das Volk" (A Curse Over the People), Der Spiegel (November 11, 1995), 41-46.
18. "Stolz aufs eigene Leben" (Proud of Their Own Lives), Der Spiegel (July 3, 1995), 40-52.
19. Falter and Klein, "Die Wähler der PDS bei der Bundestagswahl 1994." For a more extensive discussion, see Markus Klein, "Das Wählerpotential der PDS" (The Voter Potential of the PDS), Zeitschrift zur politischen Bildung 4 (1996): 42-48.
20. Falter and Klein, "Die Wähler der PDS bei der Bundestagswahl 1994." For a more extensive discussion, see Markus Klein, "Das Wählerpotential der PDS" (The Voter Potential of the PDS), Zeitschrift zur politischen Bildung 4 (1996): 42-48.
21. Klein, "Das Wähler potential."
22. Falter and Klein, "Die Wähler der PDS bei der Bundestagswahl 1994."
23. "Schröder muss sich entscheiden."
24. Ibid.
25. "Wir lieben die Heimat" (We Love Our Homeland), Der Spiegel (July 3, 1995), 54-64.
26. "Alles so schön bunt hier" (Everything's So Colorful Here), Die Zeit (December 8, 1995), 2.
27. Der Spiegel, no. 33 (August 15, 1994), 111.
28. "Schnell ans Meer" (Fast to the Water), Der Spiegel (November 10, 1995), 50.
29. "Da Steht alles auf Treibsand" (Over There Everything Stands on Quicksand), Der Spiegel (February 23, 1998), 46-49.
30. Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, Programm der Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus: 1990 (Berlin, 1990).
31. Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, Programm der Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus: 1993 (Berlin, 1993).
32. The appeal to the wounded pride of the eastern Germans by the PDS was vividly illustrated by a public declaration by the party in November 1996 entitled "Discrimination and Persecution in the Federal Republic of Germany of former citizens of the German Democratic Republic." This document, signed by leading figures of the PDS, argued that eastern Germans were being "judicially persecuted" simply because "they had enjoyed their constitutional rights in and loyally fulfilled their constitutional duties to the GDR." According to the declaration, trials of former functionaries of the GDR were "political trials" illustrating an "insatiable quest for persecution" by western Germans. The document concluded with a brazenly populist statement that "there exist two sets of rights in Germany: one for the citizens of the old FRG and another for citizens of the second state that has joined it." PDS, Declaration on Discrimination and Persecution in the Federal Republic of Germany of former citizens of the German Democratic Republic (English translation), 1996.
33. "Das PDS-Problem heisst Identität" (The Problem of the PDS -Identity), Tageszeitung (January 31, 1995), 4.
34. "See No Evil," Economist (November 23, 1996): 55-56.
35. "Angela Marquardt ist in der falschen Partei" (Angela Marquardt Is in the Wrong Party), Tageszeitung (February 2, 1995), 3.
36. "Stalinismus entzweit die Partei" (Stalinism Divides the Party), Tageszeitung (January 30, 1995), 1.
37. See Kleinfeld, "The Return of the PDS."
38. "Das PDS-Problem heisst Identität," and PDS Declaration on Discrimination.
39. Frankfurter Rundschau (January 29, 1996), 2.
40. Heinrich Bortfeldt, "Die PDS: Auf dem Wege an die Macht?" (The PDS: On the Road to Power), German Studies Review 30 (1997): 279-92.