Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment

(Modern Library Chronicles) Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kotkin and Gross revisit the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Employing three case studies — East Germany, Romania, and Poland — this book aims to show what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be swept away in political bank runs. It is ultimately the story of the huge failures of political and economic elites, of the fraud and decadence that cashiered the would-be alternative to the market and democracy, argue the authors. Kotkin is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University, with a joint appointment as professor of international affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School. Jan T. Gross is the Norman B. Tomlinson ’16 and ’48 Professor of War and Society at Princeton University.