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May 2023
57m 31s

Living Behind the Iron Curtain

David Runciman
About this episode

This week David talks to Katja Hoyer and Lea Ypi about life under communism. East Germany was the most successful of the communist states of Eastern Europe, measured by economic prosperity and sporting success. Did the GDR ever really offer a model of how Soviet-style communism could give people what they wanted, including social mobility and consumerism? Why did it fall apart in the end? And how did the GDR experiment look from inside Albania, where Lea grew up? A conversation about freedom, dissent, paranoia and blue jeans.

Katja Hoyer’s latest book is Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990.

Lea Ypi’s prize-winning Free: Coming of Age at the End of History is available in paperback now.

To hear more about Rosa Luxemburg, this is from Season 2 of History of Ideas.


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