Volume 38, Number 9 · May 16, 1991
The Good Old Days
By Robert Darnton
When the East German regime collapsed last winter, it did not come crashing down with a great bang. Power simply seeped out of the state apparatus, leaving the machinery intact but without enough energy to set its gears in motion. This situation lasted seven months—from December 3, 1989, when the Politburo and the Central Committee of the Communist party resigned, to July 1, 1990, when the currency and economic union went into effect and the German Democratic Republic began to be absorbed into West Germany.
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