Seeking Recommendation: The Role of Civil Servants in Authoritarian States

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Seeking Recommendation: The Role of Civil Servants in Authoritarian States

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1fannyprice
marraskuu 12, 2016, 8:37 am

Hopefully the subject is clear enough, but I'm looking for books that discuss the role that ordinary government employees played in enabling or resisting authoritarian or otherwise nefarious regimes. I'm sure Nazi Germany is rich with examples, probably Stalin's Soviet Union, but welcome wider perspectives.

2LolaWalser
marraskuu 12, 2016, 9:15 am

>1 fannyprice:

Regarding Russians, I immediately thought of this: Russian Bureaucracy and the State: Officialdom From Alexander III to Vladimir Putin. I had it in my hands but decided it was too expert too costly for my dilettante needs.

eromsted might have more advice.

3LolaWalser
marraskuu 12, 2016, 9:25 am

P.S. And of course Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem comes to mind as a landmark on that particular theme.

4davidgn
Muokkaaja: marraskuu 12, 2016, 9:35 am

Modernity and the Holocaust is essential reading. You should read it yesterday.
More tangentially relevant, you might try Anna Funder's review of The Lives of Others (as well as her book Stasiland)

5proximity1
marraskuu 12, 2016, 10:00 am


NAZI Germany:

Victor Klemperer's "tagebuchs." and his Lingua Tertii Imperii "Eines Notizbuchs" ...

http://www.librarything.com/work/223346
http://www.librarything.com/work/2488979
http://www.librarything.com/work/9892257

Franz Neumnann* :

http://www.librarything.com/work/92376

Robert Gellately* :

http://www.librarything.com/work/20580

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* : I haven't read these but recommend them based on what I've read about them by others.

6DinadansFriend
marraskuu 13, 2016, 7:20 pm

There has not to my knowledge been a large instance of Civil Servants effectively carrying out serious resistance to an authoritarian regime. They are far too vulnerable to retaliation. Later, after the collapse of these regimes they may provide some shining examples, but this is not the norm for the civil serpents. Open to having my mind changed by evidence of course....