Bowling for Communism

Bowling for Communism illuminates how civic life functioned in Leipzig, East Germany's second-largest city, on the eve of the 1989 revolution by exploring acts of "urban ingenuity" amid catastrophic urban decay. Andrew Demshuk profiles the creative activism of local communist officials who, with the help of scores of volunteers, constructed a palatial bowling alley without Berlin's knowledge or approval. In a city mired in disrepair, civic pride overcame resentment against a regime loathed for corruption, Stasi spies, and the Berlin Wall.

Reconstructing such episodes through interviews and obscure archival materials, Demshuk shows how the public sphere functioned in Leipzig before the fall of communism. Hardly detached or inept, local officials worked around centralized failings to build a more humane city. And hardly disengaged, residents turned to black-market construction to patch up their surroundings.

Because such "urban ingenuity" was premised on weakness in the centralized regime, the dystopian cityscape evolved from being merely a quotidian grievance to the backdrop for revolution. If, by their actions, officials were demonstrating that the regime was irrelevant, and if, in their own experiences, locals only attained basic repairs outside official channels, why should anyone have mourned the system when it was overthrown?

Andrew Demshuk is Associate Professor of History at American University. He is author of Demolition on Karl Marx Square and The Lost German East.

Andrew Demshuk offer[s] stimulating analyses based on empirically rich case studies that will be of interest to scholars of East–West German histories and the transformation of rural and urban spaces alike.

Demshuk's argument is a powerful reminder that politics is only a small part of the wider context that shapes how people live.

Overall, this is a fascinating multifaceted book which explores an often overlooked aspect of urban informality in late Communism.

Thanks to its nuanced analysis, multi-dimensional outlook and highly original analystical framework developed throughout the monograph, Bowling for Communism will be of interest not only to specialists in German history but to a wide array of researchers who wish to enrich their understanding of social and political change in socialist societies.

Assembled from an impressive wealth of archival and oral sources, Bowling for Communism demonstrates that there remain many more interpretive and conceptual angles from which to tackle some of the big questions about state and society relationships in the late GDR. [T]his is a rich and innovative study that will provide a number of helpful points of departure for future studies of the urban history of Late Socialism.

Bowling for Communism approaches the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in a way that few other scholarly works do. While Demshuk's analysis does much to bring into question the totalitarian model when applied to the GDR, it also effectively describes how poorly run East Germany actually was.

Arnold Bartetzky, University of Leipzig, critic for the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung:

Bowling for Communism is an absorbing, even exciting, read – from the first to the last page.

Jennifer V. Evans, Carleton University, author of Life Among the Ruins:

Demshuk makes a convincing case for the importance of local actors and local issues, beyond Berlin, showing how politicized city planning was within the faltering political and economic situation in the GDR.