Corruption in one’s own country: official responses to the abuse of office in Poland and East Germany, 1980-1990

This dissertation examines how East-Central European elites and institutions dealt with cases of office abuse for personal gain. Focusing on extraordinary periods in Poland (from ‘Solidarity’ to Martial Law in 1980/1981) and in East Germany (from the collapse of the Berlin Wall to the collapse of the state in 1989/1990) it analyses the multilayered responses to cases of embezzlement of state resources for personal gain and the abuse of official material privileges involving the political class. This book highlights the socialist culture of perceiving and dealing with corruption. It illuminates how this culture, during revolutionary events of the 1980s, facilitated the outbreak of scandals, an underappreciated factor in the collapse of communist regimes in East-Central Europe.