Varieties of Communist Civil Society: Comparing Forms of Engagement in the GDR and the Polish People’s Republic

In recent years, comparative research on authoritarianism has focused primarily on political institutions, leadership styles and instruments of repression. In doing so, the tension between state and society, especially under communist regimes, has been neglected. This paper addresses this gap and takes social engagement in the context of state socialism in the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland as the starting point for a systematic analysis, asking to what extent different variants of ‘communist civil society’ emerged here – and with what consequences for the stability of the two communist states. At first glance, both regimes show great structural similarities: a political order dominated by the Communist Party, state-controlled mass organisations and the rejection of autonomous social organisations. Nevertheless, the GDR and Poland differed considerably in the practice of social participation. While the GDR was characterised by a high degree of institutional control, surveillance and ideological discipline, the People's Republic of Poland – despite its authoritarian basic structure – opened up selective opportunities for social self-organisation. This is particularly evident in relation to church, cultural and trade union groups. In Poland, actors such as the Catholic Church, intellectual circles or the Solidarność trade union were able to establish independent social spaces, at least temporarily, whereas comparable movements in the GDR were more strongly integrated into the institutional structure or suppressed – with the obvious exception of the state of war in Poland. The paper distinguishes between three types of social engagement under socialist rule: (1) state-initiated and controlled organisations or so-called state-mobilised movements (e.g. FDJ, FDGB, ZMW, ZHP), (2) oppositional or ‘genuine’ civil society groups (e.g. Solidarność, church-based groups), and (3) semi-state or hybrid forms of participation that oscillated between loyalty and obstinacy. The central question is how informal practices, cultural resources and historical contexts contributed to the development of such widely varying degrees of social autonomy. Theoretically, the article draws on concepts of informal politics, obstinacy (Eigensinn) and fragmented society. It understands civil society not as an exclusively independent construct or even an oppositional counter-model to state power, but as a spectrum of practices that enable social self-organisation even within authoritarian systems, albeit under different conditions and with an ambivalent function. The paper has two objectives: First, it aims to contribute to the typology of communist regimes by showing that variations in social organisation can be key indicators of different variants of authoritarian rule. Second, it makes an empirical contribution to a differentiated view of scope for action and social capital in real socialism. The comparison between the GDR and Poland illustrates how, despite similar institutional starting conditions, different social dynamics could emerge – a finding that is also relevant for the analysis of contemporary authoritarian regimes.