In this fascinating book, Thomas Fleischman seeks to retell the history of the Communist-ruled German Democratic Republic (GDR) and its ultimate demise in 1989–1990 from the vantage point of pigs and pig-farming. This apparently outlandish starting point might not seem promising on the face of it. But Fleischman's book is for the most part convincing, and its transnational perspective, which involves a critique not only of the “failed” socialist experiment of the Soviet bloc but also of the victorious democratic capitalist world during the Cold War, is particularly valuable and insightful.
The part of pre-1945 Germany that became the GDR in 1949 was poor in natural resources aside from low-quality brown coal and uranium ore. For obvious reasons, however, the uranium was soon controlled by a Soviet company and allotted to the Soviet nuclear weapons program. East Germany also had a limited industrial base, which was constrained still further in...