“人民的体育”:1963-1985年德意志民主共和国的小偷小摸

IF 0.2 Q2 HISTORY
R. Millington
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引用次数: 0

摘要

弗里德里希·恩格斯声称共产主义将消灭犯罪。随着“剥削性”资本主义社会条件的消除,人们犯罪将不再有任何物质或心理上的原因。然而,冷战后期东方集团的现实情况却大不相同。小偷小摸是一个特别严重的问题。市民们从超市里偷酒,从建筑工地偷砖,从同事的储物柜里偷钱,这种现象呈流行病的规模。本文采用档案和口述历史证据来考察德意志民主共和国(gdr)的小偷小盗。学者们普遍将其归因于“稀缺条件下的经济”,也就是说,市民偷窃了供应短缺或不公开出售的物品。然而,本文认为,小偷小摸是否构成对社会主义统治的挑战,因为这种犯罪违反了国家意识形态。它发现有证据表明,反抗国家的愿望确实促使一些公民偷窃,但大多数盗窃行为是由更平淡无奇的原因引起的。然而,分析确实表明,公民嘲笑和摒弃了人民财产的概念,从而拒绝了该政权政治计划的核心原则。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
The ‘People’s Sport’: Petty Theft in the German Democratic Republic, 1963–1985
Friedrich Engels claimed that communism would eliminate criminality. With “exploitative” capitalist societal conditions removed, there would no longer be any material or psychological reasons for people to commit crime. The reality in the Eastern Bloc in the late Cold War was, however, very different. Petty theft was a particular problem area. Citizens filched alcohol from supermarkets, bricks from construction sites, and money from colleagues’ lockers on an epidemic scale. This article employs archival and oral history evidence to examine petty theft in the German Democratic Republic (gdr). Scholars have generally attributed its occurrence to “economy of scarcity conditions,” that is, citizens stole items that were in short supply or not on general sale. This article, however, considers whether petty theft constituted a challenge to socialist rule since this crime contravened state ideology. It finds evidence that a desire to defy the state did motivate some citizens to steal, but that the majority of thefts were inspired by more prosaic reasons. The analysis does show, however, that citizens mocked and dismissed the concept of People’s Property, thereby rejecting a central tenet of the regime’s political project.
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CiteScore
0.40
自引率
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发文量
23
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