ABSTRACT
In the epoch that lay between the extraordinary years of 1953 and 1989 no large-scale protests took place in the GDR. The savage repression of the uprising, not least through the prison terms meted out to thousands, together with the subsequent beefing-up of the security state unquestionably heightened the risks of mass collective action, demoralising potential participants. The effect is well illustrated by the words of one worker in the early 1960s: ‘Just stop talking about striking,’ he moaned to colleagues, ‘everyone who strikes gets locked up. I was also locked up on 17/6/1953’.1
