Abstract
The Ministry for State Security (the ‘Stasi') was an inseparable and characteristic feature of the ruling apparatus in the GDR. It is impossible to understand what co‐operation with the Stasi meant without a full understanding of the nature of the state in the GDR, and the attitude of the population towards it. The GDR was accorded at least a partial legitimacy; people made their peace with the state. The Stasi was the starkest but certainly not the only expression of the belief that the state could act as it pleased, if it believed that its actions were in the interests of progress. The issue of the Stasi has affected political life in the east of Germany in different ways through all the phases of change since 1989, and has led to unjustified conflations between an individual's attitute to the Stasi and his or her attitude to the GDR state.

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