John Connelly is a professor of history and director of the Institute for East European, Eurasian, and Slavic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Captive University: The Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education, 1945–1956. He is currently working on a history of East Central Europe from 1784 to the present.

Dagmar Hovestädt has been the spokesperson for the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records (BStU) since 2011. She previously worked as a TV journalist, covering news and current affairs during the 1990s in Berlin and the 2000s in California. She is a Fulbright alumna and a Burns fellow.

In a dynamic panel discussion, Connelly will explore what made East Germany unique among Communist nations, including its notable reputation for being particularly strict in its application of Communist orthodoxy, with a huge internal police force and a leadership that resisted reform, while Hovestädt looks at the changing role of the Stasi Records Archive over time.

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This event is presented as part of Wende Conversations: A Discussion Series Supported by Susan Horowitz and Rick Feldman.