The Berlin Uprising was the occasion for Berthold Brecht’s only overt literary dissent from the Communist regime to which he had—somewhat ambivalently—committed himself: Following the June Seventeenth uprising the secretary of the Writers’ League had leaflets distributed on Stalin Allee where one could read that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could regain it only through redoubled efforts. Wouldn’t it be simpler under these circumstances for the government to dissolve the people and elect another one?
