[Davide]

Quote:

it depresses me so much to see how everyone swallows their lies.

You have our solidarity, comrade. In Italy too, they are organizing concerts to celebrate. Meanwhile, they are rehabiliting the fascist volunteers of the Italian Social Republic, people having sworn loyalty to fascism sit in the government, Berlusconi uses the Roman salute when dealing with the most far rights movement...

[Szabo]

In Italy? I never knew outside of Germany people cared so much.

[Davide]

Yes, dear comrade, they care... They care about anything they may use to celebrate capitalist egemony and to demonize the opposition to the system. They are going to held concerts, firework shows and feast over the ashes of workers' states, and rights.
Rome's mayor Alemanno, as well as French president Sarkozy, was even present at the wall's fall: an ex-squad member having participated to the reconstituted fascisct party Ordine Nuovo, having granted honourary Roman citizenship to the Dalai Lama, wearing a Celtic cross as a necklace, the fascist model, not the traditional Celtic one you are surely accustomed to see in your county, cothman Kernewek whek...

[Moris]

http://exiledonline.com/how-the-west-hi ... evolution/

[Acteon]

I definetly think its justified, specially after the facts CheLives said wich i didnt knew, fragging capitalist dogs, why cant they let a country live in peace bastards

This post has not the required quality. Please try to keep your emotions in check in the future. thanks. mod.

[Commie77]

Ya sources would be nice. I could use it for my project.

[Merlov]

Wrong in my view. Security precautions around Berlin would have been better, in my view.

[Red_Bull]

Jumping into the conversation late but my opinion on the Berlin Wall is this. Perhaps the USSR should have been more concerned with "why" people were fleeing in droves as opposed to "how"

[Mabool]

Everybody knew why people were fleeing. What difference does it make?

[Red_Bull]

Mabool wrote:

Everybody knew why people were fleeing. What difference does it make?

I simply mean to say that the construction of the wall gave the impression they were more concerned with containment than rectifying the very reasons people were fleeing in the first place. I'm sure there were economical realities that played a role in this decision, but perception is reality, and the perception was the USSR was a bully suffocating freedoms.

[OP-Bagration]

You can't give a free education to your citizens and let them fly away to make money abroad. This is a major argument. Anyway, they should have built a trench. Can you imagine the Germans filling the gap with shovels in 1989 ?

[Loz]

Yugoslavia opened it's borders,and as much as 6-7 000 00 workers((called gastarbeiters) went to Germany to work mostly in construction business.
That's how SFRY lowered the unemployment,and secured a steady flow of hard currency(money these workers sent home to their families was taxed).
It's interesting that most of these emigrants were low-qualified workers,while those with college degree usually stayed home to work in ever-going Yugoslav industry.

[soviet78]

Loz wrote:

That's how SFRY lowered the unemployment,and secured a steady flow of hard currency(money these workers sent home to their families was taxed).

The SFRY's unique variant of socialism probably had something to do with the need for a valve like that. In the USSR and the rest of the Eastern Bloc unemployment was kept low by the constant expansion of production, without enough improvement in individual worker productivity. No industry ever had enough workers, and this resulted in factory directors competing for good workers through various incentives.

Loz wrote:

It's interesting that most of these emigrants were low-qualified workers,while those with college degree usually stayed home to work in ever-going Yugoslav industry.

I'm certain that open borders in the case of other Eastern Bloc countries (which were the ideological/geopolitical enemies of the West, unlike Yugoslavia) would have resulted in programs set up by Western governments designed to encourage and support highly skilled workers to immigrate. We can still witness this on a limited scale in the case of Cuba and the United States, with organizations in the latter providing jobs, financial support, etc. to new immigrants.

[OP-Bagration]

But DDR was part of Germany, it was easier for a east-German to go west and find a job. The situation was very different and the brain drain was a fact. According to the website mur-de-berlin.fr, it cost 22.5 billion DM. According to a WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS' study :
Yuri Andropov, head of the Central Committee department on relations with communist and workers' parties of socialist countries, spoke of the need to "use the opportunity of Ulbricht's stay in the Soviet Union" to talk to him about the increasing numbers of East German intelligentsia fleeing the country.

Quote:

I'm certain that open borders in the case of other Eastern Bloc countries (which were the ideological/geopolitical enemies of the West, unlike Yugoslavia) would have resulted in programs set up by Western governments designed to encourage and support highly skilled workers to immigrate. We can still witness this on a limited scale in the case of Cuba and the United States, with organizations in the latter providing jobs, financial support, etc. to new immigrants.

+1

[Mabool]

Quote:

I'm certain that open borders in the case of other Eastern Bloc countries (which were the ideological/geopolitical enemies of the West, unlike Yugoslavia) would have resulted in programs set up by Western governments designed to encourage and support highly skilled workers to immigrate. We can still witness this on a limited scale in the case of Cuba and the United States, with organizations in the latter providing jobs, financial support, etc. to new immigrants.

Exactly. It is often overlooked that it just isn't as simple as "people fled the tyrannical communist dictatorship to get FREEDOM". Right from the very beginning of German separation, the West incessantly and systematically encouraged immigration, even offering money to immigrants from the East. It is no exaggeration to say that the GDR was confronted with a neighbor that basically tried to steal its entire population, not to mention that it never gave up its claims on the GDR's territory. In light of this, the wall really was justified as measure of self-defence.

[robheus]

Quote:

I think the reason the wall was viewed negatively is because the East Berliners may have felt they were being trapped in the city.

Huh? The border was between east germany and west germany, and thus surrounded all of West berlin. So it did not trap east berlin in the city.

[Order227]

West Berliners were the ones "trapped in the city". West Berlin was an enclave within DDR territory. That's why the Berlin Blockade would have forced them out, had the West not mounted the famous airlift.

[Tails]

Order227 wrote:

West Berliners were the ones "trapped in the city". West Berlin was an enclave within DDR territory. That's why the Berlin Blockade would have forced them out, had the West not mounted the famous airlift.

Indeed. Road traffic, railways, air traffic and waterways were all restricted for West Berlin residents yet the authorities portrayed it as an enclave of freedom within a communist nightmare. Entering West Berlin from the East must have been a bureaucratic nightmare because you were searched extensively at the border (Checkpoint Charlie, anybody?).

[robheus]

I think the Berlin wall was justified because without it, the GDR would have been broke within a few years, and secondly the shooting-orders were justified because around 25 border soldiers were killed by refugees.

[Order227]

Here's an interesting question: suppose the DDR had gone broke in 1965? Would the USSR have relinquished the territory as a failure, and allowed it to be reintegrated into the West German state? Or would they have "repossessed" it and perhaps assimilated the entire territory to Poland, as was the case with East Prussia after the war?