Opinions on East Germany - Soviet-Empire.com U.S.S.R.

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Soviet cogitations: 17
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 06 Jul 2013, 16:25
New Comrade (Say hi & be nice to me!)

08 Jan 2014, 23:31

Yami wrote:
Let us be clear about the Berlin Wall, if 'socialism' in East Germany was superior to conditions found in West Germany then the only reason the wall need have been built would have been to keep people OUT not keep them IN!

I find it bizarre that socialists are oppossed to immigration/emmigration. Lets be clear, the wall was built because East Germans thought, rightly or wrongly, that life was better in West Germany and wanted to live there. As the West Germans were happy to have them, what is the problem?

They were certainly not happy to have them. If the GDR hadn't built the wall, the West may well have done something similar. In fact, when the wall was built there was not one whit of objection from President Kennedy: it suited him fine. It was only decades later that Reagan spuriously demanded that the wall be torn down.

Yami

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Soviet cogitations: 589
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 07 Dec 2013, 14:24
Ideology: Democratic Socialism
Unperson

09 Jan 2014, 11:36

They certainly were happy to have them and continued to pay the East German government hard currency to free their political prisoners.
The socialists in the East, when they were short of dollars would sell their endless supply of political prisoners. I'm not knocking that as I'm sure the men and women freed were happy about it.
Can you provide a link to the plan for the West German government to build a wall?

Mabool

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Soviet cogitations: 10005
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 14 Jul 2008, 20:01
Ideology: Trotskyism
Philosophized

09 Jan 2014, 22:23

Comrade Gulper wrote:
They want it back -- the good parts. They want excellent health care, guaranteed employment, and a decent standard of living. They want an economy that doesn't buckle and warp under the constant fluctuations of "free market" speculation.

What they DON'T want is constant Stasi surveillance, Olympic doping, and walls built clear across people's houses in the middle of the fragging night.

So, yes, they want Socialism back, but NOT the half-baked, hastily assembled, Soviet client state that was the DDR. This is the 21st century, and Germany isn't short of rational minds that can do better than that.

This is the correct answer.

Also everyone who managed to "escape" from the GDR got a 100 marks as a "welcome gift". Which gave access to more eagerly-desired Western goods than most Easterners ever managed to assemble before 1989.

"Don't know why i'm still surprised with this shit anyway." - Loz

Tails

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Soviet cogitations: 1782
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 07 Oct 2009, 20:08
Resident Artist

02 Feb 2014, 20:53

The Stasi was the most evil and pervasive agency ever as they gathered everyone's data, unlike the good ol' West, where privacy is respected.

Seriously, the DDR should have been reformed rather than destroyed as the political system felt austere rather than the organic expression of the working class.

Yami wrote:
Living standards were higher in the West Germany and they had universal health care too, spending twice as much per citizen as they did in the East.

All these benefits in the West you mention are being rolled, unsurprisingly after the threat of socialism receeded. The living standards enjoyed by those in the past will never come back unless the system is changed.