East Germans say Life Was Better under Communism

[HenryReardon]

Henry, perhaps your choice of words served to confuse.

)

Only those you choose to argue for the sake of argument.

 

[syntax]

I spent some time in East Germany - eight hours to be exact. It was 1986 and, in the spirit of Glasnost, the East German authorities were allowing limited visits across the border for German citizens and tourists. I was studying in West Berlin and received a visa that allowed me to spend twelve hours in East Berlin. It was a revelatory experience.

The western side of the Berlin wall was covered in graffiti and at several points scaffolds were set up so that you could climb to the top and look over into East Berlin. It was an ugly site. 150 yards of no-man's land led from the wall to a barbed wire fence ringed with guard towers. I remember standing on that wall and looking at the distant figures in East Berlin and realizing how lucky, truly lucky, I was to have ended up on this side of the wall.

I took the subway into East Berlin and waited in a long line for my visa. At one point, some guards pushed their way through the crowds, took hold of the man standing in front of me and, without a word, dragged him away. I nervously showed my US Passport to the border guard, paid a fee and received my visa. I had to exchange West German marks for East German marks on a 1-1 basis (the market exchange would have been something like 250 East German marks for 1 West German mark). As it turned out, I couldn't even spend all the money as there was almost nothing to buy and food was incredibly cheap. It was Christmas time and I stood in a line around the block to buy the only thing that was for sale - a deck of playing cards. A big but bland lunch cost 50 cents.

East Berlin had most of the best buildings and architecture. One majestic building housed the historical museum. It was an amusing display of historical materialism and charted the rise and collapse of capitalism from Roman times until the triumph of Communism. The section on the United States was limited to slavery and Reagan's bombing of Libya. I followed a group of young soldiers as they made their way through the displays, wondering what was going through their minds.

I don't really remember talking with any citizens. My general impression was that East Berlin was beautiful but lifeless - like a corpse. I'm sure much of that impression was based on the weather, as it was mid-December. The contrast between West and East was remarkable. West Berlin was vibrant, impulsive and free. I had always dismissed the Cold War conflict as meaningless, along with the "Evil Empire" rhetoric that Reagan was so fond of espousing. Not after that visit.

Those East Germans polled in the OP may feel they had it better under Communism, but, based on my brief experience, I think that they are expressing dissatisfaction with their current system more than any fondness for Communism.

One other recollection. On another stay in Germany during the late 1980s, I took a German course with an instructor who had lived in East Germany. She and her husband were so frustrated with their situation that they decided to flee. They gave up everything they had and arranged for a friend to drive them over the border as they hid in the trunk of the car. They escaped to West Germany with nothing more than a little money and some clothes. That is how desperate they were to leave. This was in 1988 - a few months later the Wall came down and Germans were soon free to move wherever they wanted, but this couple had lost everything.

 

[Kulindahr]

Kulin, this is true to some extent.

One guy with whom I work who was from the former Czechoslovakia said that all they needed to do was get up and go, for any reason; another from Lithuania said all they could go anywhere in the Soviet Union for any reason, but going to other Eastern Bloc countries involved a lot of paperwork and permission. In other words, going one way was infinitely easier than going the other. (This was true in the 1970s and 1980s with the US and Europe, when it was infinitely easier for Americans to visit Europe than the other way around.)

To be fair, I've never spoken with a former resident of the GDR, and since this thread is about the GDR, I don't have any information to impart about how easy it was for them to travel—I just know they COULD.

An aside, and some trivia: Did you know gay people got their rights in the GDR before their brothers and sisters in the FDR?

What I know is from a friend whose dad has a business which after the reunification got employees from the East. He said they couldn't get used to not just being able to go off for a business trip whenever he told them, but being able to do the same just because they felt like it.

 

[HenryReardon]

By all accounts there was a dreary, unhappy, 'same ness' between all the eastern bloc countries - at least in the cities. Unless it involved visiting relatives, there was little incentive to travel.

 

[Kulindahr]

makes u wonder if certain people who have had one system for so long find it difficult to change

Some people haave trouble dealing with change, but some are also in the wrong place when change happens -- my fave example is candle makers when the light bulb came along.

 

[Kulindahr]

^ (Rolls eyes). Mary, is that the BEST example you can come up with? I mean, think horse and buggy vs. cars, the Omnibus vs. the subway, bow and arrow vs. guns, Vaseline vs. Astroglide.

Jeesh. Why Must I Do All the Thinking Around Here?

I just said it was my fave.

But in a way it is the best -- the symbolism is ironic.

 

[Kulindahr]

Syntax, thank you for an utterly compelling first-hand account.

You do realize, however, that since the wall fell, millions of East Germans have fled to the West? Yes, that's right—after the wall fell. Why? East Germany has turned into a real hellhole, with unemployment rates topping 25% in many places.

Some have fled because they had no place to go -- westerners came in with titles to the property they'd been in all their lives...

A friend in college had a fencing instructor who was born in E. Germany. His path to the West and back is astounding:
The guy got good enough that he was sent on tours throughout the Warsaw Pact. He worked very carefully at his one goal, to be one of those at a fencing contest & exhibition near the Black Sea. Finally he made it.
There was a finer such gathering, right on the Black Sea, but he'd not wanted to be there because security was too tight -- the Soviets worried about their top talent feeling to the West. But he was close, and that was enough: one night during the event he departed the compound, jogged to a back road, and covered the kilometers to the Black Sea. Out he swam into the dark, and paused, shedding anything that might identify him, then turned, steering by the stars, swam for hours, and then turned landward again, finally coming ashore in Turkey -- where his state of near-undress got him take promptly exactly where he wanted to go... to the authorities, to defect.
He ended up in the U.S. as a fencing instructor. When the Wall fell, he began arranging his life to go back to Germany, to where he'd grown up. But when he got there, strangers were living in the house, strangers whose ancestors had owned the land when the Soviets came in.

I never heard any more of this bit of history, which is frustrating. But I imagine that the courts there are still tangled with such cases, and that there are people who still don't know if their homes will become theirs again -- from both sides of the divided nation.

 

[The_Reaper]

Me again, just felt I should throw a few things in here before things get too convoluted to add this point.

Many of you speaking out against communism and the rule of it in East Germany tend to throw out the point of the Statsi and the Secret Police and the systems of fear and intimidation they used to keep 'order' in the country.

I would point out, that in most cases, democracies often employ such individuals but in more limited roles. I mean, of course, the fact that a US Administration in this day and age would authorize illegal wiretapping on citizens (a practice, though less technological, used by the Secret Police within the Eastern Bloc).

And what about the raids? Well, surely we've seen some of those in Western Style democracies.

The argument of the secret police doesn't really work when organizations like the FBI and NSA exist within America, and other similar organizations exist in other democracies. Sure, they may not be as brutal to their citizens as the Soviet Secret Police, but they do use many of the same methods.

As such, pointing out the problem of the secret police is a moot point in my opinion.

The very crux of this issue, is that none of us can truly speak of knowing life in the Soviet Bloc. I've never lived there, and I'm sure many who have contributed to this thread have not either. As such, given the democratic style in which we were raised, it becomes hard to separate fact from fiction, propaganda from reality.

Since the end of the Second World War, America was locked in an ideological battle with the Soviet Union. As such, American newsreels and other media outlets were no doubt rife with propaganda against the Soviet lifestyle and such.

Some of it may be true, some of it may not. Since we're speaking with what information we have, given that I doubt any of us have combed over the Soviet National Archives (and truth be told, I forget whether the Soviet Archives were opened after the fall or not) then we cannot really paint an accurate picture of life behind the Iron Curtain.

Too many of us have already made up our minds that communism = bad. While this is true of the styles we've seen practiced in reality, we cannot apply it to theoretical styles of communism.

After all, essentially, this argument keeps revolving down to semantics: Is democracy better than communism?

However, that is a flawed question, as there are multiple questions to be asked:
Is direct democracy better than socialist-communism?
Is representative democracy better than dictatorial-communism?
Is a constitutional republic better than a Marxist-communism?

Effectively, communism CANNOT be boiled down to one form, neither can democracy. To assume this is to assume that all political systems will be operated in the same manner and that is a fallacy.

Communism, like democracy, has its flaws and its merits; which is truly how we must weigh the two systems. We cannot weigh them however by their performance in reality, because we've never seen true communism and we've likely never seen true democracy either.

As such, we can only judge them by their ideological and philosophical vision since we lack a true representation.

Oh, and for those saying we have a 'free and representative' democracy where the will of the people is heard, please consider this:

Politicians, and their organizations, are often in charge of drawing up ridings/districts/etc; as such, a skilled plan can often sway an election by restricting the number of opposition votes in one area and shifting them elsewhere, in a process know as 'gerrymandering'.

Now, if the government has the authority to determine who can vote and where (based on their own political ambitions) how free can our democracy really be when they can prevent us from voting them out with simple tricks?

 

[HenryReardon]

Typically, they went to a beach or some other rural destination, some resort that had to do with nature. Soviets went to the Black Sea, East Germans went to the Baltic Sea beaches, and so on.

.

Do you really believe that the average citizien in soviet Russia was able to go to the Black Sea every year? Sure, party officials did; those in favor did; but the average occupant of say, a collective farm? I rather doubt it. From what I have read, it would appear that live for the average citizen was a daily scramble for survival - there was little time or money for trips to resorts.

 

[Kulindahr]

KULIN: I found a better article, this one brought to us by Der Spiegel. What I find particularly tantalizing is that some of the former East Germans who have done quite well under reunification still preferred the old system.

On another note, I find that, listening to the various accounts in this article, there seems significant bleedover into conservative principles. Do you agree? To wit:

http://snipurl.com/ninc5

There's a lot of editing of the past going on there! What I see is a not-untypical glorifying of the past as a way to complain about the present.

I'm not sure what conservative principles you're seeing there; I'm seeing nostalgia tinted by rose-colored glasses, more than anything.

 

[Kulindahr]

Here's the other thing: That whole "welfare queen" idea was absolutely not tolerated. No matter what, those people could goddamn well push a broom, couldn't they? Those people who would have been "welfare queens" here in the US, could either push a broom in an office, or push a broom in the Stalag. Everybody who was able-bodied was expected to work. I'm sure you can see the value in that idea, too.

That brings to mind several novels I've read where Red Square is depicted early in the morning with a virtual army of elderly grandmothers, patiently sweeping the entire area with old-fashioned handmade brooms. I thought it a romantic touch by the novelists until some friends who made a trip to Russia reported that it was real.

They were able to work -- so they did. We might call it make-work, but it was work.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

I'm sure there are Germans who think life was better under the commies. There are Austrians who think it was better under Hitler. And some people here who claim we never had it better than under Mussolini.

As an Italian whose Austrian great-grandparents were Jews from Vienna on one side and nazis from Tyrol on the other side of the family, I beg to differ.

And for those who keep asking how those two families ever intermarried: they all fled to Argentina, where my daddy was born. And no, he never thought life was better under the military junta of Videla.

 

[NineOfClubs]

Yeah, yeah, and life here was better before the Industrial Revolution......

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

I'm sure there are Germans who think life was better under the commies. There are Austrians who think it was better under Hitler. And some people here who claim we never had it better than under Mussolini.

As an Italian whose Austrian great-grandparents were Jews from Vienna on one side and nazis from Tyrol on the other side of the family, I beg to differ.

And for those who keep asking how those two families ever intermarried: they all fled to Argentina, where my daddy was born. And no, he never thought life was better under the military junta of Videla.

The fascists have typically done a lot for their countries. The same can't be said for the multiculturalists.

 

[palemale]

The fascists have typically done a lot for their countries. The same can't be said for the multiculturalists.

Yeah, like exterminate the multiculturalists, and anyone else they don't like. Such an enlightened view of good government you have Harke. Are you thinking of running for office?

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Yeah, like exterminate the multiculturalists, and anyone else they don't like.

'Multiculturalists' didn't exist in Western Europe until the 1990s

Such an enlightened view of good government you have Harke. Are you thinking of running for office?

Sorely tempted.

 

[palemale]

You could run as a Republican, they're a fascist political party! Pat Buchanan could be your campaign manager and help you master the goose step.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

You could run as a Republican, they're a fascist political party! Pat Buchanan could be your campaign manager and help you master the goose step.

I'm sure they aren't.

 

[palemale]

fas·cism

1often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism

Sounds an awful lot like the Republican Party to me.

 

[JB3]

fas·cism

1often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism

Sounds an awful lot like the Republican Party to me.

Actually, sounds a whole lot like Obama.