East Germany/ DDR

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Pretty simple question,
What was the DDR like?
What do people who lived there think about it?
And maybe someone can suggest some books on the subject.

[ACAB]

Mark steel answered this best.

Was the soviet Union and the DDR a good place to live?

Imagine you had a party and to keep people in you had to erect walls, put up barbedwire, have snipers and machine gun nests and still people were building a hot air balloon to escape would you say well that was a success dear, or would you say, well this party was probably shit?

A simple use of logic can usually ascertain an answer you seek

[Grenzer]

I can tell you that they had terrible music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkunjHpHMHY

Unfortunately I can't think of any books off of the top of my head, but the people there had a relatively high standard of living(perhaps the highest) of all the Eastern Bloc states.

[Railyon]

There is one book I would recommend you on the DDR, but it's in German. It's from the 70s and not an analysis of the DDR itself but how it is structured and how it understood itself as a socialist society. Makes it seem like fucking paradise. But as said, only available in German.

The criticism leveled at the DDR itself was mostly that of lack of civil liberties and the whole Stasi snitch culture including people "made to disappear", the special Cold War circumstances like the Berlin Wall, etc. Economic shortcomings were actually not a perceived problem of much of its population, something the bourgie adversaries stress (to no surprise). The DDR itself was pretty Orwellian in some respects, most famously the slogan of the vanguard party, the SED, "the party is always right".

[Per Levy]

I can tell you that they had terrible music.

not true:

vUMa5ZaxCG4


What do people who lived there think about it?

well people have mixed feelings about it, there was a lot of shit going in the gdr like the scarcity of certain goods the ever present stasi and so on but also people were nicer to each other and more friendly, mostly because you needed to know everyone in order to get certain things or certain services that you couldnt get otherwise in the gdr and because money wasnt that much of a big issue as it is nowadays.

a lot of people in the former gdr dont like capitalism but also don like socialism thanks to what they expierinced in the gdr.

[Ostrinski]

DDR anthem goes hard

[Per Levy]

DDR anthem goes hard

DTV92wqYjfA

[Brosa Luxemburg]

As far as the DDR goes, the Berlin Wall was erected for 2 reasons.

1. To keep the citizens of the DDR in because refugees would make the system look bad.
2. Sabotage operations coming from West Germany and run by the CIA (as documented in William Blum's book Killing Hope).

It was a bad place to live, yet at the same time a peasant from some capitalist shithole like Haiti would probably find any of those "communist" countries, whether East Germany, Cuba, USSR, etc. to have been heaven on earth. It's all about perspective.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Actually, here is an article by William Blum called The Other Side of the Berlin Wall (http://consortiumnews.com/2011/07/28/the-other-side-of-the-berlin-wall/).

Interesting look at it.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

A good friend of mine, who speaks German fluently, lived in West Germany and the DDR for significant periods of time. He was not exactly a communist. Yet, he said he always had a great time in the DDR. People were very friendly, and they had more time to spend because they had easier work schedules. Of course, the DDR was not nearly as wealthy as the West, but I think in retrospect, a lot of people in the East probably regret the change. I'm guessing on that, though. A comrade of mine mentioned that this may have been the only time in history that many "refugees" drove their cars across the border. So, no worker's paradise, but neither the hell hole depicted by the Imperialist powers.

[ACAB]

There is no such thing as a capitalist country, educate yourself and those around you:tt2:

All Governments and states currently in existence and all past ones have been shit, they have rendered the territory they claim as theirs shit for the masses who reside there.

A state can not be revolutionary and supporting a state is not compatible with socialism, claiming that the DDR is in anyway anything other than a sick symptom of class society is futile and using capitalism as a measuring stick to judge state socialism is about as pro worker as crossing a bloody picket line.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

There is no such thing as a capitalist country, educate yourself and those around you:tt2:

All Governments and states currently in existence and all past ones have been shit, they have rendered the territory they claim as theirs shit for the masses who reside there.

A state can not be revolutionary and supporting a state is not compatible with socialism, claiming that the DDR is in anyway anything other than a sick symptom of class society is futile and using capitalism as a measuring stick to judge state socialism is about as pro worker as crossing a bloody picket line.

Wait what?

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

There is no such thing as a capitalist country, educate yourself and those around you:tt2:

All Governments and states currently in existence and all past ones have been shit, they have rendered the territory they claim as theirs shit for the masses who reside there.

A state can not be revolutionary and supporting a state is not compatible with socialism, claiming that the DDR is in anyway anything other than a sick symptom of class society is futile and using capitalism as a measuring stick to judge state socialism is about as pro worker as crossing a bloody picket line.

I think you mean communist country and I agree with you if you meant that, but I wasn't saying that in my post I was just asking what the DDR was like.
And the rest of your post are arguments against things nobody in this thread has said.
Read the OP next time before you start rambling.

[ACAB]

I was responding to the above user, however I still maintain you grasp of communist theory is disheartening, anyone who has Stalin as an avatar probably needs to asses some stuff in their life.

[Sasha]

@ OP, not a hellhole but not a paradise either....

[Omsk]

Imagine you had a party and to keep people in you had to erect walls, put up barbedwire, have snipers and machine gun nests and still people were building a hot air balloon to escape would you say well that was a success dear, or would you say, well this party was probably shit?


Is this a quote from Reagan?


On a more serious note - i could recomend you some books or articles about the DDR.There is also a thread i wrote in,about the DDR,you can find a lot of information there,just type: "DDR" in search engine or something like that. (German Democratic Republic.)

This is the short line:

Anti-revisionist perspective - Market Socialism and revisionism,nothing special,but a country that still made big progress,and it was far from the demonized Stasiland the propagandists want to present it as.

It was not communist,not socialist,but it was not a "COOMMUNIST HELL WHERE PEOPLE EAT BARBED WIRE AND BRICKS FOR LUNCH AND STAAAALINNNN IS A SAINT !!! OH SAVE US JESUSSU"

Clear?

[Railyon]

Anti-revisionist perspective - Market Socialism and revisionism

It understood itself as Marxist-Leninist though, if its Selbstbild, its self-perception, is to believed - almost all political literature, from Marx to Lenin to whoever else, was published by the Institute for Marxism-Leninism, and it was the state's official doctrine.

Doesn't mean it was what it said on the tin, but we're accustomed to that in regard to "socialist countries" anyway.

[Omsk]

Yes,but such trivial things as the names of the publishing centres,and the rhetorics used by the party,should be to an extent,ignored,i mean,the DPRK until recently talked about communism.

To be honest with you,it was 'hardline' ,in some aspects,and liberal in others. The German communists,though,were always one of the finest the internationalist movement had,although,there were a lot of deviationists and various revisionists and similar types.

[Left Leanings]

Pretty simple question,
What was the DDR like?
What do people who lived there think about it?
And maybe someone can suggest some books on the subject.

One book I have read, which gave an insight into life in the German Democratic Republic is Stasiland: Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall (2003) by Anna Funder, and published by Granta Books, London.

A film I gave watched is "The Lives of Other", written and directed by Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck

[Omsk]

Are you all right good comrade?I though one would die from so much propaganda..

[Railyon]

Yes,but such trivial things as the names of the publishing centres,and the rhetorics used by the party,should be to an extent,ignored,i mean,the DPRK until recently talked about communism.

I would be very careful with that statement as a Marxist-Leninist, you know; the devious left-communist conspirators might use that against you.

[Left Leanings]

Are you all right good comrade?I though one would die from so much propaganda..

Oh the book and the film are one-sided, I have no doubt about that. But they are two items I have come across, so I just put them forward, rather than not.

My understanding of the DDR is that whilst it was not the best of worlds, it wasn't the worst either.

Our goals we have yet to a achieve. The struggle continues.

[Omsk]

In that specific context.


Our goals we have yet to a achieve. The struggle continues.

This is true,the German communists of the DDR,objectively,failed,without mention,but they should not be left to the right-wingers and former Nazis to be demonized.The thing is,the right-wing has a monopoly in the world of information,and people are starting to forget about West German former Nazi politicians who had state power,and the Nazis in the Bunderswehr,and the former Nazis and Waffen SS extermination troops who had the luck to escape to the American sector.

[eyeheartlenin]

Originally Posted by Brospierre
DDR anthem goes hard


DTV92wqYjfA

Writing from the States, I don't know whether "goes hard" is a positive or negative judgment (I suspect, the latter), but I have always thought the DDR Hymne was a phreaking gorgeous piece of music. So, IMO, it's kind of a shame that DDR society was as repressive as it was.

The DDR, as I remember, even published a magazine about itself in English, "Democratic German Review." I saw a copy once somewhere.

When I was working for engineering profs at a Uni, we had an Ossi as a post-doc – this was long after the disappearance of the DDR in 1989 – and that guy was the most materialistic person I think I ever met. I also noted, after 1989, there seemed to be a lot of fascists from the territory that had been the DDR. Why that is, I don't know.

Two more things occur to me: The Nationalhymne (if that's incorrect, I apologize – it has been 42 years since my last German class at Uni, with Frau Müller) really deserves one description that the text of the Hymne has, schön wie nie. The other thing is that for a few years, there was a black and white video on youtube of the military march on the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the DDR, October 1989 IIRC, and watching the video, I was always struck by the fact that, with all the military equipment it had, the DDR could have defended itself impressively against an attack from outside, but it was helpless in the face of dissatisfaction among DDR citizens and the subsequent massive popular repudiation of the SED government.

[Omsk]

Why that is, I don't know.


Because the DDR fought the former fascist circles,and was against fascism,(ie any behaviour that could be linked to supporting fascism was absolutely not tolerated,like in most of the Soviet Bloc.) And when the unification happened,the fascists didn't have much enemies,because the new state was pretty much right-wing.