Q

"Everyone watched everyone and you had two choices: Either you went with the flow or not. Either way, everyone watched everyone and it was impossible for individuals to organise an opposition to this."
I don't know about the USSR, but i know what you said is complete bullshit as far as GDR is concerned. When the State was overthrown and the records opened up, it was found that the Secret Police the "Stasi", had 174,000 informants. A large part of them were within the 2 Million party members of the SED that never were formally asked if they wanted to but counted as informants because they at one occasion gave information. That was in a country of 16 Million! Overall, the Stasi had around 500-800,000 informants in its existence. Also, a very large part were foreign informants.

hey. fairly recently you posted a lecture by Tiktin on the former USSR, and I had a question. Tiktin says that pretty much everyone hated the way the USSR was set up under Stalin, including all of the bureaucracy, because the environment was unstable and they could not pass down their privileges like a proper class could. If this was the case, how did the USSR continue in the way that it did? If EVERYONE hated the system, including the "ruling non-class", then how did it go on? I didn't understand this. I know you're not Tiktin, but I was hoping that you may be able to provide some insights on this lol

Can you please e-mail that Visitor Message of yours to me for more permanent posterity? Damn!