How debunk this?

  • Coolkidbozzy [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    The soviet union was great, in comparison to everything before and after on the same land

    I assume you mean the Berlin wall. East germany was much poorer than west germany. This was the case before WW2, and it is still poorer today. It wasn't helped by events like the Dresden bombings or Russia taking some of its industrial capital as reparations

    East germany quickly produced the most educated working class it ever had with free universities. West germany had better wages and more treats because of their wealth. Therefore, people flocked to the west. That doesn't mean east germany was inherently worse under socialism! They simply started with worse material conditions. The wall was an 'authoritarian' measure to prevent brain drain. I don't know if it was the best option, but I understand why it was built. Perhaps a compromise could have been freedom of movement within the eastern bloc, to give people the opportunity to build socialism elsewhere if they wanted

    Socialism isn't utopian, but it is the most democratic way to distribute and build the resources we have, and give people the most opportunities. The entire USSR was always way poorer than the US, or modern China, but it accomplished so much more for the common person than its successor states ever will

    • Vampire [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      These are good arguments. I wasn't talking only about Berlin though, but this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_Eastern_Bloc

      Wasn't emigration heavily restricted? Or have I been disinfo'ed

      • plinky [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago
        1. Educate specialists for free

        2. specialists want that pmc blood money, not 50 percent more than worker money

        3. emigration of people highly invested in by the state

        4. emigration gets restricted cause it doesn’t make any sense to do this for society

        • Coolkidbozzy [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          A Hungarian economist stated that "it was quite obvious that the socialist countries—like other countries—intended to prevent their professionals, trained at the expense of their society, from being used to enrich other countries."[62] Eastern European spokesmen maintained that they were keeping would-be emigrants from suffering from insufficient linguistic and cultural preparation.[63] They also stressed the debt that individuals owed to socialist states, which offered care from birth, including subsidized education and training[63] and, thus, they justified the emigration restrictions as an "education tax" with the states having a right to recoup its investment.[64] Open emigration policies would create a "brain drain", forcing the state to readjust its wage structure at a cost to other economic priorities.[65] Bulgarian and Romanian representatives had long argued that they could not afford to match western salaries and, without emigration restrictions, they "would become like Africa."[65] The restrictions presented a quandary for some Eastern Bloc states that had been more economically advanced and open than the Soviet Union, such that crossing borders seemed more natural—especially between East and West Germany where no prior border existed.

          yeah the Wikipedia article basically states what I wrote above

          a physical wall only existed in Germany, but the restricted borders were along the entire eastern bloc like @Vampire said, for the same reason