“We never worried about not having a place to live or a job, or about being evicted. There were no worries or fears about our livelihoods and there was so much in the way of culture and recreation that was available most of the time at little or no cost.”
She said that “attempts were always made not only that you had a job but that it was the best job you could do and whenever possible a job you really liked.”
Zastrow explained that she disliked the technical aspects of her schooling, despite the fact that they were providing her with skills that were quite useable. “I love animals,” she said, “and really wanted to have a career working with them.” She described how “there were needs for everything in the GDR, for people who could do all kinds of things and they worked to get me a job that I loved, a job on a large agricultural dairy collective where I had such good times working with more than 300 cows!”
Then why is the former GDR territory today such a reactionary shithole? Rampant racism, homophobia and support for the fascist AfD party. I have a hard time believing that this was such a progressive place just 30+ years ago.
Generational difference apparently, older people are more likely to be nostalgic for the Soviets, people born since 1989 are more likely to be fascists https://hexbear.net/comment/4984330
When the wall fell the GDR basically experienced Shock Therapy like the former Soviet union states. Everything was privatized, property was seized, safety nets were dissolved. Poverty became so rampant that children born during that time period exhibited stunted growth similar to children raised during famines.
most social structures in eastern germany were organized within the workplace, factories had film and music-clubs for example and all of that virtually disappeared overnight when those workplaces became privatized.
Pushing reactionary rhetoric is key to every project of destruction of socialism. Also the fact that colonial imperialist powers were flexing their stolen wealth at citizens of socialist states just so they can deny them the spoils when capitalism is restored and then say "communism made you so poor you're just outcompeted now!"