With Putin talking about the orthodox church being holy and using to justify some conservative bullshit, all I can remember was the bolsheviks going around the country proudly declaring that cities were now "officially godless" and redistributing the church's gold amongst the people and using it to pay for electrification projects.
This is a good perspective to hear. Like, so much of what the west said about the DDR was bullshit. But at the same time, I also want to be fair and not pretend it was a workers paradise and everyone was just tricked into wanting capitalism.
There was no going back after the USA flooded East Germany with capital. In From Us To Me the co-op fisherman made a great point that if the GDR managed to create an exchange program wherein young people were forced/allowed to live under capitalism for a while (working min wage in Mexico or something) they would never have wanted the wall to come down.
People fell for the Propaganda and wanted to try it, but there was no going back once the Vanguard fell and capital was allowed to reign freely.