The DDR made plenty of mistakes, but most of those were the consequence of being a military occupation. Unfortunately, the people of the DDR never got a chance to build Socialism for themselves in the early days and the friction between Soviet models of socialism and ones more suited to Germany's material conditions was pretty substantial
Unlike the West, the DDR suppressed the Nazi's instead of offering them jobs, and the Stasi and the controls on public life are a consequence of that. By the time the threat subsided, the Cold War was in full swing and those occupation institutions were the easiest way to solve the issue.
But ultimately, the DDR is the closest thing we have to Marx being proved right, that a revolution in an industrialised society could represent a great leap forwards from capitalist relations.
Fully agree. Like all AES states, the DDR was also shaped by a state of siege, and that was particularly pronounced due to being a frontline state in the Cold War, coming with threats such as one of the world's absolute hotbeds of spy activity in Berlin, being the designated staging ground for the opening moves of WW3, or a constant propagandistic onslaught of incredibly hostile BRD media, which were able to broadcast across almost the entire DDR territory. It's unbelievable how vitriolic west German anticommunism was, i think we're one of the few continental western European nations that already rivaled the US in that regard even before capitalist realism choked any meaningful dissent in the imperialist core.
So there was an unbelievable amount of pressure on the DDR from the very start and i think that contributed a lot to the need to supress dissent. "Divided" Germany was such a weird place. I still grew up with the notion that there's this alternate universe version of my country, people a bit older than me grew up with the perspective of having to fight a war against their own relatives in the east.
The DDR made plenty of mistakes, but most of those were the consequence of being a military occupation. Unfortunately, the people of the DDR never got a chance to build Socialism for themselves in the early days and the friction between Soviet models of socialism and ones more suited to Germany's material conditions was pretty substantial
Unlike the West, the DDR suppressed the Nazi's instead of offering them jobs, and the Stasi and the controls on public life are a consequence of that. By the time the threat subsided, the Cold War was in full swing and those occupation institutions were the easiest way to solve the issue.
But ultimately, the DDR is the closest thing we have to Marx being proved right, that a revolution in an industrialised society could represent a great leap forwards from capitalist relations.
Fully agree. Like all AES states, the DDR was also shaped by a state of siege, and that was particularly pronounced due to being a frontline state in the Cold War, coming with threats such as one of the world's absolute hotbeds of spy activity in Berlin, being the designated staging ground for the opening moves of WW3, or a constant propagandistic onslaught of incredibly hostile BRD media, which were able to broadcast across almost the entire DDR territory. It's unbelievable how vitriolic west German anticommunism was, i think we're one of the few continental western European nations that already rivaled the US in that regard even before capitalist realism choked any meaningful dissent in the imperialist core.
So there was an unbelievable amount of pressure on the DDR from the very start and i think that contributed a lot to the need to supress dissent. "Divided" Germany was such a weird place. I still grew up with the notion that there's this alternate universe version of my country, people a bit older than me grew up with the perspective of having to fight a war against their own relatives in the east.