Reminder: Homosexuality was illegal in West Germany, but legal in East Germany. Among so many other reasons the East was better
I would say the DDR failed due the Stasi, which was a part of everyone's lifes. This control was so tight that they had a informant in every appartment and also in every factory.
Also the "Order to Fire" (a policy that allows people to be shot if they try to cross the border out of the DDR) policy shouldn't have ever existed in a proper state. If you have to build a giant wall and arm it with guards who are ready to shoot to kill just to keep people in, is it really a good place to live?
The DDR failed because the entire Eastern bloc was systematically isolated and its citizens bombarded with Western propoganda that they bought hook, line, and sinker (and later regretted, as most surveys of the post-communist period will show you). If the Stasi were the reason for the DDR's collapse then the United States, whose NSA is more powerful and more invasive by a factor of ten (maybe even a hundred), would've collapsed decades ago.
The East German economy was first hindered by the Soviet Occupation Zone which claimed 60% of the industry. The Soviets didn't offer any help to their occupation zone, but they did transfer the cost occupation to the Germans, and demanded reparations from them as well. Only by 1953 when Stalin died, were the factories returned to the GDR.
In 1953 there was a huge uprising against the SED. This uprising was the result of the attempts at a "accelerated construction of socialism in the GDR" which meant that the government would try to accelerate the transition of socialism by heavily investing in heavy industry and collectivizing agriculture. This lead to lessening of products in the civilian market, and to food prices increasing due to more wealthier farmers escaping to the west, leading to farmland being unused. And lastly the work quota increases which demanded that people worked 10% more for the same wage as before. These policies led to more people fleeing to the west, which lead to the GDR reversing course on the collectivization, and the investments on heavy industry being shifted towards consumer goods. But the quota increases weren't reversed and stayed in effect. This lead to a protest in which the people demanded this to be reversed and that free elections were implemented. This protest had a million people in it, so it wasn't a small protest. This protest was of course suppressed by the Soviet Army and the Stasi, who arrest over 10,000 people, and executed 32-40 people.
And during the Seven-Year plan which started in 1959 with the goal of reaching the per capita production of West Germany. And what did they implement? Increased quotas, and the emigration to the West shot up once. And since emigration increased, there were less farmers, which lead to a food shortage in the GDR.
Due to a steady industrial decline from 1959 the leader of the GDR Ultrich implemented the New Economic System (NES) in 1963, which would make the economy more decentralized, in hopes that it would reverse the course of industrial decline. The results of this new economic policy did reverse the decline, but no as much as the state wanted. And the growth was more a result of increased investment than actual improvements in the system. This failure to meet expectations lead to a new policy called Economic System of Socialism (ESS), which also failed to meet expectations, and was terminated in 1970.
So it seems that the failures of the GDR were more because of economic mismanagement than western propaganda. Of course I am open to other ideas on the topic that you could provide, but this just seems more plausible to me.
And on the CIA being worse than the Stasi, I will just give it to you, since I can't be bothered to read more after about 2 hours of reading GDR history and economic policies, and writing this thing.
Also feel free to correct me if you think I got something wrong, or I worded something badly, since I am not a good writer by any means.
There absolutely was bad economic management by an increasingly aged political leadership, none of that can be denied. But again, that circumstance is also present in the (surprise surprise) modern day United States, where our entire political class is mostly made up of boomers and silent generation who can barely form a coherent sentence. Economic policy in the DDR could have been better, but its standard of living (measured by purchasing power, not nominal GDP) was similar to the West, its rate of income inequality far better, and life satisfaction in all aspects outside of being able to criticize the government was far and away better than the West. East Germans had a strong say in how to do their jobs, women in East Germany had far more freedom (so much so they had better sex under communism than their capitalist German peers!), and the DDR was even tolerant of homosexuality, having a state run gay bar. Life in East Germany wasn't like the West, you couldn't get consumer goods in mass quantities, there were coffee shortages, but nobody sent hungry, everybody had a house, everybody got a good education, and when the wall came down and East Germans realised they needed lots of cash to buy the consumer goods they wanted while their rent trebled and they lost their jobs, they by and large regretted the fall of the DDR.
In the USA you atleast have the chance of getting rid of the old people due to democracy, but in the GDR if an old person came to power, he was in power for ~20 years average. This can be seen in the aftermath of the 1953 uprising when Ulbrich was meant to be replaced due to his incompetency, was veto'd by the Soviet Union.
The GDR didn't legalise being gay. They only decriminalised it. But they viewed it as "a biological flaw". But I must give credit to the GDR on their lgbt policies, since they were better than the western countries.
The HIB, which was an organization for gay people, was constantly surveid by the Stasi, who also constantly intervened in the actions of the HIB leading to the disbandment of the HIB.
And the most famous trans person in GDR Charlotte von Mahlsdor was also constantly surveid by the Stasi.
Try guessing who stepped in when Ursula Sillge tried to organize a meeting for lesbians in the GDR. It was the Stasi once again, who stopped this from ever happening in the first place.
And probably the worst thing is that the GDR government denied that gay people were victims of the HOLOCAUST. They said that due their low numbers killed they weren't victims of it. And they said this in 1983, so it was pretty late into the GDR life. They of course changed their stance on this 2 years later, but my god.
"The SED responded negatively, arguing that homosexuality could not be considered a ‘separate problem’ in the history of the Holocaust, adding that ‘many homosexual concentration camp inmates were criminals, and the number of homosexuals murdered in concentration camps was a very small part of those killed by the fascists.’" - Taken from this wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_German_Democratic_Republic
After all of this the GDR began to change their stance on gay people in the 80's. The clubs that you were talking about were made during this time. But of course this didn't completely wipe homophobia from the GDR, since the policies on gay people were vague and up to interpretation.
I can't deny that the GDR had good empoyment and housing, since that is one of the strengths of communism. But that doesn't guarantee a good life for the citizens of a communistic country. On the part on life fulfilment, every source I can find on how life was in the GDR, and says it was dull, since all entertainment had to be state approved, and freedom of speech was restricted. Also people were indoctrinated ever since they were in kindergartens, so that probably had something to do with it.
Once again if I made some mistake, feel free to correct me. Also sorry if I didn't respond to all of your stuff, since this thing took an hour to write on my commute, and I am running out of time to write more.
Yeah can't really argue that one, the Wall was a Bad Look.
@thethirdgracchi @mazdak also wait roughly 15 min pretty soon the Failed States of America is going to be desperately trying to keep certain essential workers from fleeing too and will resort to measures perhaps more desperate than any seen in the past
I already fled but tbf I'm not all that essential
Yeah I wouldn't put it past them, especially with their renewed interest in semiconductor fabrication and reindustrailisation push. I've a plan to flee at least, thankfully I've dual citizenship with the ROI.
@thethirdgracchi @mazdak perhaps dance dance revolution work better when installed on modern new computer
The West found it much easier to get everyone to willingly install listening and tracking devices in their homes. Hey Google, who's the CIA agent assigned to browsing my search logs today?
Social media didn't exist back in the Cold War, and if it did, the Soviets would have restricted it for being western, and made their own which was heavily censored and monitored just like the Chinese social media.
So I don't get why this is a western problem if the other side would have done it as well given the chance, and the Chinese are actively doing it.
Yeah, I wonder why Western social media companies spying on people is a Western problem. Truly a mystery.
I won't deny it is a problem, since I know to what extent data is collected, and where it might go. I am only asking on your position with China doing the exact same thing.
since I know to what extent data is collected, and where it might go
No, you don't. Are you trying to pretend like your government and the megacorporations are somehow transparent? You would've never known what they were doing with your data if it hadn't been for people like Snowden and the whistleblowers at Facebook, and you'll never know the full extent.
As for China, there's no way to know how much they do any of this if you don't actually live there. I definitely don't trust anything Western media says about the subject, and it's probably overblown at best.
Since no western news media is good enough for you, I will use the text that Snowden himself wrote in his autobiography, since you seem to classify him as a trustful source.
In his biography Snowden wrote that one of the motives for the leak was when he learned about the extent that China collected telephone and internet communications. He described the amount of data being collected to be appalling.
He wrote his while being in Russia, so there should have been minimal "western influence".
Also Snowden lived in China for a while, so he does know his stuff.
The only thing I consider Snowden to be a 100% reliable source on is the stuff he leaked from the NSA, because that's straight from the horse's mouth. I don't care about whatever else he has to say knowing that he's a racist libertarian
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Does aybody have actual stats? But from what i remember the ratio of gdp per capita between west and east germany has been more or less constant since tbe 1880s probably longer.
So the conclusion is that the gdp per calita diferences in political system were overshadowed by the effects of diffusion of the industrial revolution. And related demographic and geografic factors. While east germany was a more equal society.
