How do I cope with the fact that I will never get to experience life growing up in and living in the German Democratic Republic (Communist East Germany 1949-1990)?
I first became captivated with the GDR when I was 12. I'm now 23 and I still find this now non-existent country fascinating and mesmerising. I think their values were beautiful and loathe the way western media has demonised East Germany and the Eastern Bloc as a whole.
How do I cope? I can't bear life in western capitalism and wish with all my heart I could have been born in the GDR in the 50s or 60s...
lmao just ask someone who lived there it was total ass Soviets had their boots so far up the GDRs ass they could taste Ukraine t. Cold war enthusiast
Thomas Fisher
You cope by living your life. What the fuck?
Camden Morales
My grandmother grew up in East Germany. She and her siblings loved it so much that they crawled under the Berlin Wall with only the worldly possessions they could fit in a potato sack. It was a potato sack and not a different vegetable because the state mandated that they be potato farmers.
Ian Cooper
There is no modern equivalent to the Eastern Bloc as it stood from 1949 to 1989/90. Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a whole alternate world - in opposition to the culturally and morally bankrupt west - in which socialism thrived and a brotherhood of nations was formed. These nations exchanged goods, peoples travelled between them to travel live and study, and enjoyed economic sustainability.
Any modern "socialist" nations, even Cuba (the most respectable example) cannot compare as they are too weak and poor alone to offer the same quality of life and brotherhood that was offered by the old Eastern Bloc
And, furthermore, I idolise the GDR because it is the most similar to my own country. I am British, and we have a lot in common with Germany. The GDR is the clearest vision of what my own country might have looked like under socialism
Yet there were also plenty of western defectors, including US army personnel, who fled the moral chaos of the west in favour of a better life in the east
I am not much interested in those who, out of greed or lust, travelled westwards. My opinion is that the GDR, USSR and allied states fought as valiantly as they could to build socialism in a world that did everything possible to undermine them at every turn
Owen Torres
They never had any intention if building a better life for anyone you mindbroken tankie fucktard.
Landon White
What country are you from, out of curiosity? And when were you born?
Not to be rude, but if like me you are from Western Europe or the US and born post cold war, you've likely been fed the one line about communism/socialism without any counter argument. In UK schools the only thing we were ever taught about the cold war was "west good, east bad, capitalism good, communism BAD". Western schools don't even pretend to offer a balanced debate on capitalism vs socialism
Unfortunately this is the consequence of history, the victors write it. Because there is no USSR or GDR left in the world to defend the legacy of socialism, western liberals have free reign to paint the history of socialism in as terrible a light as they please. It also of course doesn't help that liberals will also point to North Korea (a state that has always had a very eccentric and strange form of "socialism", and has only become more deranged since 1991) as if it is the only example of an alternative to capitalism. This is not true. A better way of life is possible, and the socialist states of the past have shown us that path
oh boy I hope you've watched all those czechoslovak movies. if not you're in for a treat
Luke Price
At least we have two out of three
Nolan Sanders
You've got a nice car, then?
Jeremiah Watson
Community, morality, the common goal of working towards an equal society. A sense of purpose beyond simply "work, work work to get marginally richer until you die".
The Eastern Bloc societies were well on their way to eradicating class boundaries. And they had already eradicated racism (it is no coincidence that far right ideologies have surged in the east only since the fall of socialism).
>Starvation, shit cars and state surveillance
All of which occur in western capitalism, and always have done. Take my country, the UK. We have harsh poverty in this country that the media refuses to shine a light on. Rampant homelessness, working class people living in destitute conditions, and no matter what party is in power nothing is ever done to help them. State surveillance? There is no one better at that than the modern capitalist west, in which we have since 9/11 been subjected to draconian tactics of suppression... but oh, they don't apply to the rich!
In the socialist east, none were wealthy. But none were homeless either. All had enough to survive. A sustainable society. That is far better than a society in which some live very comfortable lives, while others live utterly miserable lives of poverty with no state assistance available.
No, modern cars are shit. Rather drive my old 90s car and pay 100k a year in reparations, gas and insurance than buy a modern car full of botnet.
Ryan Gutierrez
Ah yes. The equal sharing of misery. Nobody is wealthy, everyone stands in line for six hours for their rations, all consumer goods are equally horrible. So much better.
And no, cars like the Trabant do not happen here. At no point were we forced to suffer through using a 40hp two stroke car with a transmission that only 'works' in the broadest sense of the term. The closest thing we ever got was the Yugo and that was *still* the fault of communism.
Nathan Brooks
>Nobody is wealthy, everyone stands in line for six hours for their rations, all consumer goods are equally horrible. So much better.
All I'm getting from this is that you're perfectly happy to live in a society where poor people are literally starving and living in abjectly awful conditions, yet the thought of living in a society where the wealthy might be forced to settle for living in smaller housing and not consuming luxury goods is somehow unfathomable to you.
Grayson Jenkins
Because the reality you speak of is a lie and instead what happens is party officials get opulently wealthy through their connections and everyone else fucking starves, so now instead of me being able to claw out a decent subsistence for myself through a reasonable degree of paid labor I literally don't have the option to get more food at all.
Wyatt Ortiz
So essentially what you're saying is that communism is a nice ideal but people are inherently greedy? Shit, I've known that since the wall came down.
Connor Bell
Damn you have very romantic and unrealistic view of Eastern block. I lived in USSR and racism was normal. Also there were influental people who took rich people place. State owned everything, but if you had influence then you controled those things. Bribery rulled the society. Also being friends with influental people also made you more "equal" than any one else.
There were clases just like there are now. Elitists vs everyone else. Only different thing is that in capitalism its much easier to become influental than in USSR where u had to be born in the right family or grow up with influental people.
There was a telling in USSR - You never see a worker capitalist trying to break into USSR, just like you never see communist worker staying in USSR.
It basiclly meant that as soon as there were opertunity to get away from communism everyone ran.
Chase Wood
In USSR you had to stand in line for 10 years to get a car and only if you were lucky to get on the list. Very small percentage of people got on that list. Only way to get a car fast was to win the lotery but the chaces were so ducking small and everyone knew it was rigged anyway.
Blake Parker
>I lived in USSR
Nice try, porky. I can see through your broken english LARP.
Most of us are. I've cried a few times in my life thinking about the tragedy of the fall of communism.
Camden Sanchez
even admits to his delusion!
Leo Wood
Obviously I was referring to the depressed part, porky.
Wyatt Murphy
Fellow commie here, honestly you can just try to help people on a micro scale, it wont change shit since its personal not a systemic change but hey it might make feel you better. Just dont get into any Trotsky panphlet and newspaper shit or i swear to Sankara Polandfag here
Ryder Hill
Eat some bread without having to wait in a line I think, any feelings of yearning will pass
