Neither an ox nor a donkey is able to stop the progress of socialism...

...only people can do.

I have been in Berlin recently and talking with friends about the former German Democratic Republic quite a lot so I wanted to write a post on it here. It wont be slag off or praising good old times. Or against socialists. Just what I think. Sorry if it sounds patronising at some points. To say it beforehand for those who dont know me, I was born in the DDR and lived there until it broke down. And it is pure coincidence that last Monday 46 years ago the wall was built. it just took some time for me. and how did the former head of the state council, Walter Ulbricht, say: Noboby has the intention to build a wall. This was a few weeks before they build it.

i hope someone bothers to read the whole post. i have been writing on this for quite a time.

when i talk with others about socialism or ddr it sometimes come to the point where i say that socialism cant work and get the reply, well it never has been done properly or right. this always hurts a bit because it has been tried so many times and it always failed or never really get very far. its often 'western' leftists who say this. it is quite interesting to see how marxism and socialism have developed so differently in east and west (not germany necessarily, but us and udssr dominated parts). in the west the discussion was free to develop while in the east the party said how to interpret it. and it has changed so many times the interpretation that there wasnt only one clear line. at some point walter ulbricht fell in disgrace and erich honecker was the new man. the same with stalin and others.
Erich Honecker
a picture of him was hanging in every public place (i think it was this one), even in school rooms. after the wall it was a cross for me (school under catholic authority...) and now its the queen in the library. tho these mean quite different things its a bit all the same in the end (just a note on the side: when the queen came to essex, new flowers were planted and one square was cleaned days in advance, even the trash bins. and people waved little flags. when some high rank ddr official came or there was an important national holiday, the same things were done. proudly waving a little flag...). but i dont know if it really has never been tried properly. or if socialism just has to go as it went. im not sure if it can work. i love the idea that everyone is supposed to be equal and no one is better of than others. and things are not overpriced. a pan bread for 0,003 euro cent. or a bus ride for a cent... but some are more equal than others. party officials had proper cars and houses. anyhow. i think that central planning wouldnt be so disadvantegeous. free market isnt really possible anyway (just now when various banks like ezb push huge sums into stock markets to calm them down after the bubble bursted in the us). it would be good to have a mixture of central planning and capitalism, i think. but not for so many years ahead and a bit more flexible. a new born child basically got as a present? an order for a car because it took 15 years or so until it was delivered... or if there was no need for a certain profession no one could study it. my mum wanted to become a librarian and she ended up with construction economics whereas she cant really handle numbers... (ddr had some weird professions like construction economist. tractorist. polytechnic teacher.) so there was no freedom of choice, except only when taking the risk of being punished for having choice. but it is understandable under central planning. not everyone can become what he or she wants as there would be a shortage somewhere which collides with the plan. another things is, that tho you could buy basic things many were unavailable (there was only artificial coffee because importing the whole needed amount would have been too expensive. Bananas were available on very, very rare occasions, every other year or so). or just at certain times and certain places. supermarkets were empty most times. I sometimes get a bit scared when I got to tescos on a Saturday afternoon and the shelves are empty. But as everyone had some relatives in the west you sometimes got a package with coffee, little toys, clothes or whatever. Not necessarily new stuff. Just things that would have probably been thrown away otherwise. The wardrobes in my children’s room were bought a year in advance in a far away town because they were available then and my parents didn’t know if they would be when im born. The same with the allotment my parents had. They built a hut and the materials came from all over the gdr. You had to be good in organising things and you had to know people who know people. I sometimes think that it is still quite strong in east germany and people still organise something. Or built things themselves, like cars, submarines, houses and that stuff (cars and submarines were built by individuals…). Basically everything was scarce. I don’t say I was suffering all the time. You survived well. But it was more personal planning involved. And furthermore, if I don’t know what a banana is I can hardly miss it, cant I?
On the other side, the whole systems was tightly organised and your life was pretty straight. I was a Jung Pionier in primary school, a youth organisation. We did important stuff like writing to our ‘working’ heroes, or soldiers. We had ‘assemblies’ to decide how national holidays should be celebrated and great persons (Valentina Tereschokowa, first woman in space; I don’t if her name is right) are remembered. I was responsible for the ‘newspaper’. Making stars when udssr conquered space again… every had some position so nothing special with that. As a child it makes you somehow proud when you can do something ‘important’. Every morning before school we had to stand on the schoolyard and to report who was missing on that day. Or if we having an excursion. Or did some other great stuff. For this we had to raise our hand and put on our heads, like that thing cocks have and say “seid bereit, immer bereit” (be ready, always ready) later on you got into the Thälmann pioneers and then became a member of the FDJ but the ddr broke down before I got into them. Here is a pic of ernst thaelmann, communist and murdered by the Nazis.
I used to be a Pionier. Seid bereit, Immer bereit
at the age of 16 boys went to paramilitary training and girls to civil defense. Ddr had an ridiculous big army. Plus hundreds of thousands of red soldiers. Germany would have been a place for a hot war. Sometimes there were large manoeuvres where all socialists soldiers marched in west direction. A quiz game if they would stop or not. Ddr had plans for an invasion of west germany. And it is not for sure whether they would have done it or not. It looked quite likely… one of my uncles had to do his 18 months of military service in a border control unit and scared himself to death every day that he might have to shoot someone. Direct order. My dad had to go to training after the normal service every other years because he was studying and couldn’t have continued otherwise.

That song was forbidden because it deals of a bird and that everyone needs to escape from daily life sometimes… revolution! Run! Treason! So it was forbidden. Films were also forbidden if they were to critical. Or books. Or whatever (the artist wasn’t liked for some reason. mail from outside ddr were opened by the secret service…) it’s Renft “Als ich wie ein Vogel war”, When I was like a bird.

that song was more appropriate, easy and cheesy. Nina Hagen “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen”.

(while browsing youtube for videos I found this one, not really good but it’s the market place of my hometown… Puhdys “Scheidung”
Another DDR Band, playing in my home-town)
there was a really tight control of all citizens by the secret service. Either officially or mostly unofficially by unofficial agents. Roughly one spy for every 180 citizens and you never knew who it was. It could be everyone. With some it was very obvious (the husband of one my mum’s colleague was colonol in the stasi). Others had a very good cover and only years after the fall of the wall victims got to know about them (sometimes it was even your wife… files with the spies’ names have be ‘rescued’ by the cia a few days after the fall). There are espionage files about my parents, one of my uncles (as he was in the foreign department), about of my granddads… maybe there are more around. I really don’t know. It can take quite a while to get your file, given it is already found. And new things might be added every year.

So this is really just a very very little snapshot of ddr life and real existing socialism. Its not by far everything. I visited berlin with a friend and she said that life isnt so black and white that u can divide it into socialism vs capitalism. We visited some historical museums because she was interested in it. And even there it is really hard to show how it was because these facts are still “cold’ and ‘dead’. We walked along the wall and saw some plattenbauten. It somehow strange for me to see films like sonnenallee, good bye Lenin, or the lives of others. There is always some memory. And more plots for east germans as they know the contexts. Anyhow, what is the most interesting thing is the many different generations at the moment. I have completely different memory then my parents who have different experiences than my grandparents. It is even so that friends of mine who are 3 or 4 years older than me have complete different memory while brother who is 3 years younger than me has almost no memory and just knows socialist kindergarten. It is really interesting to listen different stories and experiences. There is a lot of (world) history in individual lives. I asked my parents in summer 1989 if we had to go to Hungary as well. There was a chance to get into the west and it was reported on west television what I saw (officially not, of course…). I still have my blue scarf from the pioneers. And my membership card. At the end of day I don’t know. I have been too young to fully experience ddr. For me it was a nice childhood and I more or less enjoyed it. Only afterwards the full extent became apparent to me. I don’t miss ddr at all. Some things were good but most were not. And when I just think of me studying in England im pretty happy that the ddr doesn’t exist anymore. It would have never been possible even to go to England. When some east germans complain about the capitalist system and how bad living they have now in comparison to ddr they should just think of their last vacation in malle or turkey… or that they can go into a supermarket and buy real coffee. Or can buy a car today and not in 15 years. And that they can say how bad living they have now. Bad living in the ddr? Never. A socialist citizen is always happy and well off (better off than those western fascists capitalists). A most of all freedom.