Not really, although the efficiency has obviously increased over time. We're generally considered to be living in the most peaceful period in human history right now.
Velvet Revolution 25 years ago today
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Not really, although the efficiency has obviously increased over time. We're generally considered to be living in the most peaceful period in human history right now.
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
He really was. Very different to Wałęsa - maybe not as incredibly brave (though brave, still!) but much more thoughtful and measured. I really enjoy Timothy Garton-Ash writing about him.
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Absolutely not the case in Poland or Lithuania, mate. That's a ridiculious thing to assert. And i cannot believe that East Germans want a return to the days of the Stasi and Honicker.
And also my other half's birthday. Havel was a great man.
Never knew that Willem Dafoe had such a huge fan base.
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Fair comment, though the Poles, being as bloody-minded as the Germans are compliant, would never think that, believe me, not least because of the dreadful food and essential goods shortages that were a fact of daily Polish life but never occured in East Germany. You tend not to hanker for two hour queues for a loaf of bread, often only to be disappointed.
I was reading a survey the other day that suggested the majority of Czechs felt the same way (think it was 60/40 or there abouts). It's a bit baffling to be honest. One thing that seems common throughout Europe (maybe the world?) is that during this financial malaise, people have been much more inclined to cling to fringe parties that claim to offer salvation in some way. Any port in a storm or something perhaps.
As you say, goods were in terribly short supply, information was far from free, travel was extremely restricted. It's hard to really fathom, although the Czechs have had some horrible politicians since Havel passed away. Some real stinkers.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
It's not that hard to fathom. It's the unequal nature of these societies now that give rise to a nostalgia for the past. Under the old Stalinist order they'd have suffered from lack of freedom to move and material prosperity, but there was a base level that couldn't be dropped below in terms of food, shelter, employment...unlike in 'democracies' where destitution is as much a part of the system as wealth creation.
If only it was just that though. If you didn't think/behave the right way, then I'm not sure those base levels could be exactly relied upon. My in-laws, for instance, were forbidden from entering university or service level professions because they were opposed to the party.
I don't doubt for certain sections of society, communism would have been great, and there would have been a lot of money to be made from it. I don't think we can possibly suggest that things aren't better now though than they were 30-40 years ago.
I mean if you look at Germany, the east is still struggling to catch up with the prosperous west, even after a couple of decades of unification. That's how badly the Soviets ballsed it up.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Different metrics used will get different attitudes/results.
If you measure success in terms of psychic benefits, then the 'new' system is better; if you measure it in terms of material distribution, then there's an argument to be made that the levelling of wealth under the old system (leaving out the party/military elite and their bureaucrats), such as it was, made the old system more palatable.
My grandad on my dad's side, may he rest in peace, was opposed to the party and wasn't ever allowed to prosper in his job/anywhere. It was like he was labelled as a black sheep - nowhere would accept him. "Yeah, you're qualified, in fact overqualified, but it says here you're not a communist" - sacked/never got the job. Ended up working at a factory, and it's where he passed as well, as his health wasn't up to match the heavy conditions.
@davek - yeah, some people were better off. I mean, communism had its good sides, if you're looking from the outside - everyone was supposedly equally as rich (rather say poor here...), and never hungry and never out of a job. But compared to the rest of the world - you were suppressed and mega poor. To put exactly how mega poor I'm talking about, and I've written this here before, so sorry for repetition - when the equalisation of money hit as communism went, the value of money dropped rapidly, as you'd expect. But I don't mean that value halved or something - it dropped by thousands. My grandparents' life savings ended up buying them... a TV set. Not even a good one, an average TV. In new money it equalled something around a hundred lev; in old money they had about a million. This is the economic lie, that we were in a stable financial situation.
My dad summed it up for me like this a few years ago when I was studying it in school - "wherever communism went - no one's fully recovered".
Pretty much exactly the same for my father in-law. Ended up working in a manual job, whereby he one day had an 'accident' and died. His body was cremated before any investigation could be undertaken.
Lets be honest here, the current climate seems to revolve around migration. The fact that so many people want to come to Britain says a lot. I don't know that many people from the west were striving to migrate to behind the curtain, but plenty were killed trying to leave.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
I wouldn't defend the old parties who ran the eastern bloc countries (which were Stalinist and only nominally 'communist', btw). But blacklists existed here too. Look at the Economic League, for example, which worked as a clearing house for employers that would sift through lists of 'subversives' they'd built up info about and then advise bosses against employing such people...subversives usually meant people who were involved in strikes previously or were shop stewards/members of left political groups etc. They were doing their stuff until 1993....and no doubt they have their less prominent successor 'think tanks' in the present.
On the standard of living stuff: I'm not saying a race to the bottom to get equality is a good thing (which seems to be at the heart of the eastern European nostalgia for the old days). But that type of attitude certainly feeds into a strand of thought about political economy that only in societies where the distribution of wealth is more equal will people be more happy. It's not the level of wealth or poverty that's important; happiness/contentment is best measured in terms of narrowing levels of inequality....in terms of wages, general income, health access, housing availability etc.
This book's become a best seller over the last few years, and argues that case with a lot of empirical evidence:
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