My dad lived and worked in East Germany. He had many friends from there. I asked him a few times, and he told me never did he (a foreigner) or any of his East German friends and colleagues ever feel they were being surveilled, watched, suspected, stopped and interrogated or any other dystopian shit that people online attribute to communist states.
My brother studied in Russia in the 90s. He constantly asked people he met if this was their experience. Everyone would say no, and that they only knew of extreme cases, where whatever they were suspected of was cleared up quickly enough, with no torture, disappearance, imprisonment or mistreatment.
This is just straight up propaganda perpetuated by cold war culture and the lies of people who “escaped”.
I met German guy a year or two ago who worked as a spy for West Germany in the 1980s. He freely admitted that the GDR put up the wall for good reasons. I asked him which side of the wall he liked better. He had to think for a minute and said ‘West. They have a more exciting nightlife… but the East was quieter and the people there were more kind’
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
