I read “Stasi State or Socialist Paradise” a book describing general life in the GDR and how it functioned and having this insightful yet critical view of the GDR really opened me up. From communal engagement, work-place democracy and education there are many things we can look up to not necessarily the GDR only but also other former and current socialist countries…and also learn from the failures and errors of these countries. That being said, if i had to run a socialist country, i would draw great inspiration from the GDR and the USSR in particular though it is important to remember that everys country material conditions are different and therefore we cannot copy socialist models of other countries, all we can do is merely take them as a base to develope, adapt and improve to our countries.
Definitely East Germany. Imagine that but with the whole territory of the Weimar Republic had the KPD come to power instead of Nazi scum. There’d be no World War 2 and Marxism-Leninism would have likely spread much, much further than it did in our timeline. Germany, the USSR and later China being allies (ideally no Sino-Soviet split) and the Western scum nations would actually have been buried like Krushchev promised at the UN. Too bad he was not a good leader so maybe in this timeline someone else would have been in power.
Yes, it’s tragic that the GDR remained dedicated to Marxism-Leninism until it’s last days while the USSR itself faltered under Gorbechev and left the GDR out to dry.
The GDR was too close to the revisionist USSR for its own good. When Gorby implemented Perestrojka, Honecker wanted to do the exact same.