March 12, 2010
Published: 8 Nov 09 12:35 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20091108-23107.html
Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was posted as a KGB agent in Dresden under communism, has said he feels nostalgia for the former East Germany, in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.
AFP (news@thelocal.de)
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Your comments about this article:
The british and french have plenty of old families with colonial experiences; the "when-we-weres" fondly recall when the livin' was easy because the game was rigged in their favor.
Rest assured that while may have warm feelings about the good old days, we dont feel any nostalgia for your former employers nor the political system they helped to keep up and running.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was not the "greatest catastrophe of the 20th century" it was the "most deserved catastrophe of the 20th century"
Im still seeing that fact the Soviet Union even failed to reach its 70th birthday by just a few days as a well deserved irony of history.
I cannot think of anything more just and deserved than what happened to the Soviet Union in 1991.
The GDR existed for many reasons. First, Stalin saw it as a step towards allowing Communism to take over the world (read "Stalin could take of the entire world"). It was "appropriate and necessary" to punish the Germans for causing all the problems in eastern Europe. It also prevented Germany from rebuilding for another go at the Russians in WWIII.
Most importantly, it was an important source of manufacturing that Russia was incapable of creating themselves. Remember, most of the East German economy was based upon making "stuff" for export to Russia (at very favorable prices) to support the Soviet Union, an economy that could not support itself.
In short, the GDR was simply a large slave-labor camp constructed to provide material wealth to Russia and serve as a buffer against those darn, freedom-loving Americans and Europeans. The wall was simply a slight addition to those conditions.
As an American who lived through those times...before, during, and after...and wish I could be there tonight to join in. The Mauerfall was a victory for mankind, not for capitalism or any other political system. One need only look at the pictures from that night to know the truth.
I was six years old, living in Nürnberg when this happened. I didn't really understand everything that was going on at the time. I now live in Mobile, Alabama, and feel a bit disconnected from the rest of the world...