Re: United Germany & The Beginning of the End for the Socialist System in Eastern Eur
Gorbachev is one of my heroes. Yes he was a party man, and he believed he could reform communism / socialism (or whatever the proper term is) into a workable system.
But, two things.
In words and in deeds, he reformed communism. Opened it up. This was important from a moral point and from a practical point. A famous observation is that revolutions don't come about at the very depth of repression, they start once the repression is loosened.
And the second thing: Gorby decided not to send in the tanks. While some would argue that this is akin to that German general who decided to disregard Hitler's order to raze to the ground Paris in 1944, that is, that one should not appreciate the criminal for the crimes he did not commit, I think this is unfair. In light of Gorby's policies as a whole, the decision to set Poland free, to let the wall fall, was a sign of enlightenment and human values. Momentous and brave.
Re: United Germany & The Beginning of the End for the Socialist System in Eastern Eur
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Louis VI the Fat
Gorbachev is one of my heroes. Yes he was a party man, and he believed he could reform communism / socialism (or whatever the proper term is) into a workable system.
But, two things.
In words and in deeds, he reformed communism. Opened it up. This was important from a moral point and from a practical point. A famous observation is that revolutions don't come about at the very depth of repression, they start once the repression is loosened.
And the second thing: Gorby decided not to send in the tanks. While some would argue that this is akin to that German general who decided to disregard Hitler's order to raze to the ground Paris in 1944, that is, that one should not appreciate the criminal for the crimes he did not commit, I think this is unfair. In light of Gorby's policies as a whole, the decision to set Poland free, to let the wall fall, was a sign of enlightenment and human values. Momentous and brave.
:2thumbsup:
Ah Louis. What a tragedy that Strike got to you first.
Re: United Germany & The Beginning of the End for the Socialist System in Eastern Eur
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Louis VI the Fat
Gorbachev is one of my heroes. Yes he was a party man, and he believed he could reform communism / socialism (or whatever the proper term is) into a workable system.
But, two things.
In words and in deeds, he reformed communism. Opened it up. This was important from a moral point and from a practical point. A famous observation is that revolutions don't come about at the very depth of repression, they start once the repression is loosened.
And the second thing: Gorby decided not to send in the tanks. While some would argue that this is akin to that German general who decided to disregard Hitler's order to raze to the ground Paris in 1944, that is, that one should not appreciate the criminal for the crimes he did not commit, I think this is unfair. In light of Gorby's policies as a whole, the decision to set Poland free, to let the wall fall, was a sign of enlightenment and human values. Momentous and brave.
That's an absolutely brilliant post, that expresses, far more eloquently than I ever could, the debt we owe to the great visionary Mikhail Gorbachev.
However, I'm more interested in your signature. What's the background to that billiards video with Zizou? What was he doing? Who was filming? How did he do that shot?
Re: United Germany & The Beginning of the End for the Socialist System in Eastern Eur
I apologise about resurrecting this moribund thread, but I bumped heads today with this thought which is tangentially relevant to this debate:
Quote:
Why do borders still matter for economic activity? The reunification of Germany in 1990 provides a unique natural experiment for examining the effect of political borders on trade both in the cross-section and over time. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid formation of a political and economic union, strong and strictly enforced administrative barriers to trade between East Germany and West Germany were eliminated completely within a very short period of time. The evolution of intra-German trade flows after reunification then provides new insights for both the globalization and border effects literatures. Our estimation results show a remarkable persistence in intra-German trade patterns along the former East-West border; political integration is not rapidly followed by economic integration. Instead, we estimate that it takes at least one generation (between 33 and 40 years or more) to remove the impact of political borders on trade. This finding strongly suggests that border effects are neither statistical artefacts nor mainly driven by administrative or “red tape” barriers to trade, but arise from economic fundamentals.
Basically, economically East-West Germany was the perfect sandbox to play out what would become Globalisation(tm).
Those who have been to the Gothic homelands in the near past will still remember the differences between East and West, and how both could still, conceivably function as separate economies. Aside from the population changes, does anyone have any data on how did the fall of the wall change the purchasing power of germans and the output of the economy?
