The aim

A recent Pew poll shows that Germans, Czechs, and Poles remain relatively enthusiastic about democracy and capitalism; Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Lithuanians less so. Former East Germans’ hopes of achieving the living standards of their Western countrymen have not been fulfilled, and the inevitable disappointments have muted anniversary celebrations. Last month in Dresden, a retired schoolteacher acknowledged the pining of some East Germans for their simpler, cozier former lives under state socialism. There’s even a neologism for it: Ostalgie. But, the teacher said, “What matters is that I can talk with an American journalist without going to jail, that I can travel without filling out forms, that I can read what I want to read, that I’m not told what TV station I can watch and not watch, that at school I don’t have to say something that I don’t say in private at home. This is what is decisive to me today.”

-November 9th by George Packer, The New Yorker.


What a misleading piece of work.

Just because the country was under the rule of a politial party which supposedly adapted a Marxist-Leninist ideology, does that make it "socialist"?(what a way to label things..) And besides what the teacher is describing here is not "socialism", it's oppression. So irrelavant. I come from a "democratic", "capitalistic" country which I consider is suffocating and oppressive. Should I say that I feel confined because the country is under the rule of democratic party? Ridiculous.