Here are some good podcast episodes from Actually Existing Socialism that cover the GDR if you want a bit of an introduction:
East Germany: Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? w/Bruni de la Motte
The American Soldier Who Defected to East Germany (Part 1) w/ Victor Grossman
The American Soldier Who Defected to East Germany (Part 2) w/ Victor Grossman
What Has Socialism Ever Done For Women? w/ Julia Mead (This is a bit more tangential)
Writings available from the authors here:
I’d recommend considering using Balabolka as a TTS generator because if you go to Tools > Use online TTS service you can select IBM Watson as the TTS engine (and it bypass the word limit restrictions.)
I think that Michael is my preferred TTS option for Watson but it’s been a while. Whatever the case, Watson is far and away the most listenable TTS that I’ve come across.
Lmk if you want screenshots because the Balabolka UI is a bit clunky.
The past tense is in reference to the historical event, it doesn’t refer to the present state of Finland’s economy.
If someone had a post titled: “How Trump caused a rift within liberalism in the US” the past tense would not imply that Trump no longer exists or that he is no longer a politician, it would simply be referring to the political rift as a historical event.
Yep. Chuev conducted a series of lengthy interviews with Molotov over the period of 1969 - 1986 and he kept extensive notes about what Molotov attested to.
While I can’t seem to find an English language translation of 140 Conversations with Molotov, his other work, Molotov Remembers, is frequently cited as a primary source by historians.
Given that it’s testimony from something which was said many years prior to the interview I’d hazard a guess that Molotov was paraphrasing because the chances of it being an exact quote are vanishingly slim but such is the nature of historical work; often the eyewitness testimony is going to be somewhat hazy, especially long after the fact.
I personally would feel comfortable in saying that Stalin had actually said something to this effect, if not exactly word for word, to Molotov.
It’s according to Molotov’s recollection. From Сто сорок бесед с Молотовым by Felix Chuev:
Stalin himself, I remember, said during the war: “I know that after my death, my grave will be piled with rubbish. But the winds of history will ruthlessly dispel it!
Huh… that’s odd. This is the exact same names and order as a list which I’ve got.
No need to apologise, I just wanted to find the source for myself and when the screenshotted page didn’t turn up in the book you mentioned I did a little bit of digging to find the right book so thought I’d make a correction to save others the time/effort of trying to find the source.
Actually it’s from page 45 of The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and Its Aftermath by Dan Stone if anybody is interested
I’m not sure which meme you’re referring to but he did appear on Dr Phil one time over allegations that he blew up his neighbours’ swingset, not even kidding:
There’s Black Red Guard on YouTube, who is a Maoist. Just don’t go to him for his takes on swingsets 💀
Just to contribute to this point with something to reflect upon:
During the (laughably titled) “Red Vienna” era, when SocDems ran the city, the government built high quality housing blocks for the working people, which would house one tenth of the city’s entire population.
Rent in these blocks was around 4% of a working class income.
Are you pulling in more cash than a Viennese worker in the 1932, dollar-for-dollar (adjusted)? Probably.
Are you spending somewhere from 25-75% of your income on housing alone, making you effectively worse off than that Viennese worker in 1932? Again, probably.
When you crunch the rawest of numbers you can get some really skewed ideas about what the reality is. Statistics lie.