Chris Doss The Russia Journal ---------------------------
The GDR is supposed to have been much, much more repressive that the USSR. In his "In First Person" collection of interviews, he says he was shocked when he went there as a KGB officer, that it was like taking a time machine back to the Stalin era. (As an aside, the only time he really shows emotion in that book is when he describes the feeling of betrayal when Gorbachev didn't use force to preserve the GDR. His wife describes a friend of the family who was in the Stasi collapsing in tears.)