On Oct 13, 2010, at 10:45 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
>
> Russia and its EE satellites were backward rural societies that never
> experienced democracy or even a republican form of government in their
> history or had a real economy. This backwardness created dysfunctions
> so ingrained in social fabric, that would persist regardless of what
> political regime ("Reds" or "Whites") succeeded the tsar.
East Germany was an industrial society that had experienced both bourgeois democracy (from repeal of the Antisocialist Laws until 1933) and a republican form of government (from 1919 to 1933). So was Czechoslovakia for an even longer time. Yet the "ingrained dysfunctions" they experienced under Stalinism were essentially identical to those of the other satellites and distinctly worse than in "backward rural" Yugoslavia.
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos