Are there simmilar graphs where they compare the German Democratic Republic with the Federal Republic? And is there a graph where they show how the territories of the former German Democratic Republic evolved after the wall fell? Just curious.
The GDR wasn't really doing well, even up to this day the eastern parts of Germany are not yet on the western standarts as there are differences between loans and pensions, in generall people in the east receive less payment and pensions compared to their western peers. A very hot topic in politics.
I think there is no doubt about that the communistic system as we saw it around the world was (and still is) a failure. But I find it a bit arrogant though to believe that everything we achieved today is a contribution of capitalism and our western way of life. It has lead to its own issues as well. And we can feel the effect of it in many different ways. I am not sure if it is much of a relief to poor people in the area of Detroit that can barely make a living supporting their famaily if you tell them, well at least you havn't ended up in a Soviet Gulag.
For me both communism and western capitalism have lead to issues, each with its own very dramatic effects though.
I just find it problematic to always hammer on Russia while never questioning our own motivations. Making this a battle between standarts or feeling supperior because of western ideals will not solve the situation in the long run.
To quote a post from someone about the subject as It describes better what I think:
As many people would say, right and wrong depend on your perspective. From a Western point of view, the overthrow of a democratically elected leader would be cause for concern, but he was opposed to their interests, so it was ok to support the revolution. Now the Russians have gone ahead and invaded the Ukraine territory on the flimsiest of pretexts, which is an outrageous violation of human rights and international law. So of course it is right to denounce the Russian incursion and try and get international support on possible sanctions.
From a Russian perspective, years of NATO expansion has meant that Russia has felt more hemmed in than ever before. Suddenly, an opportunity presents itself to have a mjor influence over a territory which has been historically under your purview. You know that you won't face any real opposition from the EU or the West, so from that perspective, you are absolutely well within your rights to do it. Anyway, who are the US to complain about international law when they invaded Iraq?
From a Crimean perspective, you have seen a President which was democratically elected (with a large help from your region) overthrown by what seem to be far-right elements who have outlawed Russian as a second language and seem set on drumming out any pro-Russian members of parliament. You are also being 'encouraged' by your Russian patrons to fight back and Putin has indicated he is ready and willing to help you. So of course, you are completely right to take over government buildings, install a new leader and ask for help from your would-be rulers in Moscow.
From an EU perspective, you just wish everyone would leave you alone.
Is there an objective truth in all this? Not likely.
Even though I have no clue how accurate the information are by now, how much the elections either in Ukraine or the Crimea have been free and which side deserves more trust, I am sure there was a lot of pressure on every side, but depending on your position everyone feels right and while Russia is violating rights here and breaching international laws I just feel that it is simply way to easy to paint them as the evil force here and making this a situation of "black and white" while also ignoring Russia, honestly no one would ignore the US if their concerns would be touched in any way or form, we didn't in the past and many of our politicians bow to it and many European nations support the US in their war against terror which lead to the situation we see today in Iraq.
Each side, be it the EU, USA or Russia will follow their interests and do everything to push their agenda while ignoring the people, freedom? Democracy? Only if it costs us nothing. If all of our decisions and actions are the right thing for Ukraine? I don't know it. If our actions lead to a free Ukraine, awesome, but the people in charge here and elsewhere sure don't do it because they feel generous, and the moment they can not get any benefits out of it they will drop the case, just as how it has been done with Chechnya and Georgia, that simple. That's all I am saying. That is my biggest fear that we might turn Ukraine just into another shithole because we promise support, but we don't do it. And I would not be surprised if Putin is exactly pushing his luck to achieve that, to test and see how far he can gamble here.
Will the west openly support Ukraine, with weapons, military support and more if needed? It is very unlikely that we will see a full war any time soon, but it is not impossible! Putin does not have the upper hand here though, so there is a good chance that Ukraine can make it's own decisions, hopefully. But they are still neighbors to Russia and no one knows what will happen in the future eventually. Poland and many other former east European states are much closer to nations like Germany and France. The question is will Russia for example accept NATO forces or foreign troops, be it German, French or even US troops in Ukraine? Would any US president support Russian or Iranian troops in Mexico or Canada even if they asked for it? That is the point. That isn't a matter of right or wrong but about strategical concerns. And no Russian politician, be it Putin or Jelzin would probably accept western influence in Ukraine. No matter how justified our cause might be here. At least I can not imagine any realistic situation where Ukraine would gain the same status like Poland for example even if they don't join the NATO - that one is out of the picture anyway.
We are playing with fire here after all and I hope that we won't get burned.
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If we're comparing US occupation to Soviet, the growing disparity between the paths that North and South Korea took as a case study is as stark as it gets..
Which was also achieved by corruption, oppression and installing a de-facto dictatorship in South Korea with characters like Syngman Rhee who had no trouble to haunt political dissidents and leftists in some cases killing them even. His governing style was extremely authoritarian. And particularly during the Korean war both sides, including the South, had no qualms to commit horrorible atrocities against civilians. The fact that the South managed to evolve better than the north is sure a huge relieve for those that lost their relatives because of people like Syngman or Kim Chang-ryong. Let us all not forget that any of those economical victories have been bought not only with dollars - hint: huge financial support by the west, but also with a lot of blood.
Like I said. Nothing in this world is always clearly evil or only good. And each side will always try to show it self as positively as possible. It is always a good thing to question motivations here and even if there is a clearly better side to ask some unpopular questions, if the murder of so many people was justified simply because of their attitude. Something which also happened even in the US. As some might remember the trials of communists which saw their death sentence. I will not call the Soviet ideas or communistic leaderships anything else than what they are, dictatorships that don't give their population even enough room to breath. But we should never ever forget that given the chance, we would not be the better people. Because simply put. We aren't. We just never had the chance to prove it. Think about characters like Lee May here who had no issue to pulverize the whole world and
bomb everyone back to the stone age (his words) just to make a point. The kind of attitude where if 2 Americans and 1 Russian survive the nuclear war, it would be already a victory. Lunatics and fanatics exist on all sides. We had simply the luck to grow up in the system that well had never such figures ruling the nation, albeit when I think about Nixon and his Mad-Man strategy during the Vietnam war where he completely annihilated nations like Cambodia allowing groups like the Red Khmer to eventually rule over the nation and killing millions in the process, than I feel that we simply dodged a bullet here that OTHER nations had to take for us.
We are rich because others have to suffer. We tend to forget this way to often when we talk about our success in the world. When ever we talk about the economic success we should not forget the extensive wars and proxy wars we had in he past, the fact that a large part of the western world, US, Germany, France and many more are some of the worlds biggest dealers in arms and that quite a lot of jobs are tied either directly or indirectly to those weapon companies, we also had a huge benefit from the communistic system that keept legions of cheap workers behind their curtain and now as more and more companies start to exploit those we start to realize this. That we do not only owe our economy and power to our ingenuity and hard work but because we have no scruple to exploit those that can't defend them self and that we also exploit nations for their resources.
I acknowledge the fact that "our" part of the world had it better than the rest. There is absolutely NO doubt about it. But if that is a reason to be proud about the system we have grown up with? I am not so sure. And we should not be so delusional to believe that what works here, for us is the kind of system that can and will work eveywhere around the world. It still is build heavily on the fact that there is a small rich side and a large poor one.
