love my Oma, she’s turning 90 next week (born 1934!) and was the first person I came out as bi to. Defo hanging one or two of these up in my dorm
Whenever people imply communism = lack of incentive for human greatness, I think about how my grandparents had lower class parents and were extremely poor (even starving) in their post-war childhood, but ended up leading pretty impressive lives, despite knowing they wouldn’t live much above the material reality of their neighbors for it.
My grandma was an interior architect and my grandpa an astrophysics professor and professional photographer. Both were gymnasts in their 20’s (my grandpa has a couple medals below). They didn’t do any of that shit for luxury, they figured they’d lead a modest life in the standard plattenblau housing block as the other working people of their town (small but cute and cozy apartment, I was there not too long ago), and that’s what they wanted.
They never needed to drive a car in their lives, and often visited countries across the Eastern Bloc by bike/public transit. My grandma always had a thing for making fruit preserves and cool pottery (still killing it), and my grandpa for art from wood carving (he was also a mountain climber). They had a nice community garden they always tended to too. It’s a beautiful town with a lot to see, honestly can’t wait to visit again
My mom was 19 when the Berlin Wall fell. She studied english abroad when everything went to shit under capitalism. Ended up moving to the US just because she met my dad. Usually when she tells an American she grew up in the DDR, they look all shocked and ask some insane shit like if she was starving to death, or if she knew anyone who was shot and killed trying to climb the wall (💀⁉️). Certainly no one was starving by the 70s/80s. My mom and all her friends and acquaintances had great childhoods. She had a small town, middle of nowhere school system that pushed sports, music, art, multilingualism, sciences, etc. on her heavily (when I did track and field in high school she always told me how her school’s facility was 10x better lmao). The DDR fostered genuine human greatness. But ig they didn’t have bananas at grocery stores and a hundred car brands like the west 🤷♂️
Weren’t many of those skilled workers educated by state institutions? Not justifying it, but the likely mindset, aside from whatever perception of making your citizens “impure,” is that you have spent decades of valuable resources to educate these folks to contribute to your society, and now they want to leave - for whatever reasons - and contribute to the enemy’s society who prays for your downfall.
This is happening in Puerto Rico. Students are getting educated by their schools and leaving to the US because there are no opportunities there. And real estate developers and investors swoop into the decaying island to enrich themselves. PR is not barring people from leaving, but they’re definitely frustrated that their investments are not paying off and perhaps even actively harming them.
Hey, yeah this is of course a Problem in many countries, “Brain-Drain” is no fun. I am also not shure on how to best address this. but I do not think that people should be imprisoned (okay, harsh term, but I am lacking better vocabulary here) by their native country. Everyone should ideally be able to roam freely. What would you suggest? Have them at least work some x years in their homecountry? Let them leave if they agree to pay back their education? Genuinley curious.