One of the best documentaries on the fall of the Soviet Union - Released 10 days ago. Its really brilliant. Educate yourselves on one of the most important historical events that effects your life right now.

Certainly a worthwhile watch. Top-tier politics like that is inherently difficult to judge but the integrity and especially the intelligence of that Nemeth character really shines through.
 
I liked it, shows that some people in power know that the system they work in is crumbling and are willing to let it go to bring in the new. While others will cling on to whatever they can to keep the decaying system afloat.
Drawing comparisons to modern America, I don't think we are to the levels of the 1980's Warsaw Pact but I hope that when the system starts to rot like a bloated corpse, some in power will let it go so something better and/or needed can replace it.
 
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Boss Hawg said:
I liked it, shows that some people in power know that the system they work in is crumbling and are willing to let it go to bring in the new. While others will cling on to whatever they can to keep the decaying system afloat.
Drawing comparisons to modern America, I don't think we are to the levels of the 1980's Warsaw Pact but I hope that when the system starts to rot like a bloated corpse, some in power will let it go so something better and/or needed can replace it.
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True. It is of course a puff piece narrated by Miklos Nemeth. But honestly it came across as heartfelt. Especially the scene where he recalls his own father viewing him as Judas for joining the communist party. Hard to fake that sort of thing. The man was presiding over the frontiers of a dying empire and faced with horrendous moral choices. He chose correctly, even when the choice at the time quite literally put him at risk of death. Its a rather inspirational story.

Never even knew about him before watching this. I knew intellectually that Hungary dismantling the border fence with Austria lead to the East Berlin-West Berlin border wall crisis, but this documentary made it very personal. Its good.
 
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The lessons of 1953, 1956 and 1968 were already in front of them but they all refused to learn and doubled down on the disaster. By the time those lessons were learned and some reformers attempted to implement them, people were sick of the entire socialist system.

The biggest disaster was the decision to attempt to match Western living standards by wasting hard currency on consumer goods imports instead of investing it into new industries, equipment, domestic consumer goods and technology.

This is why the Trabant (for example) was such an outdated piece of shit by the time of Die Wende, they never had proper funding to redesign and upgrade it so only incremental changes were possible. Duroplast is a pretty remarkable example of ingenuity in the face of resource limitations though.
 
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