WI the Commies left their people go?

[basileus]

This was an AH illumination, like John Belushi in the church in "The Blues Brothers" *reverent homage*
WI the Communist regimes, whose most loathsome feature was their jailing of entire nations "for security reasons", left the unhappy,the dissidents etc. simply go (obviously implanting a great number of spies in the West such way, to counterbalance the neat loss in tech skil, manpower and so on)?
What effects could this move have, had it been made say after 1956, with the destalinization, and no Berlin Wall? Do you believe, like me, that some people would simply come back finding freedom too much a burden?
Could Communism have a possibilty of an inner peaceful evolution from totalitarian tyranny to multiparty democracy, instead of fossilizing and suiciding?

 

[NapoleonXIV]

Well, its hard to see how the would have built the walls if they hadn't had to. I mean the PR you're giving to the rest of the world.....No, they wouldn't do that if it wasn't absolutely necessary. That meant they were hemorrhaging very valuable people at an enormous rate and very few were returning.

At least that what logic dictates, Captain. But history is seldom logical. Besides the reasons I've just given did the walls have any other cause or movement that might have explained them?

They've always struck me a rather odd. Most governments up till now have been dictatorial and even oppressive but this is the first one that actually locked its people up and yet still tried to argue they were better.

 

[Brilliantlight]

Well, its hard to see how the would have built the walls if they hadn't had to. I mean the PR you're giving to the rest of the world.....No, they wouldn't do that if it wasn't absolutely necessary. That meant they were hemorrhaging very valuable people at an enormous rate and very few were returning.

At least that what logic dictates, Captain. But history is seldom logical. Besides the reasons I've just given did the walls have any other cause or movement that might have explained them?

They've always struck me a rather odd. Most governments up till now have been dictatorial and even oppressive but this is the first one that actually locked its people up and yet still tried to argue they were better.

Agreed, even the pre-WWII Nazis didn't stop German citizens from leaving Germany.

 

[Chris]

The Jews? Even apart from them, the germans were often pains about allowing the people to leave. That said, if there were masses of uncontrolled emmigration, the NATO nations might want to block it themselves as the immigrents would be competing for jobs.

Chris

 

[Brilliantlight]

The Jews? Even apart from them, the germans were often pains about allowing the people to leave. That said, if there were masses of uncontrolled emmigration, the NATO nations might want to block it themselves as the immigrents would be competing for jobs.

Chris

Actually, suprisingly, no. Read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". After the war started they were worried but not before.

 

[Susano]

I think NATO would take greta pains to take all Warscaw Pact emmigrants, simply for propaganda reasons.
However, without "population control", East europe would be "bled white" after only one, two decades... simpley becasue most working people wuould indeed have left.

 

[carlton_bach]

It sounds like a pretty unlikely development to me for the entire Eastern Bloc (though Yugoslavia tried it, if you recall that country). But let's maybe assume Stalin dies in the first few days of the invasion, Beriya and Molotov do not make it past the war with their power intact, and a more moderate, nationalist military-dictatorship faction (emerging gloriously from the Great Patriotic War) runs a more sensible policy...

I think it could have worked. You have to keep in mind that until 1960, while Berlin hemorrhaged tens of thousands of emigrants annually, these represented the count of the entire GDR. THey came to a country that had the same language and culture and officially welcomed them (unofficially the 'Zonies' were anything but welcome in most places). The other countries would likely lose far fewer people - where would a Pole or Slovak go? In Berlin itself, there were plenty of people who worked on one side of the border and lived on the other (more of them lived East and worked West because of the currency differential). Plenty of folks would have loved to go on like that indefinitely (and frankly, the GDR could have done with the inflow of hard DMarks)

Also, many of the refugees faced a stark choice of either living out their life in an increasingly repressive and unforgiving system or leaving for good, running a very small risk in the process but never being allowed to return. I think that, had the regime at home been less repressive and the choice less brutal, many might have opted to become seasonal cross-border migrants or returned home after a few years in the west, homesick for the old certainties or their families.

Maybe the FRG would, instead of importing foreign workers from Turkey, Italy, Spain and Yugoslavia, recruit extensively in the GDR? East German 'Gastarbeiter' sending home a large chunk of hard cash every year might just have been what the country needs. Also, with a bit more cross-border traffic the industry could have faced more competitive pressures and developed to keep up with the world market. Posit a similar development for Poland and the CSSR ("Socialism with a human face" was tried, remember?) and the east might turn into a nice enough place to live.

Hell, "Lifelong security, a meaningful existence in service to your fellow man in a society dedicated to justice and equality" - if I could believe a word of it, I'd take the deal in a minute, higher salaries be damned.