What I've read about the GDR is that money was rarely the problem. You couldn't spend the money if what you wanted to buy was simply not available (except maybe in "Intershops" where you needed to pay in Western currency, that was in fact very expensive). It really was a different system.
Read a memoir by a KGB agent who arrested a man in Moscow who was passing info to the CIA. Had been doing so for years. The CIA had the typical western attitude towards money so they kept giving him stacks of rubles. Thinking they were being generous. The man (a professor, I think) had nothing to spend it on so he stacked cash up in a closet. Had around 1 million stored when he was caught. He probably would have been better off just burning it as the money was used as evidence in his trial.
Had a chance to ask a Russian / Soviet historian how one could spend a million rubles in the late 70s, early 80s. He just shrugged and laughed about it. Almost no way to spend that much. Nothing cost very much and there wasn't much of it.
Yes the movie Night Crossing also shows very well that there was a lot of suspicion, for example they had to buy the fabric from lots of different places and this a slipup actually caused them to be ratted out (not sure if this particular part of the story happened to these people in real life too but it was really a thing)
Yes, was noticing the same. It was easy for them to sell the car and get a new one, so this meant a lot of connections and underground "jobs" for the extra revenue.
Anyways, fantastic story. First time reading despite living relatively close.
I’m loving the comments here. But I confess I exoected a ‘social technology’ solution to the problem!! Like “casserole” in the UK, which connects people in a neighbourhood with others who need food and a visit. You make a casserole and take it round. I’ve not seen this in person but it seems like a great application of tech to help ward off loneliness… You could easily extend this to “dog friends” or “cat friends”, where you’re connected with someone who’d like you to visit them and bring your dog or cat for an introduction and a pat
I wrote sound-sampling software for Atari using Action! and Mac/65 by OSS, using my own DAC+ADC hardware (8-bit of course). They were fast tools, it was very productive.
I found myself thinking, “I wonder if some of this could be used to playback video on old 8-bit machines?” But they’re so underpowered…
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