stories from behind the berlin wall
I just finished reading Anna Funder's Stasiland, which I learned about from Charlie Stross, and it was an unbelievably good book.

The GDR seemingly took to Stalinism with the zeal of a religious convert and completely outdid its parent state in creating an Orwellian surveillance state. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union had one KGB agent for every 5800 people. The GDR had one Stasi agent or informer for every 63 people. If part-time informers are counted, it was one informer for every 6.5 citizens. Everyone was under observation by the state.

Stasiland looks at what living in such a society does, both to the watched and the watchers, and how people have dealt with their roles in such a society now that it no longer exists. Funder does this by letting former East Germans tell their stories, whether they were imprisoned or whether they worked for the Stasi. It's almost unfathomable, what it must have been like to live in the GDR. Funder pretty much sums it up at one point: "Relations between people were conditioned by the fact that one or the other of you could be one of them. Everyone suspected everyone else, and the mistrust this bred was the foundation of social existance."

Once the Wall came down, and Germany was reunited, Germany took the step, which apparently no other Eastern Bloc country has taken, of opening up the Stasi files to the public. Individuals are allowed to see their files with names of third parties redacted, but with the real names of Stasi agents and informers who observed and informed on them. I cannot imagine what this does to a society, much less an individual, to know which of your family members, friends, or coworkers spied on you and to also know that these same people are still in positions of authority. After the files were opened up, even Erich Honecker and, apparently, Erich Mielke asked to see their files.

This book was infuriating, heartbreaking, and inspiring. It sounds cliche, but it was a good reminder of what people can do to each other in the name of ideology, and for any sane state, it should serve as a warning of what not to do.