In East Germany, you could send a letter to any official’s office up to the chairman with complaints, suggestions, etc, and they not only had to read it, but had to respond back with the steps they took to resolve your issue, or explain why they couldn’t resolve it, within 4 week. By law, they had to prove to you that they put in every effort to help you. Then every few months, they had to submit to a committee of volunteers all the letters they received and the responses the gave. This committee published all the data of the amount of letters sent through this channel, and the % of letters that were successfully resolved. It’s estimated that at least 2/3rds of all households in East Germany had sent such a letter and got a successful resolution out of it, throughout the DDR’s history.
I recall reading somewhere that the Communist party can be viewed as one big complaint bureau. It seems like the GDR took this to heart pretty well.
Any reading you can recommend on this?
There’s a youtube channel called Socialist Swan that covers a lot of aspects of life and inner workings in the DDR.
I’d also suggest this book: “Stasi State or Socialist Paradise”
Stalin personally stood behind all 42 million people with a gun to each of their heads, and what’s unforgivable is that he didn’t even buy the gun from the US.
Same thing in Cuba