Word: german
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Soviet field marshal commands East Germany's 200,000-man army, its 600-plane air force and its 200-ship navy. The Soviet ambassador frequently sits in on meetings of Ulbricht's Politburo. More than 72% of East Germany's exports flow eastward, and East German tourists generally head the same way. License plates from Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union dot East Germany's sparsely traveled highways, and its famed spas and museums echo with the labial lilt of Slavic voices. Soviet troops-350,000 of them-have created enclaves of little Russias, little Ukraines...
While West German cities glisten with activity and night life, the workers' paradise next door seems to be like most paradises: merely dull. Its cities die at dusk, and those of its citizens who venture forth show on their faces the ennui, the boredom, of people who are constantly subjected to ideological blasts. East Germany's 40 daily newspapers are full of cant and propaganda, and even an annual folk fair has to be called a "Festival of Creative Socialism." Its intellectual life is almost totally noncreative, since voices that speak or hands that write with less than...
...stopped yet-East Germany now ranks as the second greatest industrial power in the East bloc (after the Soviet Union) and as ninth in the entire world. It is building new plants and new industrial towns all over, has developed a thriving shipbuilding industry from scratch. Such traditional East German industries as chemicals and optics are again enjoying international prestige. East Germany's economy is considered a growth economy, advancing about 4% a year...
...healthier if it were not tied so tightly to Russia, which continues to extract favorable deals from its satellite. Ulbricht in 1965 committed 45% of the country's exports for the following five years to the Soviet Union at ridiculously low prices-an act that caused East German Planning Chief Erich Apel to commit suicide on the day the deal was announced. As a result, East Germany is forced to ship eastward many of the machines that it needs to modernize its own factories and many of the exports that it needs to increase trade with the West...
Beetle Cuts. There are a few catches. To get ahead, students must belong to the Communist Free German Youth, and anyone who speaks too frankly about the regime may find himself expelled. Students must take tests in political aptitude before they can take end-of-the-year academic exams. Politics also color the curriculum: though East German instruction in the sciences is sometimes better than West Germany's, the humanities are warped by Communist propaganda. A seminar studying Reformation history, for example, will only emphasize Luther as a class-conscious leader of the peasantry...