Mouth-front

USSR - GDR: forty years of fraternal confrontation

If the Poles in the Warsaw bloc played the role of dissidents, the Czechs - compromisers, and the Hungarians and Bulgarians - compote producers, then the Germans were our eternal rivals - in sports, in megalomania and in socialism. They surpassed Russia in the perfection of the system of preschool institutions, which to this day is considered the most advanced in a unipolar world that has turned towards humane socialism. They broke the Russian monopoly on the love of Indians by flooding the countries of the bloc with plastic Apaches and celluloid Goiko Mitichs. They took the most orthodox position in suppressing communist heresies in the fraternal capitals. Finally, they did not worship borrowed idols: the founding father of the Teaching was their own, local, dear.

The Stasi counterintelligence was the second red intelligence service after KGB, which was used to scare democratic children. The Berlin TV Tower was built by Ostankinskaya's younger sister, and only because of the moderate size of people's democratic Germany. In skating, swimming, gymnastics, running and other flexible individual disciplines, the main sports power in the world was always competing with the East Germans, and when the biathlon quartets of the USSR and the GDR “worked neck and neck” in the final of the relay, it lost all resemblance to sports. Other teams competed elegantly behind the brackets, in the noble fields of Olympic camaraderie - leaving them far behind, at the finish line the Scythians fought with the Nibelungs, and it seemed that at the last firing line real, combat clips would go into the chambers.

Behind them was the iron spirit of the hunting barons, the centuries-old traditions of Teutonic athleticism, the clanging of invincible armadas and the taste for the conscientious execution of any task - behind us were Russia, Moscow and the Arbat, four years and the shoulder straps of CSKA officers invisible to the world. Losing to the Czechs in hockey was a shame, to the Vietnamese in basketball was ridiculous, to the Germans in any case was impossible. However, there were probably similar sentiments on the other side.

Competitiveness brought the fierce antagonists together: the Gereks-Gusaks-Kadars-Zhivkovs looked like minor vassals of the state, and only Honecker gave the impression of a junior partner of the great metropolis. Among cooks and footmen, East Germany was the butler - that’s why she parted with the owner like a gentleman, without squabbles. The Germans were not a counterfeit of Europe, like the Slavic brothers, but a genuine, ineradicable, visceral Europe. Apart from us, they alone knew what a real war, famine, occupation was and what it meant to defend the capital to the last man. And they were the only former relatives who did not harbor any grudge against the Russians, for defeat in battle is always more honorable than hasty capitulation. In addition, the troops were with them on a legal basis indefinitely and left of their own free will, and not due to ultimatums of international law.

What else remains in memory of the strange concept of "East Germans"? Vulgar, with a mother-of-pearl tint, the Madonna sets. Magazine for snotty people "Bummi". Children's series about unattended uncut boys. The slutty Dresden trainee girls who cried at our farewell to the army were more bitter than their own. The TV game "Do with us, do as we do, do better than us", a caliper on the flag, the abbreviation DDR on stamps, Inspector Warnicke in "Science and Life", a toy railway with fake grass crumbs and the GDR television ballet "Friedrichstadt Palace" on New Year's Eve. And yet, nevertheless, ueber alles is a great gift for calmly accepting a loss, breaking a sword on your knee, and not stealing change from the new owners from the bedside table.

The GDR was the only country that submitted to the Soviets that did not have the inclination to stick to any winner, but diligently and diligently beat him on his own field.

The tournament is over. Combat draw. It's a pleasure to do business with you, fellow Teutons.

Denis GORELOV