Comment by sixhobbits
14 hours ago
How does one reconcile the idea that the Stasi disappeared political opponents regularly but also engaged in weird stuff like moving people's socks around.
> The final stages entailed psychological and physical harassment: moving things around at home (one morning the alarm clock goes off at 5am instead of 7am, and the socks are in the wrong drawer, there’s no coffee left …); damage to bikes and vehicles (eg slashing tyres); the spreading of rumours as mentioned above; ordering goods and making appointments in target’s name etc.
I get that sometimes a "broken" opponent is more useful than a dead one as they can sabotage the whole cause, like this article implies. But if you hold as much power as they did then it seems very unlikely to me that using resources to troll someone like this provides an effort/reward ratio that would be interesting to someone with that much existing power
You can't disappear everyone. Deniable punishment of possible precrime would create superstitions for the general population to be on their best behavior. Sabotage that slows down an adversary would enable more time for surveillance.
See "predictive policing", https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...
> One former deputy described the directive like this: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.” In just five years, Nocco’s signature program has ensnared almost 1,000 people.
Perhaps for the same reason Russia's intelligence forces does it? They kill people in an obvious manner to send a message and the message is to demoralise, destabilise and psychologically harass other people. "I could be next"
I'm not sure if the Stasi disappeared people in an obvious or hidden manner though. Maybe they did it more frequently than modern states assassinations? In both cases it shows that the life of any person is not important to them - what's important is the effects an action causes.
The question you ask is really important, because it shows how devious the Stasi regime was and why it lasted half a century. Why would they do this? Why would they go through these lengths to destroy a person so entirely they wouldn't even need to disappear them?
The Stasi knew that power is never that absolute. The GDR was built upon the idea that is was good, not evil (like the West). You can't be good and regularly disappear public figures, especially those from intellectual cycles. Additionally, people were aware of the oppression as is. If the GDR would have simply disappeared people, there would have been revolts. Germans were too connected to the other reality.
Here is a popular song from that time
I think what I want,
and what makes me happy,
but all in silence,
and as it befits.
My wish and desire
no one can forbid,
it remains so:
thoughts are free.
...
And if they lock me up
in a dark dungeon,
all that is purely
futile work;
for my thoughts
tear through the barriers
and walls in two:
thoughts are free.
The song predates the GDR by at least a century though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Gedanken_sind_frei
The Stasi documented what they did in quite some detail and most of the documents were not destroyed during the fall of the wall. So, there is no need for speculation.
I'm by no means an expert on the matter but as far as I know, the Stasi did not disappear political opponents regularly, at least not after Stalin's time. I looked over the article and didn't find that claim but if I missed it and it's in there, then the article is wrong about it. The Stasi had a large array of measures at disposal. Some people were cleared for moving out of the country to West Germany. Others went to prison. Some people were exposed to radioactive materials. Others got a better job that moved them away from other dissidents.
Specific "Zersetzungsmaßnahmen" you and the article mention were very rare - we're talking about an estimated few hundred to thousands cases in total. When they occurred, however, they were extremely devastating because not even experienced critics of the system imagined them. We're not just talking about switching socks and replacing good milk with spoiled one in the fridge. There were also cases of medical doctors prescribing the wrong drugs, for example, worsening the symptoms of diseases.
As far as I know, who became the victim of these special measures may not have been a fully rational decision. It seemed to be based to a large extent on the preferences of the case officers in charge.
Broader measures against critics of the system were far more common, however, and way more pervasive than what most people suspected at the time. For example, the father of a former girlfriend of mine was a famous GDR rock musician. He later found out from the archives that the Stasi planned and supervised his whole life and managed to break up his former band without anyone suspecting it. One guy moved somewhere else for work, another went to prison, and he moved elsewhere, too. There were also way more informants than he ever suspected. Basically, the Stasi and their informants interfered with what other artists he met, were he and his band mates got work, and so on. They planned over years. It went far beyond the usual method of giving people a telephone and letting them hear a loud click when the tape was switched on (they did that, too!).
> it seems very unlikely to me that using resources to troll someone like this provides an effort/reward ratio that would be interesting to someone with that much existing power
Nevertheless, this happened. The Stasi was a huge bureaucratic organization with ideology at its core, built after the example of the KGB. Stasi officers considered themselves fully in the right, defending their people against counter-revolutionary and decadent activities. Goals ranged from "helping" citizens get on the right track towards socialism in a friendly but firm manner, over collecting information about potential adverse political activities, to completely destroying enemies of the state and doing counter-espionage.