One more comment on the article Sprint to freedom: how the East German athlete Ines Geipel outran even the Stasi by Oliver Moody in The Sunday Times, 5 November 2019.
I am deeply skeptical of a daughter of a Communist intelligence officer playing the part of being in opposition to the dictatorship. I have read many similar stories in Poland and they are all false.
Expressing certain criticism towards the system is all right among Communists. To control the narrative you cannot avoid expressing criticism. They know that if they don’t do it, someone else will. Therefore the trick is to channel the criticism into safe areas, and leave it in safe hands, while at the same time preventing the full truth from being revealed.
In Poland the entire so-called “democratic opposition” to Communism was the creation of the Communist intelligence. The top leaders of the “opposition” were Communist party members, their children, and generally people from the inner circles of the Communist power. The first “non-Communist” prime minister in Poland was earlier a three-time member of the Communist “parliament”.
The story in the article seems to be made up in many ways.
Putting up posters protesting the violence in Tiananmen Square is exactly what a person protected by the authorities would do. Someone authentically opposed would not bother, because it was pointless, revenge would be inevitable.
“There was a big row,” – this also points to the falsehood of the story. Communists eliminate their opponents most often quietly. An open row served to build up a person’s social visibility. Communists were not that stupid. This element of the story does not make sense.
@LechSBorkowski