[jhbadger]

The revolutions of 1989 would tend to argue against that. Leaders in East Germany and the like thought that giving people subsidized food, housing (and alcohol) would be enough to make them content. Some of it was, yes, about not having democracy, but a lot of it was being upset that they didn't have the consumer goods they knew people in the West had access to.

[ben_w]

Hmm. I live and work in the bit of Berlin that used to be DDR (aber ich bin Ausländer).

The museums around here insist the two big problems were the secret police and the fact that production wasn’t very well matched to demand. Even if you ignore the literal Stasi, I think you may be understating the impact of the shops running out of various foods from time to time.