How did the leaders of the former Soviet Union and East Germany regard the Berlin Wall? Did they privately acknowledge that yes, they were forcing people to stay in the Communist system whether they liked it or not? Or was there some ideological rationalization that they at least half believed themselves?
The Party line (literaly)
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"The measures our GDR [German Democratic Republic, the dishonest formal name for East Germany] friends were forced to take in 1961 were of strictly defensive character … [T]hose measures …Østeeply reduced possibilities of using West Berlin for subversive activities against the GDR and other socialist states
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One important factor was that by the summer of 1961 Germans were swarming from East to West Berlin en masse, and often flying on to West Germany from there. The Wall cut off that exodus.
In East Germany it was referred to as the “Wall of Anti-Fascist Protection”, and it was to protect its people from dangerous “Western influences” (such as oh, say, freedom of speech).
Your question requires us to know the state of mind of East German leadership at the time. Yes, they had a “party line” that this was a response to a Western threat, but mow many of them actually believed it at the time is hard to say.
Which is why I won’t go any farther, because it will only be my opinion, The mods have been down on posting opinions in this thread lately, so I suggest you ask to have it moved to IMHO.
It might be interesting to check Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs for mention of this topic. He wrote his memoirs secretly after he fell out of favor, and he was relatively candid.
I guess many people in the Communist bloc knew the Wall was to prevent countrymen from emigrating, not from Western influence as propaganda told them, but a “good citizen” (i.e. a citizen loyal to the government, probably a convinced communist) might have accepted it as something nasty, but necessary. As mentioned already, there had been a wave of emigrants going west, often well-educated people the East German government needed for rebuilding the economy. Therefore, a loyal communist might have thought it’s not very nice that the Wall is there, but it’s necessary because of national interests, so let’s live with it. Others, less loyal communists, surely hated the Wall, as many successful and failed attempts to escape prove, but it’s difficult to estimate which one was the majority view.