Decades of ideological re-education failed to erase Eastern-border revisionism in East Germans

Evidence

Strangely enough, the SED regime was rather shocked in 1965 by a survey that had been undertaken by its own Central Committee Institute for Opinion Research. Despite twenty years of ideological re-education, the question whether the German ‘boundaries from 1937 should be restored’ had been answered in the affirmative by 22 percent of GDR citizens. It must have been little comfort that one could refer to a parallel Allensbach survey according to which only 46 percent of West German citizens surveyed declared that the former German territories would never be German again. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 388

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s question about whether professed conviction predicts actual belief and whether coercive correction of threat-hardened belief backfires — 22 percent clung to ‘1937 borders’ despite punishments for saying so. — connects to: National revanchism largely failed to mobilize millions of displaced Germans — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 412; Ideological change requires persistence against contrary immediate evidence — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 561; Education increases ideological consistency without displacing racial attitudes. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3734 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Is 22% affirmative despite terror a sign the belief was hardened by suppression, or merely an underestimate of what respondents truly felt? The survey itself was a state punishment risk.

Broader Connections

• Ideological change requires persistence against contrary immediate evidence #expands (0.82) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 561
• Education increases ideological consistency without displacing racial attitudes. #expands (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3734