Originally Posted by StefanG

complex topic...

in short: There was a gap between what was offical policy and what was reality - but as usual it wasn't all black or white.

Official policy was that Russians are friends, there were even organized friendship evenings where they put Russian soldiers together with normal people and sometimes it even ended up with Russian soldiers marrying German women.

And if you - as an Eastern German - were a believer of the GDR system, you probably had no problem.

Then again if you were not, you had a problem. That started with Russians bringing out the tanks in 1953 against an uprise of Eastern German workers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uprisi...n_East_Germany


And of course their support in putting up the wall.

It is still unknown how many Eastern Germans were deported and/or executed in the 1950ties to 70ties because they were considered opposition.