>Furthermore, he has a system of volunteer spies in which children report on their parents, and neighbours on each other. This cannot possibly work well since eventually everyone reports everyone else and it all has to be abandoned.

Asimov was mistaken here. The East German Stasi did implement a system in which many, many people (not literally everyone, but a staggering percentage) reported on each other.

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pavlov 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And North Korea maintains a system of neighborhood surveillance, mandatory self-criticism sessions, and hereditary social classes which are perhaps closer to “1984” because they are so well established now.

When it collapsed, East Germany was still led by the same people who had created it. The Berlin Wall only existed for 28 years. North Korea is a multi-generational prison.

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TMWNN 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> When it collapsed, East Germany was still led by the same people who had created it. The Berlin Wall only existed for 28 years. North Korea is a multi-generational prison.

Excellent point. Something that refutes another of Asimov's critiques in his review, that tyrannies inevitably end through tyrants' deaths, or at least become milder in their oppression. Admittedly he wrote the review in 1980, back when a) the first Kim was still in power and b) no one in the West saw North Korea as anything other than an "ordinary" Communist state—no awareness of Juche, etc.—but still.

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decimalenough 5 hours ago | parent [-]

North Korea is rather exceptional though. Few dictatorships manage even one smooth succession, let alone two.

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neilellis 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Monarchies

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chungy 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It depends on one's definition of dictatorship. I personally do not believe, for instance, the British Crown is one such instance.

	▲	j-bos 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Besides that, multiple ways to read this. "Monarchies" could've been a reference to pre modern monarchies of which many made it through at least 3 successions. Or as a correction to the upper comment, saying that the Kim's are more monarchy than plain dictatorship.

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calini 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This also happened heavily under the Romanian communist regime. My parents were first hand witness to that.