Well in the case of East Germany at least, most engineering standards were already established so it made no sense to change them. The problem that they had wa

Well in the case of East Germany at least, most engineering standards were already established so it made no sense to change them. The problem that they had was ultimately the political and social system that produced the manifestation of the designs. The underlying designs were sound. I'm slightly inclined to agree with the principles of Marxism-Leninism but it suffered from one of the many things that the human race is good at doing: Good specification, bad implementation.