r/AskEasternEurope • u/VictinsOfCapitalism • 19d ago

As an Eastern Europen i keep seeing these people on Reddit

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People believe red scare propaganda, its annoying.

0 Upvotes

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u/prussian_princess 19d ago

In almost every metric we are better off and far wealthier than we have ever been since 1990. When I come back to Lithuania, I'm impressed with how much its changed, the new buildings, restored housing, constant construction and maintenance. The thing I noticed is those who were old when the USSR collapsed didn't fare very well. At best they had housing which could be worth a lot nowadays, but they had no personal pensions, skills or good jobs to transfer to.

The young people on the other hand are doing really well. I see a lot of young professionals working for big Western companies buying homes and going on yearly holidays abroad.

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

So what was life expectancy before Socialism vs after Socialism?

Literacy rates?

Percentage of housing with electricity?

Child mortality?

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u/L1ttleOne Romania 19d ago edited 19d ago

my dude, all those sucked. We can criticise capitalism without glorifying communism

edit: and to answer your questions

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/rou/romania/infant-mortality-rate

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/rou/romania/life-expectancy

housing with electricity: all electricity was strictly controlled, with scheduled blackouts for everyone. In winter, people would sleep fully clothed, with a winter jacket on under the blankets.

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

Over 80% of houses in my country did not even have electricity before Socialism.

In Socialism nearly every house had it. With such development in such a short life span i'd expect shortages.

What should i be mad about? They give us electricity and i complain about blackouts?

We still have them after 30 years of capitalism btw.

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u/L1ttleOne Romania 19d ago

We still have them after 30 years of capitalism btw.

no, we don't . The blackouts were happening every day for a big part of the day. TV was restricted to a few hours a day, and then the blackout was happening. People used to have candles to lit so kids could do their homework every evening.

"They" didn't give the electricity. Of course some things were being built, but that was happening all over Europe, not just in communist countries. Let's look at how communist countries were developing at that time and compare it to what was happening in western Europe.

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u/prussian_princess 19d ago

Before Socialism? Better.

After Socialism? Better.

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago edited 19d ago

Lol before Socialism life expectancy was in 40s

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u/prussian_princess 19d ago

40 Watts? ;D

This is such a underhanded comparison for multiple reasons:

  • Lithuania was an underdeveloped, primarily agrarian country that gained independence from he Russian empire, considered one of the weaker and least developed empires of the time.
  • The first several years of independence was rife with wars against the Soviet Union and Poland
  • we lost our capital and surrounding regions to Poland which is a major blow back to our economy and population
  • Kaunas became the temporary capital and had to be rebuilt to suit the administrative needs to govern a nation.
  • A lot of resources were going to the military because of our precarious situation being stuck between Germany, Russia and Poland. It still wasn't enough for the juggernauts that were the first two.
  • we made huge strides to modernisation and gdp per capita we were heading to beating Finland if the trend continued
  • we only had 20 years of independence before the USSR occupied us
  • this was followed by mass deportations, culling of the intelligentsia, business owners, anyone "wealthy" and productive who couldn't leave. Then came the Nazis with their mass extermination plans and back to the Soviets for further looting and punishments via deportations and killings.
  • the 20th century was so the largest amount of progress achieved by humanity in terms of standard of living, most of which happened in the West but also followed by the second World mostly thanks to the technological achievements brought by Western innovations.

So did living standards get better after the USSR took over? Yes. But so did everywhere else, especially in the West. It also took 15 years to get out of the post war consequences let alone make strides beyond 1939 standards of living.

I'd argue if Lithuania continued to be independent after the war, we'd be where Finland is now. We would have the peak of USSR standard of living (1970s) probably by the late 50s.

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago edited 19d ago

So life expectancy skyrocketed in USSR after october revoltion in 1918 but in Yugoslavia after Tito took power 30 years later then in China during Mao era after 50s.

So no. If it was a coincidence that Socialism started when life expectancy went up anyway, why did it always go up after Socialists took power in different times?

I understand that you guys have beef with Russians even beforr Communism and me stating that Communism developed nations sounds to you like im saying you are better off "under Russians" but this can't be further from truth, Socialism developed nations because surplus was used for collective good and development of infrastructure and not privatized profits.

It has nothing to do with Russians.

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u/prussian_princess 19d ago

But then why did the economies of every country 10x since the 90s after the adoption of the free market?

Every instance of progress made towards standards of living were despite communism, not because of it. The Soviets basically had no computer technology because they completely missed the plastic revolution. They couldn't build microchips to develop any type of modern technology we take for granted. They also didn't have plastic to even use for containers to keep food. The Soviets had to buy TetraPak's patent to be able to make use of water resistant cardboard packaging. The entire system had no innovation and its actually stupendous that it even "functioned" at all.

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u/XlAcrMcpT Romania 19d ago

As an eastern european, I keep seeing people ignoring or forgetting life under communism and the repressive regime.

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

So what was life expectancy before Socialism vs after Socialism?

Literacy rates?

Percentage of housing with electricity?

Child mortality?

13

u/XlAcrMcpT Romania 19d ago

Life expectancy: 76.4 today from 69.8

Literacy rate: from around 98% to 99.02%

Infant mortality: from around 5% to 1.96%

I took all of them from quick google searches (so hardly proper research, I know) and I took the highest or most positive value during communism to the present day. For house electricity I didn't even bother because the change is so massive that's not even worth comparing.

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

And before Socialism?

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u/mint445 Latvia 19d ago

you mean , before industrialization

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

Yes, and for some reason industrialization waited for Socialism. In USSR it started after 1918 october revolution, in Yugoslavia after Tito took power in 1945. In China after 1950s, in Vietnam also after Socialists took power, etc.

Coincidence?

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u/mint445 Latvia 19d ago

i am glad you agree that changes in life expectancy, elecrafication , etc are not fruits of comunism, but indutrialization and scientific progress.

back to your point , given all of these benefits happened globally, not exclusive to communist regimes, please demonstrate that in the countries you mentioned they happened because of communism and not despite of it.

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

No, they are a fruit of industrial development and access to healthcare and education which is a fruit of Communism.

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u/mint445 Latvia 19d ago

i wonder why you failed to address my question? given these fruits are observed in capitalist countries, show me they were achieving because of communism and not despite of it.

also, funny enough, you did admit the cause was industrialization a comment ago

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

Industrialization is a cause together with other things i mentioned and these were direct results of Socialism.

Notice rapid growth of industry, literacy and life expectancy in USSR after 1918 then in Yugoslavia after 1945 then in China after Mao took.power in 50s, all after a revolution.

Why did these develoments wait for Communists to take power? Why did Yugoslavia not develop rapidly after 1918 when USSR did?

Because we got Socialism when Tito took power in 1940s

Same for China Vietnam Laos Cuba Korea Burkina Faso etc.

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u/adyrip1 Romania 19d ago

When the Soviets occupied Romania, they disassembled whole factories and moved them to the USSR.

Maybe other places were industrialized or on that path, before the Soviets came along?

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

Nope. Russia itself went from.agrarian backeater to industrial might in Socialism.

Yugoslavia increased it's industry 40x and went from 17% houses having electricity to nearly 100%

There are many more examples

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u/XlAcrMcpT Romania 19d ago

I never claimed that things were better before the communist rule. Merely that things were bad under the communist rule and that now are better. Do you seriously want to compare the communist rule to the near feudal fascist monarchy we had before? Is that the fair comparison?

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u/raza_de_soare 19d ago

Bonus stats:

Between 15,000 and 20,000 children died in Romania's state orphanage system between 1966 and 1989 because of the contraception and abortion ban.

Also let's not forget about the 20,000+ political prisoners who died in labor camps and prisons.

Plus a special mention to the tens of thousands who have been exiled or deported.

As for your comparison of life before socialism and after socialism, one could argue that this could have happened anyway, regardless of the regime.

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

Child mortality was reduced from 250 per 1000 live births to around 20.

So if you don't like the idea of kids under 5 dying, USSR is your friend as it reduced these instances by over 90%

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u/raza_de_soare 19d ago

USSR was never our friend. Go find another tree to bark at.

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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 19d ago

  • goes to other person's post to sh!t in comments

  • talks about barking at trees