Would the Eastern Bloc in Eurasia have higher living standards today if they didn’t drop communism?

[TheReckoning]

Looking at the living standards of ex-Eastern Bloc countries, a lot of them had pretty noticeable declines in standard of living in the early-mid 1990s (for example, Tajikistan’s GNI per capita went from $5,200 in 1990 to $1,400 in 1996). While all of these countries have since recovered, about half of them are worse off relative to the rest of the world then they were in 1990. Would they have been better off today if they didn’t end Marxist-Leninism?

[Vice President Christian Man]

No

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

They wouldn't have higher living standards if they'd never abandoned it and for that matter probably wouldn't have higher living standards if they'd never adopted it.

[Mr. Smith]

Looking at the living standards of ex-Eastern Bloc countries, a lot of them had pretty noticeable declines in standard of living in the early-mid 1990s (for example, Tajikistan’s GNI per capita went from $5,200 in 1990 to $1,400 in 1996). While all of these countries have since recovered, about half of them are worse off relative to the rest of the world then they were in 1990. Would they have been better off today if they didn’t end Marxist-Leninism?

Poland, Czechoslovakia -> Czechia/Slovakia, and The Baltics got much better.

[Damocles]

Yes. Please, enlighten me how maintaining the occupation of Muscovite sycophants would have improved living standards for the typical Czech person. I’m sure they’d be glad to regale you with stories of throwing bricks at RuZZian tanks and pouring soap on the roads and changing the orientation of street signs and putting blindfolds over the eyes of statues. I’m sure they’d love to discuss the implications of that occupation government being bounded in a reactionary and imperialistic system of RuZZian domination and control.

We know your sympathies already lie with RuZZia. Perhaps the Rusich will take you if you’re this intent on making every possible excuse and bad take on the Kremlin’s orders.

[TheReckoning]

Yes. Please, enlighten me how maintaining the occupation of Muscovite sycophants would have improved living standards for the typical Czech person. I’m sure they’d be glad to regale you with stories of throwing bricks at RuZZian tanks and pouring soap on the roads and changing the orientation of street signs and putting blindfolds over the eyes of statues. I’m sure they’d love to discuss the implications of that occupation government being bounded in a reactionary and imperialistic system of RuZZian domination and control.

We know your sympathies already lie with RuZZia. Perhaps the Rusich will take you if you’re this intent on making every possible excuse and bad take on the Kremlin’s orders.

How could this post be interpreted as pro-Russia? I’m basically calling the modern Russian economic model to be inferior to the Soviet one.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I've been to Prague last September. Granted it's their capital. But I can't really fathom how it could possibly have a higher standard of living than what I have already seen there - let alone under friggin communism. It was sort of a cross between Vienna and Amsterdam, and this pretty much included the living standard. The idea that it is some near-apocalyptic wasteland where American teenage tourists get snatched away and are tortured to their gruesome deatha à la the Hostel films is quite frankly laughable.

[HillGoose]

no lmfao

[LAKISYLVANIA]

I completely misread the question and thought you asked if communism didn't happen.

But again the answer is actually similar (with reversed answers)

Eastern Europe and all nations that joined the EU: No. (in particular Czech Republic and Poland benefit most)

Russia: Yes

The stan-countries: Mixed. Kazakhstan & Azerbaijan, no. But like Kyrgyzstan/Taijikistan/Turkmenistan: Yes

A lot of this obviously also is explained by global affiliation and alliance networks instead of pure economics, but in particular urban centers of the eastern European nations benefited the most.

I've been to Prague last September. Granted it's their capital. But I can't really fathom how it could possibly have a higher standard of living than what I have already seen there - let alone under friggin communism. It was sort of a cross between Vienna and Amsterdam, and this pretty much included the living standard. The idea that it is some near-apocalyptic wasteland where American teenage tourists get snatched away and are tortured to their gruesome deatha à la the Hostel films is quite frankly laughable.

That does make a lot of sense, but you forget to mention an important thing. Czech Republic and Western Poland arguably had the same standard of living as Western Europe before WW1. Vienna also declined during WW1 because of the loss of Austro-Hungarian Empire back than. Before that Vienna was a world city, now it's like same tier as Brussels but behind Paris, London, NYC, Tokyo and so on. And don't underestimate the beauty of Prague, even today. The city has a lot of history.

Secondly, in western civilisation, globalism esp. causes the urban centers to develop much faster than surrounding rural countries, which is the urban areas will often be more supportive of liberalism and center-left movements.

Thirdly, Hostel didn't take place in Prague but in Slovakia, but it's now a wrong stereotype which is also happens in other films or in other eastern european settings (transylmania in romania which is a bad film but in a funny sense). Of course horror films will be quite shallow and rely on stereotypes when it comes to settings as that contributes to a more eerie setting from a film perspective. It is a horror film designed for entertainment, not a documentary. However while even taking that into consideration, i still didn't like the film.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

For better or worse, ask Uzbekistan (looks good next to to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, but its GDP per capita is basically a flat line over thirty years, it uses seasonal slavery, and does not compare well with Kazakhstan) and Belarus (good compared to Ukraine, bad compared to the Baltics and Russia). They perhaps came the close to maintaining communism.

For the record, popular memory still preserves the Soviet Union as a high point in people's lives/living standards in many of these countries, but that has been somewhat fading, and is essentially a lie anyway - historians tell us that Soviet living standards started declining in the Brezhnev years.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

They wouldn't have higher living standards if they'd never abandoned it and for that matter probably wouldn't have higher living standards if they'd never adopted it.

With some exceptions (those mostly being resource extracting countries), the Fall of Communism simply reasserted age-old divisions in Central/Eastern Europe, with old German/Swedish/Habsburgian lands recovering/leaping forward the easiest.

[PSOL]

The first deviation of no return happened when Stalin cowardly did not continue the offensive well after the fall of Berlin and push all the way to the Atlantic, with the US having weak capacities to produce that many atom bombs or even transport them far from the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. Had Stalin pushed on in 1945, or even through until 1955, the whole of Europe would be red and awash with freedoms from the bosses relative to the systems before it.

[dead0man]

The first deviation of no return happened when Stalin cowardly did not continue the offensive well after the fall of Berlin and push all the way to the Atlantic, with the US having weak capacities to produce that many atom bombs or even transport them far from the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. Had Stalin pushed on in 1945, or even through until 1955, the whole of Europe would be red

that's assuming the Red Army could function without all the aid it got from the US.

and awash with freedoms from the bosses relative to the systems before it.

meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

[The Mikado]

Looking at the living standards of ex-Eastern Bloc countries, a lot of them had pretty noticeable declines in standard of living in the early-mid 1990s (for example, Tajikistan’s GNI per capita went from $5,200 in 1990 to $1,400 in 1996). While all of these countries have since recovered, about half of them are worse off relative to the rest of the world then they were in 1990. Would they have been better off today if they didn’t end Marxist-Leninism?

You picked Tajikistan, a country that fell into a brutal civil war after it left the USSR and which had far and away the worst outcome in the 1990s, for this example on purpose.

[TheReckoning]

Looking at the living standards of ex-Eastern Bloc countries, a lot of them had pretty noticeable declines in standard of living in the early-mid 1990s (for example, Tajikistan’s GNI per capita went from $5,200 in 1990 to $1,400 in 1996). While all of these countries have since recovered, about half of them are worse off relative to the rest of the world then they were in 1990. Would they have been better off today if they didn’t end Marxist-Leninism?

You picked Tajikistan, a country that fell into a brutal civil war after it left the USSR and which had far and away the worst outcome in the 1990s, for this example on purpose.

1. If Tajikistan had never dropped communism, the civil war probably would’ve never happened, and therefore, all the damage that came about from that war would’ve never happened as well. Also, Tajikistan began to decline before 1992, when the civil war started.

2. It’s not just Tajikistan. Ukraine had a GINI per capita of $17,000 in 1990, while today, it’s only $13,000 (these figures are PPP adjusted). The fact that a country is seriously poorer today than how it was in 1990 is really pathetic- the only other countries like that are resource-based states that have had population growth outpace resource extraction.

They wouldn't have higher living standards if they'd never abandoned it and for that matter probably wouldn't have higher living standards if they'd never adopted it.

Based on what do you conclude that communism didn’t stunt any development in Eurasia?

[Vosem]

They wouldn't have higher living standards if they'd never abandoned it and for that matter probably wouldn't have higher living standards if they'd never adopted it.

This seems like an extremely strange assertion, given that some countries were divided down the middle, with both sides having very similar preexisting cultures and economies, and those that didn't adopt it ended up with much higher living standards. Very likely anywhere on Earth that has strayed from capitalism even briefly could have higher living standards now if it had avoided that experience.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Looking at the living standards of ex-Eastern Bloc countries, a lot of them had pretty noticeable declines in standard of living in the early-mid 1990s (for example, Tajikistan’s GNI per capita went from $5,200 in 1990 to $1,400 in 1996). While all of these countries have since recovered, about half of them are worse off relative to the rest of the world then they were in 1990. Would they have been better off today if they didn’t end Marxist-Leninism?

You picked Tajikistan, a country that fell into a brutal civil war after it left the USSR and which had far and away the worst outcome in the 1990s, for this example on purpose.

1. If Tajikistan had never dropped communism, the civil war probably would’ve never happened, and therefore, all the damage that came about from that war would’ve never happened as well. Also, Tajikistan began to decline before 1992, when the civil war started.

Bullsh#t. The original incumbents in the Tajik Civil War were the same party leaders that had been in charge before 1992, and were known by outside analysts as "neo-communists". The war happened because authority was weakened by perestroika and the collapse, not because of a sudden change in Dushanbe's development model.

(Besides, the factions in the civil war were directly influenced by Soviet patterns of power, patronage, and development)

In any case, Communism dropped Central Asia, not vice versa. Moscow left the Union and Central Asian party leaders were like "wtf".