this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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What people who lived in the Soviet union and other socialist states have to say:
Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. https://archive.ph/9Z12u
Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
From 1989-1998, Hungary was a failing democracy. Since 1998 it gradually became Viktor Orban's private kingdom.
It doesn't mean that communism is wrong (as you've provided multiple examples here that I haven't checked), but in the case of Hungary I'd say it is complicated.
The trajectory Hungary took after transition to capitalism mirrors what happened in most post USSR states. This just further supports the point that the communist system was better.
That is just the classic "Communism failed and the proof is the USSR!" Turned on it's head.
This more of a Hungary problem then a capitalism problem, although I'm sure it does it's fair share of damage.
Should they go back to communism? Maybe. I'm sure liberals, socialists and communists would all agree that kicking Orban out is a good first step.
What happened in countries like Hungary and Poland is a direct result of the transition to capitalism however. What's more this transition happened under the best possible conditions. The transition happened largely democratically without any violent revolutions, and these countries got support from the west to soften economic impact of the transition. Yet, despite all that we see that majority of post Soviet countries end up going in a similar direction under capitalism. Again, Hungary isn't an outlier here.
Ok, so it is not nostalgia, bad management, corruption, disillusionment "of how great capitalism is"... it is only that post Soviet nations had it better during the communist era and thus are better managed as Communist nations.
Whelp, I'll just remain a skeptic.
I wish the post Soviet nations, completely unsarcastically, good luck in the next elections or revolution. I would be happy to see the communist ideology continue to thrive in the face of capitalist debt slavery, and the contemptuous bourgeoisie.
Thing is that bad management, corruption, and so on, have happened in every human society that has ever existed. A political system isn't magically going to change that. What a political system can do however is create different selection pressures for behavior. Capitalist system selects for different kinds of behaviors than a communist one. As we see with the case of transition from communism to capitalism in eastern Europe, the selection pressures of capitalism result in far worse things happening than under communism.
Idealistically? Yes. I wholeheartedly agree. Capitalism will always encourage unfair competition, whereas socialism will strive to end it by its very definition.
I'm just still unconvinced that the post Soviet nations, as a whole, suffer the same "communism withdrawal symptom". The systematic pressures might be so that switching to Communism now will simply fail again (and let's not forget the dear old CIA... eh?).
Again, hope I'm wrong, but I don't see the point you're making as clearly as you do. I think it is a more complicated situation, but I sure do think that being more socialist wouldn't hurt them.
And I can't repeat this enough, remove Orban the dictator from power.
Unfortunately, I expect that things are going to get worse before they get better. I don't think people who are in power now will simply let it go the way communists did.
Hard agree. Our government will wreck the economy just to die on two hills: social conservatism (EU funding says hi) and russian reliance. Russian gas, russian atom (x2) because they want to build Paks II. They also gerrymandered the everliving fuck out of electoral districts so they can win their precious supermajority. I hope they fail on at least one of the aforementioned hills so they can drop the ball like the now-opposition did in 2006. As for communism, well, the 72% seems very wrong. Sure we had dictatorship-lite, but 1956 happened beforehand, to which we lost many of our schools for example. Plenty of (grand+)parents' tales paint communism like it was the worst thing that could possibly have happened. Also, if 72% of people preferred communism, then surely the dem. socialist party would Poll higher than 3%.
Reminder that fidesz (the govt party) was originally anti-communist. (I am Hungarian if it wasn't obvious).
I wish you people good luck in driving out that bastard, and the hard fixes necessary afterwards - regardless of which system it will follow.
Shhh we only believe facts that back up what we were told to think