Politics To Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovens, Hungarians..:wasn't life under socialism better?

JanDerrek

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Hi there. My question is to Eastern Europeans. Wasn't socialism better? Just look at the demographics of some European post socialist coutries. For example Czech Rep. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Czech_Republic). The birth rate in Czech Rep fell from 12,4 per 1000 in 1989 to 8,7 per 1000 in 1999, and the fertility rate from 1,87 per woman to 1,13 (!!!) per woman in 1999. So if capitalism is so good why do people have less and less children at capitalism . And look at this graph which shows the suicide statistics of Poland at the period of 1955-2008 (see http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/pola.pdf). Suicide rate in Poland was just 5,7 per 100.000 population and 11,2 per 100.000 pop. in 1980 and has increased during 1990s and 2000s (during capitalist reforms): 15,1 per 100.000 in 2000, 15,8 per 100.000 in 2005 and 14,9 per 100.000 in 2008 (the increase is about 50% from communist times). If communism was so horrible and capitalism is so nice why do more Poles kill themselves at capitalism than during socialism? Think about it!! So wasn't life better during socialism?
Thank you!!
 
Hi there. My question is to Eastern Europeans. Wasn't socialism better? Just look at the demographics of some European post socialist coutries.
It was a shithole back than with low standard of living, shortages of everything, and lack of freedoms. Please, watch some documentaries before asking such naive questions.

For example Czech Rep. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Czech_Republic). The birth rate in Czech Rep fell from 12,4 per 1000 in 1989 to 8,7 per 1000 in 1999, and the fertility rate from 1,87 per woman to 1,13 (!!!) per woman in 1999. So if capitalism is so good why do people have less and less children at capitalism .
Birth rate always drops together with economic development, education and access to birth controls. Before that every third time people had sex they got pregnant. Now they can have sex for fun only all the time, till they decide to have a child.
During socialistic years countries were poorer with shortage of birth controls (people were getting used to this novelty) that's why there were more children per capita back then.
Birth rates in Africa is around 5 now, highest in the world. Do you think they live better than the rest of the world?
We don't have statistics from a developed and rich socialistic country because there is not even one example of such, and almost all of them collapsed (without external enemy and a war) about 20 years ago. That's how good socialism was!

And look at this graph which shows the suicide statistics of Poland at the period of 1955-2008 (see http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/pola.pdf). Suicide rate in Poland was just 5,7 per 100.000 population and 11,2 per 100.000 pop. in 1980 and has increased during 1990s and 2000s (during capitalist reforms): 15,1 per 100.000 in 2000, 15,8 per 100.000 in 2005 and 14,9 per 100.000 in 2008 (the increase is about 50% from communist times). If communism was so horrible and capitalism is so nice why do more Poles kill themselves at capitalism than during socialism? Think about it!! So wasn't life better during socialism?
Don't believe blindly in statistics done in Soviet Block. Did you ever hear about "Propaganda of Success"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_success
I lived my first 23 years in Poland during Soviet era, and never heard about big disasters happening in socialist countries. In Soviet Union there was never an earthquake, flood or planes crashing. We only learned about Chernobyl disaster when radioactive cloud made it to Sweden and Swedes reported that a big nuclear disaster must have happened in Russia. Only then Russian Communist party admitted that it happened.

Socialist regime still exists today, check this propaganda movie from North Korea, happy people and loved leader. Similar propaganda pieces were shown on TV daily in every socialist country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yCHx9XQmPg

North Korea and Cuba are among poorest countries in the world where freedoms don't exist. There was a big news from Cuba recently. Cubans will be granted access to Internet soon!!! It should tell you something about quality of life there.

And before you post something else how good socialism is for the people, please give us an example of one socialist country where people have good standard of living and freedoms comparable to Western standards of living. One real life example please to prove your point.
 
It was a shithole back than with low standard of living, shortages of everything, and lack of freedoms. Please, watch some documentaries before asking such naive questions.
that's true. A living under the primitive and barbarian sovjet yoke was the most terrible experience of all righteous and brave east Europeans since the mongol conquest.
 
Well it was much better, but then again Yugoslavia, although a socialistic country, was never a part of Eastern block.

It's true that birth rates drop with development, but that's like from 5-6 kids to 2-3, but when you have a drop from 1,83 (which is already considered low)to 1,13, then you know you're in deep trouble.

It is also not true that socialism collapsed by itself. Billions of dollars were invested by foreign militaries for that purpose. In fact that was one of the major causes NATO was formed at the beginning.

If you measure "better" with availability of Coca-Cola, Marlboro, jeans trousers and Rolling Stones LPs, then yes it was way better on the West.
 
It is also not true that socialism collapsed by itself. Billions of dollars were invested by foreign militaries for that purpose. In fact that was one of the major causes NATO was formed at the beginning.
Billons of dollars were invested in Eastern Block military too. The question still stands, what this has to do with collapse of communism (as self ended) in Europe? Cuba and N Korea didn't collapse yet, right?

If you measure "better" with availability of Coca-Cola, Marlboro, jeans trousers and Rolling Stones LPs, then yes it was way better on the West.
Is this all you care about Ike? What about personal freedoms? Freedom to self expression, freedom to travel, freedom to criticise, freedom to vote, and what democracy stands for, etc?
 
Billons of dollars were invested in Eastern Block military too. The question still stands, what this has to do with collapse of communism (as self ended) in Europe? Cuba and N Korea didn't collapse yet, right?
If I understood right, your question is "what does billions of dollars invested in collapse of communism have to do with collapse of communism"?


Is this all you care about Ike? What about personal freedoms? Freedom to self expression, freedom to travel, freedom to criticise, freedom to vote, and what democracy stands for, etc?
Democracy today stands for freedom to vote for any organization that is being financed from abroad. And that's all there is to it. West doesn't care about real democracy.
It's just an obscure term for "let us put our people on the head of your government so they can do what we like". We've all sen this being done dozens of times. Even schoolchildren are aware of that.

In my country, since the fall of communism we have lost all mentioned above - lost the possibility for self expression, lost freedom to travel, we have the freedom to criticize but only in our apartments, total media darkness is on since "democrats" prevailed.
 
If I understood right, your question is "what does billions of dollars invested in collapse of communism have to do with collapse of communism"?
I meant, how did you figure it was a main reason of collapse?



Democracy today stands for freedom to vote for any organization that is being financed from abroad. And that's all there is to it. West doesn't care about real democracy.
And yet the Western World is the most democratic.

In my country, since the fall of communism we have lost all mentioned above - lost the possibility for self expression, lost freedom to travel, we have the freedom to criticize but only in our apartments, total media darkness is on since "democrats" prevailed.
I'm sure you just don't like the way free people express themselves. They are free to become openly gays or embrace capitalism, the very unwanted element in "your country".
 
I meant, how did you figure it was a main reason of collapse?

What else would it be? Economics under Soviets were surely not worse than under Tzar, yet again The Empire survived for centuries.

And yet the Western World is the most democratic.
As was an old Greece - full democracy.

I'm sure you just don't like the way free people express themselves. They are free to become openly gays or embrace capitalism, the very unwanted element in "your country".

It would be OK if it was just me, but it's lot of people, vast majority and it has nothing to do with gays. You're just making verbal diversion with them.
Take Slovenia for example. They're not even on Balkans, evaded devastations of Balkan wars, WW1, WW2, Yugoslavia civil war, had best GDP in Yugoslavia, has GDP of almost $30.000, yet again they say:

Vrbic (historian): The Yugoslav passport was the best in the world, and you could travel anywhere,” said Mr. Vrbic, who at 16 hitchhiked from Ljubljana to India."
Troha (entrepreneur):"I miss Yugoslavia...We didn’t have anything, but we had everything.”


souce: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/world/europe/30yugo.html?_r=0


So if Slovenians think like this, what do you think rest of us think? Ye, we now have democracy, but we've lost everything else. This is worse terror than in Medieval Age. Things are going to burst. Riots are already happening:

 
Communism/socialism and nazism are the dark sides of the same inhumane coin.
 
Hi there. My question is to Eastern Europeans. Wasn't socialism better?
Thank you!!

You know, just for asking a question like this, one could be put to mental hospital (for the rest of your life) in those times...
 
You know, just for asking a question like this, one could be put to mental hospital (for the rest of your life) in those times...

The man has a right to ask. Both capitalism and socialism have their good and dark sides. No system is perfect, some people living under socialism, then they embrace capitalism, and wanted to turn back to socialism. Problems with the socialism as it existed: it was ineffective, choking free initiative, without innovation, lulled the people, did not allow criticism etc. Problems with capitalism: small number of people hold the majority of wealth, capital is more valued than labor and skills, successor system makes it difficult to penetrate the poor in the higher class, in the case of economic hardship burden shifts to taxpayers etc. What is needed is not FOR or AGAINST this or that but rather to apply appropriate system in a country where most people will live satisfying, and that system has good prospects and strengthen the long future.
 
“Problemswith capitalism: small number of people hold the majority of wealth, capital ismore valued than labor and skills, successor system makes it difficult topenetrate the poor in the higher class, in the case of economic hardship burdenshifts to taxpayers etc.”

It is alltrue about problems of capitalism, but the Communist regime, in addition, toits outrageous violation of human rights, holds exactly the same problems ofunjust society as capitalism:
All the wealth is at the hands of Elitecommunist party, connections (wealth, bribes) are much more important and valuedthan labor and skills (no one can get promoted without the connections, even ifa person is fully incompetent, he or she survives in a position because of freemarket competition – any factory or enterprise get state funding). Successorsystem is very powerful – elite communist party kids get all the training andpositions, in case of economic hardship (which is a normal state undercommunist regime – the “deficit” shortage of anything of better quality can beobtained by connections and bribes only).
The communistparty elite has everything – everyday goods are supplied as bonuses (free),there are special resort places, special shops for communist party elite.Besides, if a communist party member have criminal immunity – in order for acommunist party member to be brought to justice, communist party has to give itsconsent, and no communist party member can brought against criminal courtbefore that.
Overall,communist regime is fully based on lies and injustice. The difference withcapitalism is that without freedom of speech and media, it was very easy tohide it from publicity.
 
Communism is the worst regime in the history of humankind. Until 1960 there was a balance between capitalism and communism. We have in this periods the economic boom on the capitalist countries and the begining of the fall of communist countries. The communist system was a utopia,he was at odds with human nature. Human being is selfish, ego is the center, while this was replaced in communism with us. The communist system degraded while did not guarantee basic elements of life. We're not talking about human rights and basic freedoms, which systematically oppressed. Obviously different countries have different characteristics, but the conclusion was the same.
There is a rule,every rule has an exception. Exemption in this case was the ex-Yugoslavia. Tito was an intelligent person. He played with both sides. West gave Tito a blank check, this blank check he supplemented himself, spent and in the end did not return anything. For this reasons the ex-Yugoslavia was an success, until the capitan of the ship was died and his place was taken by a pirate, Slobodan Milosevic.
Obviously the two camps spent billions against each other, this period is called Cold War, right? But this war was not won by the one who produced more tanks or cannons,but the one that produce refrigerators, TV and washing machines.
Concerning China, today i will consider a fascist state nothing connection with communism. North Korea is an communist state.
Key features of communism was HYPOCRISY, was a hypocrit system.

P.S.

In communist countries it was forbidden to kill yourself, you can be a considered a deserter and your family suffer the consequences.
Such for that shit of sistem.







Nothing good can arrive from an slavo-orthodox ideology.
 
@ Dagne,

I agree with you after many arques,

Communism start as an idea, revolt or occupation, and ended as a conservative system of a nomen class, the communist party, wich at its late became a Dictatorship.
the problem was that the party divide the 'milk' and 'fat' equal, but never the meat which was sold in black markets.
they learn the people that they have to live with an equal glass of milk, so everybody should be thankfull, but nobody was willing to do search, to develop, to produce,
that why even today the 'mother' of communism Russia stayed far behind industrial and technological, while all brilliant minds 'eascape' west.
The 'german minds' at the times of WW2 escape Nazis or taken by USA and Russia, they manage to raise the lavel of technology to both,
I remember Russia was the first who travel to space, etc etc, but what after 65 70's 80's
East Europe has fine internet due to the 'weighth' that communists gave to communication's from the times of 'cold war'
but after that? so military/industrial developement was done to show their abilitties, but the ship sunk, cause the party become a class, and slowly the rulling class until it became dictatorship.

'Let them closed, let them hungry, give a good meal every since and then, give them a fantastic show/event , they are quiet'


on the other hand Capitalism,
Capitalism is old, based in a free economy where merchantise follows the needs, where merchants can be rich or broke in one day,
but after WW2 Europe followed Caynes logic, we build state and national corporations with our taxes
search many according our needs, we progress daily living, and we produce 'rich or capital' from our hard working hours and searches,
and suddenly we decide to deposit our rich in tanks named banks, and took pappers
and we study the free system in universities from the times of Adam Smith but very hard after 1950's and we manage to create the monsters,
The Bankers, The Corporation,
which from a national treasure become international terror.
we destroy countries to feed the monsters, we kill people so us the monsters survive,
we even sold our national treasures like water, electricity, health, to the monsters.
for those who do not understand,
it is an example from India, in an valley where water was enough, a refreshment company open a factory to use the water, giving some jobs,
they put huge pumps draining major quantities of water, living almost no surface water, and very deep level in wells

the result was, bottled refreshment to cost cheaper than a glass of fresh clean water

that is capitalism

capitalism survive longer than communism due to 'mercenairies', the ones who kill, beat, use chemicals when i want to protest,
but capitalism is a bubble, it can easily 'boom' and needs years of 'caynes' to rebuild it.



PS
All I want to say is that in every system, we must work, we must protest, and we must ask for fair justice, and goverments for the people, not them shelves (Communism nomenclattura) neither for corporations/banks (capitalism's monsters)
 
“Problemswith capitalism: small number of people hold the majority of wealth, capital ismore valued than labor and skills, successor system makes it difficult topenetrate the poor in the higher class, in the case of economic hardship burdenshifts to taxpayers etc.”

It is alltrue about problems of capitalism, but the Communist regime, in addition, toits outrageous violation of human rights, holds exactly the same problems ofunjust society as capitalism:
All the wealth is at the hands of Elitecommunist party, connections (wealth, bribes) are much more important and valuedthan labor and skills (no one can get promoted without the connections, even ifa person is fully incompetent, he or she survives in a position because of freemarket competition – any factory or enterprise get state funding).

This is not an exclusively communist problem, but problem of corruption which is ever-present. If you showed incompetent, in a capitalist regime your chief would get you fired as soon as possible, but in communist system the owner is the state and problem was that state and judical system were not ready and for this kind of job. No one was there to take responsibility to finger point the incompetent, and all the damage was suffered by the state. State is somewhat a complex concept, while on the capitalist side we have a corporation or an owner who is a person who is willing to push things further for his private interest.


Successorsystem is very powerful – elite communist party kids get all the training andpositions, in case of economic hardship (which is a normal state undercommunist regime – the “deficit” shortage of anything of better quality can beobtained by connections and bribes only).
It's not much different in capitalism. In both communist and capitalist regime the elite tries to hold others away. It's not like the old Hilton will leave his business to who is most competent. Bribery works on both sides of the globe, it is just that on the East was easier to get away with it, so it was done more openly. Why easier? We already covered that one in previous answer.

The communistparty elite has everything – everyday goods are supplied as bonuses (free),there are special resort places, special shops for communist party elite.


This has nothing to do with communism, it was just pure hypocrisy and exploitation of the system.

Besides, if a communist party member have criminal immunity – in order for acommunist party member to be brought to justice, communist party has to give itsconsent, and no communist party member can brought against criminal courtbefore that.
Nor was this. This was an usurpation of ruling system.

Overall,communist regime is fully based on lies and injustice. The difference withcapitalism is that without freedom of speech and media, it was very easy tohide it from publicity.

Overall you described one particular implementation of the communist system that, disregarding the basic forms, has not much in common with communism. In fact, you pinpointed exactly the non-communist elements of that society, and blamed them as wrongs of communism.
 

This is not an exclusively communist problem, but problem of corruption which is ever-present. If you showed incompetent, in a capitalist regime your chief would get you fired as soon as possible, but in communist system the owner is the state and problem was that state and judical system were not ready and for this kind of job. No one was there to take responsibility to finger point the incompetent, and all the damage was suffered by the state. State is somewhat a complex concept, while on the capitalist side we have a corporation or an owner who is a person who is willing to push things further for his private interest.



It's not much different in capitalism. In both communist and capitalist regime the elite tries to hold others away. It's not like the old Hilton will leave his business to who is most competent. Bribery works on both sides of the globe, it is just that on the East was easier to get away with it, so it was done more openly. Why easier? We already covered that one in previous answer.



This has nothing to do with communism, it was just pure hypocrisy and exploitation of the system.


Nor was this. This was an usurpation of ruling system.



Overall you described one particular implementation of the communist system that, disregarding the basic forms, has not much in common with communism. In fact, you pinpointed exactly the non-communist elements of that society, and blamed them as wrongs of communism.

You can't see the difference how people live in free market capitalist economy countries to how people lived under so called communist countries?!!! You are blind like a bat, and all your understanding problems start here. I experianced both systems in my life, and I can tell you that you are blind.
 
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“Problemswith capitalism: small number of people hold the majority of wealth, capital ismore valued than labor and skills, successor system makes it difficult topenetrate the poor in the higher class, in the case of economic hardship burdenshifts to taxpayers etc.”

It is alltrue about problems of capitalism, but the Communist regime, in addition, toits outrageous violation of human rights, holds exactly the same problems ofunjust society as capitalism:
All the wealth is at the hands of Elitecommunist party, connections (wealth, bribes) are much more important and valuedthan labor and skills (no one can get promoted without the connections, even ifa person is fully incompetent, he or she survives in a position because of freemarket competition – any factory or enterprise get state funding). Successorsystem is very powerful – elite communist party kids get all the training andpositions, in case of economic hardship (which is a normal state undercommunist regime – the “deficit” shortage of anything of better quality can beobtained by connections and bribes only).
The communistparty elite has everything – everyday goods are supplied as bonuses (free),there are special resort places, special shops for communist party elite.Besides, if a communist party member have criminal immunity – in order for acommunist party member to be brought to justice, communist party has to give itsconsent, and no communist party member can brought against criminal courtbefore that.
Overall,communist regime is fully based on lies and injustice. The difference withcapitalism is that without freedom of speech and media, it was very easy tohide it from publicity.

Very good point! If the tzar is capable then his son must be tzar. And what is the child is incapable?
But it is human nature (flawed logic). Yes, you are right, communist regimes practiced this a lot.
In Serbia, and Yugoslavia, however, it was not a prominent.
Starting from the president himself, Tito's children had not any special privileges.
But, what was a good, poor children had all the conditions to teach school (schools were free at all levels) and if they were worthly and able they could succeed in life.
For one society it is important that people can have a chance, unfortunately in the rigid societes, many do not have this oportunities.
In rigid communist countries because communist elite and poverty, in rigid capitalistic countries because poverty and oligarchic elite, etc.
Bad systems are those where no movement between social layers.
Serbia and Yugoslavia in this regard were the high achivement of civilization because many, even the poorest had the chance to skip social layers and become more prominent in society and material secured.
But, of course, it is not enough that one system is successful.
Socialistic system in Serbia and Yugoslavia, althought it was different from all the other socialist systems, suffered from certain ailments, which were systemic.
Again, in the first place I put (as in the last mail) that the socialist system (generally all so far) is ineffective (a little more about this in a reply to another member of forum).
 
Very good point! If the tzar is capable then his son must be tzar. And what is the child is incapable?
But it is human nature (flawed logic). Yes, you are right, communist regimes practiced this a lot.
In Serbia, and Yugoslavia, however, it was not a prominent.
Starting from the president himself, Tito's children had not any special privileges.
Same in poland, everybody was equal by law. You don't want to say that Tito's kids didn't live in a villa, was driven around in a limo, wearing western clothes, had preferential treatments in hospital and any public institution, etc. These are called privileges.


Serbia and Yugoslavia in this regard were the high achivement of civilization because many, even the poorest had the chance to skip social layers and become more prominent in society and material secured.
But, of course, it is not enough that one system is successful.
Are you saying that in Yugoslavia type of socialism there were social layers, if not classes? And with all the equal opportunity and free education there were still poor people there? How was it possible in this great Yugoslav socialism?
 
Same in poland, everybody was equal by law. You don't want to say that Tito's kids didn't live in a villa, was driven around in a limo, wearing western clothes, had preferential treatments in hospital and any public institution, etc. These are called privileges.

Nothing special. They were ordinary people just like everyone else.


Are you saying that in Yugoslavia type of socialism there were social layers, if not classes? And with all the equal opportunity and free education there were still poor people there? How was it possible in this great Yugoslav socialism?

I use the term social layers. Because classes are stricter term.

Yes, social layers existed. Communist party elite, managerial elite (managers of enterprises), technocratic elite (in public sector) etc.
But, what is important is the members of these layers changed, in the other words, there was no inheritance (generally).

Yes, you are right, there were poor people. You can read what I wrote about the disadvantages of socialism. And generally, socialism is ineffective, and Yugoslav self-managed socialism too (although it was unique in the world, and different from all other); I will explain a little more in response to another member of forum.
 
You can't see the difference how people live in free market capitalist economy countries to how people lived under so called communist countries?!!!
LoL, so it wasn't communist after all. Thank you for being sincere.

You are blind like a bat, and all your understanding problems start here. I experianced both systems in my life, and I can't tell you that you are blind.
Of course you can't. Thank you for this one also :grin:

Oh.... edited. Lame. But it was your true self speaking, before the evil LeBrok took over :)
 

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