You are lucky that your country have not endured Soviet occupation like other states in Eastern Europe. Event today the economical and social signs are clearly visible on those states.
This was magnitude worse that British/American influence.
This was magnitude worse that British/American influence.
I am from Czech Republic, a former communist country. And it was nowhere as bad as Chile or El Salvador. Or, if you want just to compare Russian atrocities, occupation in 1968 was nowhere as bad as mass rapes in Germany after the end of world war, or Ukrainian famine, or Stalin's purges.
It's not just it's not black and white, it's not even one-dimensional. You can have regime without freedom of speech that puts couple tens people per year into jail (like Czech Republic in the 70s and 80s), or you can have a regime with freedom of speech that commits torture and war abroad, killing hundreds of people. To ask/answer which one is worse is meaningless.
And to compare it from economic perspective is just outright disgusting. Even if killing some people would indeed cause higher economic growth, no human should agree to such a trade.
First of all you are comparing third world countries like Chile or El Salvador with European countries that were doing well before WWII. At least Romania was. This makes your comparison flawed, because when a country is somewhat rich, with a working middle class, with somewhat working institutions, it does have the resources to spare and it will still be doing OK.
Because of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact between Hitler and Stalin, we've lost territories like Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, by force of course. And I must say that this was happening in 1940, with a Romania that hadn't entered the war yet. Russians later blamed us for giving support to the Germans on their invasion, but that's why they say you reap what you sow. Bessarabia is now the republic of Moldova. We still think of them as being Bessarabia, as Moldova is also the name of the adjacent region in Romania.
After the war, the soviet induced famine has hit us as well, but it hit Moldavians much harder. Hundreds of thousands of people have died of hunger and the official numbers are actually lower than what happened (my grandfather lived to tell me the story). But furthermore, we had to pay war reparations. And during their invasion on our territory, they've established what are called Sovroms, which were enterprises meant to deplete the resources of our country, with the effect that we've paid much, much more than the war reparations that were demanded. The soviets also mined us, for example we've shipped thousands of tons of uranium ore which ended up being used in their atomic bomb project.
In Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina the soviets did what Russians do best when invading a territory. They arrested, executed or deported to labour camps in Siberia hundreds of thousands of people and they also planted Russians on those territories, with the purpose of completely destroying their national identity. And this strategy of theirs does wonders. In the eyes of many Moldavians, the Russians are their "brothers" and Romania has had a "colonial policy" that has to be terminated. In return we've started granting them dual citizenship that has been their gate to the EU. We wouldn't have any economic benefit in an eventual unification of course, the difference between Romania and the Republic of Moldova being the difference between western and eastern Germany in the eighties. This is why Ukraine is so divided btw, as this is their usual modus operandi and anybody that says Russia's actions there are justified is either an ignorant or full of shit.
But back to the soviets, in Romania the result was poverty of course. But as a fun fact, even our former communist government was anti-Russian. For example at some point under Ceaușescu we declined to place our military forces under the Warsaw Pact's joint command and we also refused to increase our military expenditures. We also refused to side with Russia on several political conflicts. And Romania was actually isolated from the rest of the Eastern block. We were the pariah of the Warsaw Pact. Our neighbors had it easier.
But by far the biggest damage that the soviets did to us is the mentality, which is the cause for the corrupted system we've inherited after the communist block fell. We've been recovering quite well, but it's far from over, being much like cancer extirpation. And while our brethren from around our country are sometimes giving signs of missing the USSR, we don't. In fact that's the reason I'm proud of my country - we've always been at the intersection of empires, we're still here, we're still speaking a romance language and we hate everybody :-)
Moldova is bigger than just "the adjacent region in Romania", Moldova is that and Bessarabia together. What's in Romania now is Moldova without Bessarabia.
I strongly agree with "damaging mentality", but we don't hate everybody! Nowadays we don't resent anyone other than the russians (with their wishful "sphere of influence" over us), and I hope that that will pass too.
Not the best way to say "thank you" to the European Union -- not only do we have to suffer your Gypsies, we also get your Moldovans :(
(Don't put all the blame on the Soviets, the Ottomans didn't treat you so well, either.)
Also, we don't need to "thank you" dude, as the EU is not a charity, but a mutually beneficial arrangement. If it's not mutually beneficial, then we can negotiate, but don't give me this condescending attitude and we really don't have to apologize for giving citizenship to Moldavians or for having a gypsy minority. This is who we've always been and speaking of gipsies, we've been lectured for years in how we aren't doing a good job of integrating them in society. Well, here's your chance.
> (Don't put all the blame on the Soviets, the Ottomans didn't treat you so well, either.)
Yeah, no shit, we were amongst the ones that engaged the Ottomans in battle, helping in preventing their expansion into Europe. In 1475 for example our own Stephen the Great delivered what is said to be the greatest defeat of the ottomans until that time. He was then denied European assistance, yet he kept waging war until 1484. He was a Moldavian ;-)
I was myself only briefly one of those Gutmenschen until I got hold of better data (which I actively sought and which were contradictory to everything I was taught in University).
On the other hand, this is pretty plonk-worthy:
> but don't give me this condescending attitude
and, yes, you probably should apologize for letting random Moldavians into the Schengen area.
All of the states in the Holy Roman Empire did pay extra taxes to pay for wars against the Ottomans a few decades later.
Plus, because it seems to have slipped further down the list that the GP the Guardian ran a correction pointing out the article has no historical basis and the damage these incorrect allegations have done to Greece in plainly visible in the writing of the GP.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/28/readers-editor-...
For example, how sanguine should I be about the claimed non-violent, non-Stalinist goals of the revolutionary forces?
For that matter, the use of the term "concentration camp", while accurate, is not provided the context to differentiate it from the modern connotations associated with Nazi death camps.
This isn't journalism, but historical propaganda.
As I read it, the major claim of the article is that the British supported elements of the Greek state who had been collaborating with the Nazi occupiers in purging the EAM resistance. This does not seem to have been disputed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E...
In any case, justifying the application of violence with the possibility of preventing more violence some 20 years later is kind of outrageous.
"Greece was to be portioned 90/10 to the West, while Romania was to be divided 90/10 in favour of the USSR"
See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/blog/books-blog/taylor-downing/y...