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Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

> Those tend to be the ex-Soviet countries with rather extremist governments.

Not really though. Romania for example is poorer and not extremist in that sense. They are not pro-Russian (especially considering they are pretty worried about what's happening in Moldova/Transnistria)

But for now it's really just Hungary and as of this weekend Slovakia that are pro-Russian. (edit: Not Poland indeed sorry scotty79)

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Poland is as far from pro-Russian as possible. Second only to Ukraine I think. We currently have bad kleptocratic populist government which in the last years lead our country back towards the 90-s (which were not glorious in Poland), but even that government treats Russia as an enemy from the start. The only thing that can be said is that due to their intellectual deficiencies they are susceptible to Russian propaganda, intended to undermine EU.

You're right, I should not have put Poland in the pro-Russian camp. I know it's not. I heard it stems from what the Soviets did at Warsaw near the end of the war (apparently they waited outside a few weeks to give the Germans time to kill as many remaining civilians as possible so they could set up shop themselves)

But it is populist and not EU-friendly right now. Hopefully it will change.

> apparently they waited outside a few weeks to give the Germans time to kill as many remaining civilians as possible so they could set up shop themselves

That's... a misrepresentation of a complex historical event, to say the least. Polish government-in-exile made a bet that Home Army forces could overthrow Germans on their own and restore 1939 border with Soviet Union. And Home Army explicitly planned Operation Tempest to be executed before Red Army liberated the whole Poland. Should they succeeded, Soviets would have to negotiate with a sovereign Poland, instead of coming there as a heroes-who-liberated-Poland-from-Germans.

As the history goes, the bet failed an the uprising was drowned in blood. But it's stupid to blame Soviets for not helping the regime which was profoundly anti-Soviet.

History knows no ifs, but should Poles cooperate back then, probably they could achieved the same result with a lot less of blood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising

Isn't that what it says there?

> The Red Army did not reinforce resistance fighters or provide air support. Recently declassified documents show Joseph Stalin tactically halted his forces to let the operation fail and allow the Polish resistance to be crushed.[19]

However I didn't have time to read the whole thing. Maybe I'm cherrypicking from the first paragraphs :)

Of course the Red Army did not support resistance fighters! Resistance was both anti-nazi and anti-communist. Despite also fighting against nazi, they were not their allies, Soviets had zero reasons to help them. And resistance fighters knew that and didn't expect any help from Soviets.

The way OP frames the situation it sounds like the resistance failed because Soviets didn't help them. In reality resistance failed because they've miscalculated their powers against Germans, and because they did everything to ensure that Soviets won't help them.

> Hopefully it will change.

We are about to have an election in few weeks but I wouldn't count on major shift yet because being populist works and their internally targeted propaganda knows no bounds. I think we need to suffer another 4 years under them unless they screw up real bad.

Romania has almost twice Hungary's GDP.

And also more than double population.

Per capita it is about 14k (RO) vs 18k (HU).

Would you say that the US(76k per capita) is poorer than Lichtenstein(184k)?

It's a tax haven for rich people just like Andorra and Monaco so yeah. People are very well off there.

In fact I'm sure the country is even richer if you compare the wealth of the average citizen instead of GDP because not much (goods or services) is actually produced from there. It's more like a place you go to after you've already made your fortune.

Yes ;) Average Lichtensteiner is way better off than average American. Lichtenstein is a very bad target for similar comparison, exactly because they are what they are.

So we're not talking about the country, then, we're talking about the populace.

Do the wages you pay to manufacturing workers have anything to do with the total wealth of a state? That's how this conversation started. Is it cheaper to manufacture things in Liechtenstein or in Hungary?

According to Eurostat⁰, Romania has a slightly higher(13000€) average annual full-time adjusted salary per employee than Hungary (12600€).

⓪ - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

Per capita they don't, they're about the same

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