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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

It’s interesting how the various post-communist states in Central/Eastern Europe have played out since the 90s. Having lived here for roughly the last ~8 years, it seems to me that the ones succeeding the most are those which have a nearly universal negative appraisal of the communist era. Poland, for example, is on a pretty great trajectory and will probably be in the top 2-3 EU economies in a decade. The Soviet system was forced upon Poland and very few people look upon that era favorably. The break between eras was also fairly clean and without too much internal conflict.

Compare that to some other states like Bulgaria or Ex-Yugoslavia, which have a more complicated memory of the communist era, and which also had a lot of conflict during the transition period. There is less of a pre-packaged “social imaginary” of what the country could be/used to be prior to the communist era - unlike Poland, which was occupied and spent a couple centuries building an oppositional identity during the Partitions/occupations.

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> the ones succeeding the most are those which have a nearly universal negative appraisal of the communist era.

A simpler explanation is that you swapped cause and effect: it's the countries where the economy struggled, where their people regret leaving their previous socialist economy.

Why some economies struggled less than other is something that probably requires a lot more of country-by-country investigation, rather than generalisations... But I think that a common trend might be:

How accessible (and geographically close) is the country to potential investors? Poland is close to Germany (and German investors could already find a German speaking minority, which could help bootstrap), likewise the Baltic republic are close to Finland and Sweden (Sweden is the first country to open an embassy in Estonia for example, which is arguably a prerequisite for a lot of investment in Estonia)

So much this. Among other causes: Poland has a population of more than 35million people, so they were able to export a lot of workforce - which then generated significant remittance income, a fundamental driver of capital creation in poor economies. Bulgaria is less than 7 million, they obviously could not do it on the same scale; they also suffered from blocks on free circulation of workers, imposed on Romania and Bulgaria on accession precisely on the back of the experience with Poland. These blocks were only lifted about 10 years ago - and significantly increased the lag they already had versus the Baltic states (which were allowed to join much earlier, largely because of strategic German interests that did not apply to Romania and Bulgaria).

> A simpler explanation is that you swapped cause and effect: it's the countries where the economy struggled, where their people regret leaving their previous socialist economy.

That's a simpler explanation, indeed. It's also wrong.

Take the 2 examples of GP. In Bulgaria, the first elections after the first president after the fall of the dictatorship was Petar Mladenov, a former politburo member. The first parliamentary elections were similarly won by the communist party.

In Yugoslavia, Milosevic remained leader for decades.

In both cases the "nostalgia" had already set in before anyone had the chance to experience any I'll effects caused by democracy.

Some of ex-Yugoslavia (mostly Croatia) is doing rather well. But the Yugoslavs did have oppositional identity: it's just that their identities were the ones from before WW2 and even WW1. The lifting of Communism wound the clock straight back to the smoking gun of Gavrilo Princep, and the place tore itself apart over nationalism and religion again.

Yes Croatia (along with Slovenia) is a good example of a place that has a strong oppositional attitude toward the previous communist era. My impression is that Croatians want nothing to do with the Yugoslav era and much prefer to be an extension of Catholic Europe / the EU. Compare that to Serbia which is still trying to be unaligned, just as Yugoslavia was.

As a Serb, I wouldn't really describe Serbia as being unaligned/centrist. The corrupt politicians (I wouldn't dare call them people) in the gov't itself eat from the laps of Russia because the West = Evil for some nebulous reason that nobody quite understands anymore (slightly exaggerating, it's mostly to do with Kosovo and NATO involvement in the Yugo wars in the 90s but most of the youth don't give a shit about that anymore), while the youth, at least in the bigger cities, tend to support the EU and want Serbia to join them one day if we're to have any hope of advancement.

At the same time they're also selling the country to the highest bidder, which for now are various Arab states like the UAE and the Saudis (lookup the Belgrade waterfront as an example), though there's also lots of Chinese money flowing into the pockets of the politicians as well.

It's a horrifically corrupt country with legitimate war criminals and their leashed dogs (like current PM Vucic) still holding the reigns, trying to scam and bruteforce their way to as much money as they can muster before the inevitable happens. Meanwhile it experiences insane levels of brain drain as anyone sensible and with the means to (my parents in the 80s and myself and pretty much everyone else in my family now included) gets the fuck out and never looks back twice.

Mind you, myself and most Serb diaspora I know don't want anything to do with the place. I was born and grew up in Indonesia and have visited Serbia a handful of times at most, so it's not a country I'd call home in any sense of the word. Even then, it still depresses me how hopeless the situation seems for anyone living there, as relayed to me by the few friends and family that are still stuck there with no way out.

You also need to take religion into account - Catholic vs Orthodox.

Orthodox countries are statistically more corrupt due to relation to God and it's translation to relation to authority. This is well researched.

That’s a pretty big claim and I’d be curious to see this research. I think you’d have a hard time untangling the communist effect (and earlier Ottoman effect) on Orthodox states to make any kind of deeper argument here.

One sample:

> Religion plays a significant role in influencing corruption levels [26,[29], [30], [31], [32], [33]]. While all religions encourage good moral conduct and ethical behavior, studies show that different religions are associated with varying levels of corruption. Notably, countries whose primary religions are hierarchical religions such as Catholic Christianity (Catholicism), Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and Islam, tend to have higher corruption levels, particularly in comparison to Protestant Christian countries [21,30,[34], [35], [36], [37]]. Supporting this claim, [30] found that corruption levels are lowest in countries with a Protestant majority and highest in countries with an Orthodox Christian majority.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10360949/

To disentagle communism you can look at 1800. But there you have other confounders (colonialism, industrialization, feudalism...)

But how many of these Orthodox countries have been Orthodox countries officially for more than a few decades? I’m struggling to think of any besides Greece.

Lebanon never got communism and the country was founded as largely a Catholic and Orthodox project, but it still has considerable corruption. (Not defending the OP's claim, just offering another data point.)

Confessionalism is probably just as large a confounder as communism in this context though..

Different iterations of the Serbian state have been Orthodox since the 12th century. The entire Orthodox part of the Balkans is in that range as well.

But the question is concerning studies done recently, not centuries ago. So I think the only way to determine if Orthodoxy leads to "more corrupt" states would be to analyze one that wasn't something un-Orthodox (e.g., socialist Yugoslavia) for the last half-century.

Huh, Orthodoxy is very old and widespread. Ofc during Communism, it tended to be suppressed, but as a bedrock of the society, Orthodoxy definitely prevails in Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Belarus and Russia at least.

Ukraine is more complicated, a nation sewn together from very different regions; Greek Catholics are an important minority, mostly present in the formerly Austro-Hungarian western part of the country, which also seems to be the most nationalist one.

Presumably these studies have been done recently, not two centuries ago, so I'm not sure how useful they are in determining that Orthodox states are "more corrupt."

I am not sure either, but I wouldn't rule it out either. Caesaropapism was probably, on the net, a negative shaping force in societies which indulged in it.

In the world of Islam, the Shi'a system of ayatollahs is structurally fairly close to Christian Orthodox Churches, and the Iranian theocracy which builds on it is corrupt beyond belief.

That said, it probably makes sense to study why some countries are somewhat less corrupt or how they managed to keep corruption in check. Corruption seems to be fairly widespread across space and time, one of the universal blights of mankind.

All studies analyzing countries as a whole are flawed. First of all, it's low sample size, there are 200 something countries. Secondly, countries are complex systems with thousands if not more variables, that are impossible to account for, so any finding is incidental at best.

This claim of hierarchy doesn’t make sense for Islam, which explicitly does not have a fixed religious hierarchy like Christianity (which I will also note it’s interesting that Christianity was split into sects but not Islam for this study).

FWIW I don't know about the statistics, but it is true that Eastern Orthodoxy does have notions like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonia_(theology) that are especially conductive to authoritarianism and its associated ills (including unchecked corruption by local authorities).

Maybe relevant, from Conversations with Tyler (Ep. 184, with David Bentley Hart):

  COWEN: Let’s say Poland, Slovenia, Czechia, which have a lot of Catholicism in their backgrounds — they seem to be converging on Western norms, living standards much more than, say, the EU members to the East: Bulgaria, Romania.

  HART: Well, they had certain advantages to begin with, too, but better relations. Again, I don’t think it has any particular... To be honest, Polish Catholicism is basically culturally very much like Slavic Orthodoxy. There, you’re going to find that culturally, Catholicism and Orthodoxy are closer to one another in many ways than Catholicism in the East is with Catholicism in the West.

  Trying to draw causal ties between what are very complex social histories, I just think is a mistake. There’s no way of saying one way or the other. Greek democracy flourished in the modern age for a while after Greek independence in the early 19th century, and Greece remains Orthodox, too. Even more than Poland, it is committed to a set of real democratic norms. In Poland, there are stronger reactionary forces at present than there are in Greece.

and also from Ep. 192, with Jacob Mikanowski:

  MIKANOWSKI: [...] I think that idea of an Orthodox disease is maybe a figment of geography more than a deeply cultural matrix that we think. I’m not — I think we could be optimistic about Croatia and Romania simultaneously. Bulgaria maybe too. I’m not sure that I believe in a kind of Orthodox curse. I think it has more to do with how things shook up internally in former Yugoslavia and where those countries are in relationship to that industrial core of Germany, Austria, Switzerland.

Yeah, I also don't think I'd really call Czechia a place with a "lot of Catholicism in its background." It was a hostile top-down imposition from the Austrians, with the consequence that Czechs are largely agnostic/areligious today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic

What would Czech have if not for Austria? Would it be Protestant or Orthdox?

Without Austria it would be about half Catholic, half Protestant with a significant Jewish minority.

Prior to re-Catholicization of the 17th century, there was a strong presence of homebrewn Hussite/Brethren Protestantism (mostly Czech-speaking people) and somewhat smaller presence of classical Lutheranism/Calvinism (mostly German-speaking people). There wasn't any clear geographic boundary between those two, the communities were mixed, though there were regional "strongholds" - e.g. Silesia was strongly German-Protestant while southern Moravia was strongly Czech-Catholic.

Orthodox communities, with the exception of ambassadors or foreign businesspeople, weren't a thing in Early Modern Kingdom of Bohemia.

I have to say that I met Mikanowski in HS in passing a few times in academic competitions and I never heard anything about him being bigoted in any way whatsoever.

Well, if people start missing the Soviet union, you probably got concerning problems. I think there is very little causality the other way around (missing the Soviet leads to problems).

I think it happens naturally in many places because older people tend to look at their history with rose tinted glasses. You forget the bad parts and treasure the good parts (which is not a bad psychological coping mechanism in itself). Add to that that the current world looks more complex as it becomes harder to keep up with age.

We see that even in Western countries, where a sizable set of boomers want to restore the order of the good old 50 or 60ies and vote conservative or right wing populist parties..

The question is what do the younger generations think and what portion of the population they are.

This period was a time of rebellion against the more authoritarian styles of government/society that existed in Western countries historically. I doubt that it's nostalgia for the 1960s that's driving modern conservativism. Perhaps any nostalgia for that period would be economic, in that it was still possible for a person (man) with one job to support a family and even own a house without much difficulty. Today, it seems like more of a struggle where people are working multiple jobs for decades to buy over-priced real estate. But modern conservatism doesn't seem to have any particular plan to go back to that kind of economy ... actually I'm not clear what it's actually trying to achieve.

I certainly hear from many people on the left that it’s nostalgia for the religious and racial power structure that’s driving it, but I’m not sure I buy it.

For the rank and file it might very well be economic, but the up and coming politicians seem to be more about money and power than any actual plan of governance.

It's hard to imagine that there's a large group who are thinking that their lives will be so much better once abortion is banned and people are no longer allowed to dress as whichever gender they like.

The irony about the economic issues is that tax rates and wealth redistribution were so much higher after WW2, and economic inequality was quite a bit less than today. The domination of right wing politics has been increasing inequality for decades, so why would anyone think that moving further to the right would help?

My point is more that in Poland, communism was always something of a foreign imposition by the Soviet Union, as the history (the Soviet invasion in 1939, plus Russian partitions before that) didn't lend itself to being happy about the situation.

Bulgaria, on the other hand, was a close ally of the Soviet Union and more historically, of Russia (at least, more of an ally than Poland.) Yugoslavia wasn't in the Soviet sphere at all and was more "indigenous" and not as repressive as the Soviet states. So in Bulgaria and Ex-Yugoslavia, the memory of the communist era is not as clearly negative as it is in Poland. (Even if it's not positive, either – it's just more murky.)

> My point is more that in Poland, communism was always something of a foreign imposition by the Soviet Union

I think communism or not is besides the point. Poland has a strong imperial tradition where the state spanned from Baltic almost to the Black Sea. They’ve been occupying and ruling for much longer than they’ve been in a socialist camp, and that had a much bigger impact on their national identity. And, as some others noted, being close to Germany gives Poland a big advantage.

On the point of “communism”, take Romania as an example. I took a tour of the Presidential palace when I was in Bucharest. The guide was extremely negative about the communist era(when the palace itself was built), as many Romanians are. She went on and on how the dictator forced the palace construction and how terrible it was. Ironically, the palace is one of the few attraction in Bucharest. Walk just 200m away and it’s going to be rubble and desolation. In summary, I don’t think being anti-communist helps them all that much.

> Bulgaria, on the other hand, was a close ally of the Soviet Union and more historically, of Russia

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Bulgaria never was an economic powerhouse or major European power, unlike Poland. Between the Ottomans and other empires, they probably don’t have a history of building a strong economy. Being between rock and a hard place, not having resources, etc. probably contributed much more than what you say.

If you think Bucharest has few attractions besides Casa Poporului, you must have not had a good guidebook and really missed out. The city is full of interesting sites. Yes, the socialist era and the big earthquake damaged the city, but there are still great museums, churches, parks, and sites connected with the artists and men of letters of the 19th century and prewar era.

Poland was occupied / colonized almost continuously from the late 1700s to the 1990s. The idea that their imperial history before that had more of an effect on the modern person’s psyche is nonsense.

> Ironically, the palace is one of the few attraction in Bucharest. Walk just 200m away and it’s going to be rubble and desolation. In summary, I don’t think being anti-communist helps them all that much.

You got it wrong here.

1)Bucharest doesn't have many eye-catching tourist attractions like a quaint historical old town because of the 1977 earthquake that destroyed a large part of the old historical buildings, and Ceausescu in his infinite wisdom, decided "fuck it, we'll just build concrete commie blocks instead for the communist party members", a highly unpopular decision even back then in those days, that even the lead architect in charge fled the country for speaking up against this idea because he didn't want to desecrate history to build commie blocks.

The only somewhat silver lining of this today, is that due to the over construction of commie blocks back then, Bucharest housing remains somewhat affordable for the average person today despite gentrification, when you look at housing affordability in other EU capitals.

2) People in Romania are rightfully anti-communist due to the atrocities of the regime, and a giant building as a big tourist attraction doesn't change that. Being anti communist does actually help with the imense progress the country made becoming business friendly and attracting foreign investors.

People miss communism because communist governments provided normal people with stable jobs and guaranteed housing. Present day neo-liberal governments do not provide normal people with stable jobs and guaranteed housing.

As such, you could say that choosing neo-liberal governments over communist governments doesn't make utilitarian sense for normal people, they should choose the governments that provide them with the basic necessities of life (i.e. housing and the guaranteed opportunity to earn one's living).

It's more complicated than that, you are ignoring some significant facts.

First of all, Poland, your example, has major human rights issues.

Even ignoring the LGBT issues (the so-called "lgbt free zones" in Poland), Poland has practically abolished abortion rights. Abortion has been denied to Ukrainian women refugees that were rape victims.

Amnesty International: Access to abortion was further limited. Criminal charges were used to curtail freedom of expression. The authorities continued to erode the independence of the judiciary. Freedom of peaceful assembly was restricted. Violations of LGBTI rights persisted.

Ironically under the Soviet Union Poland was one of the first Countries in the whole Europe (and probably the World) to have legal abortion, because communist countries did not have to please the Catholic Church (or any church).

Under Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union became the first modern state in legalizing abortions on request — the law was first introduced in the Russian SFSR in 1920

So there's that.

The second issue is nationalism, mainly far right nationalism, that spread throughout Europe from the former eastern block, that was once put under control by the Soviets.

AfD in Germany, Sweden Democrats in Sweden (despite the name they have roots in white nationalist and neo-Nazi parties), Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, Giorgia Meloni and FdI in Italy, Vox in Spain etc. etc.

Look at Milošević for an example gone really bad, former leftist, he joined ranks with far-right nationalists extremists and things went south.

A very popular representative right now in Europe is Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who took a more moderate approach but is still a far-right conservative dictator-wannabe who's causing lots of troubles to the EU.

All of the aforementioned far-right parties in Europe are allied to, or close friends with, Orban.

Third: the so called Visegrád Group formed by Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, has strong ties to Germany, which in turn means they sustain German economy by importing their goods (combined, they are the second largest export market for Germany) and vice versa.

Last, but not least, the EU has invested a lot of money in those Countries and sustained their economy to keep them in, even though their politics have raised more than an eyebrow.

So it's like the end of WW2, by looking at the numbers one could think that the war produced the economic growth in Europe, but it actually was the Marshall Plan.

p.s. Poland is far from being one of the 3 major economies in Europe

> Ironically under the Soviet Union Poland was one of the first Countries in the whole Europe (and probably the World) to have legal abortion

>> the law was first introduced in the Russian SFSR in 1920

Poland was never part of the Soviet Union. It became socialist and part of the eastern block only after WW2, so I doubt the legal abortion date.

Also I mean, yeah the eastern block was quite progressive in some ways, but human rights were not one of them. Some of the gain were hugely offset by the millions of people who were tortured and killed by the system. Also much more blood thirsty in the Soviet Union than in Communist Poland.

Quoting here

In 1932 the new Penal Code legalised abortion only when there were medical reasons and, for the first time in Europe, when the pregnancy resulted from a criminal act. This made Poland the first country in Europe outside the Soviet Union to legalize abortion in cases of rape and threat to maternal health.

In 1920 Lenin legalized abortion in the Russian Federation, not in Poland.

> but human rights were not one of them

Poland has major human rights issues right now, in 2023, as a member of the EU.

Stricter laws about the abortion rights have started popping up in 2011 and the latest reform is from 2021. They are quite bad, they basically abolished abortion for 98% of the cases it was performed and for the rest of the cases the waits are so long that it becomes virtually impossible.

I find this extremely true. Hungary has a neutral/good memory of Soviet times.

Despite oppression, people felt more safe, because there were clear guidelines to life in general. If you adhered to them, you had a boring and regulated life. Everyone had a job (it was mandatory to work), and most people could afford to own a holiday home in the countryside.

The "state" provided a life where you played along the rules and with minimum input you reaped maximum rewards. That's difficult to duplicate in a capitalistic scenario.

Hungary was also way more liberal, than east germany for example, which practiced Stalinism till the very end (but still we have people nostalgic for that).

As someone from the UK with a Hungarian partner - you pretty much nailed it.

The older members of her family look back with fondness on that period in time which sounds strange to someone from a western country but I can sort of understand it - some of it is just the nostalgia of youth but some of it is I think caused because the freedom to make choices comes with the requirement to live with your choices.

When the state keeps the safety rail up in where you live, where you work and how you spend your leisure time you have a clear path towards how to live your life - which is a comfortable if stifled existence.

That said, the younger diaspora have a different way of looking at the world - many left to move to other EU countries because they wanted to avoid that nostalgia.

That said I truly love visiting Hungary, the history, art and food is amazing, the people are warm and friendly and the countryside is staggeringly beautiful (as is the Balaton).

It's certainly on my list of places to suggest people visit.

Wasn't there a bloody rebellion against the Soviets in 1956 in Hungary?

The nostalgia is for the period after 1956. While the USSR and Warsaw Pact helpers succeeded in putting down the Hungarian uprising, they had to manage the discontent in the country so that it wouldn’t happen again. (Moreover, the Hungarian uprising was fed by frustration at specifically the Stalinist regime forced on Hungary, but Stalin’s death was eventually followed by a thaw even in the USSR.)

So, for the remaining thirty years of socialism, Hungarians found it easier to travel abroad, publish literature or present art and music that was previously forbidden, and there was even some limited private enterprise. In rankings of which countries had it best in the Eastern Bloc, Hungary is usually at or near the top.

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