Budapest was an exception to the rule. Hungary always thumbed its nose at mother Russia. I always ate well there and in Prague. Bucharest was the worst, followed by Sofia. At least we had the option of driving to Istanbul from Sofia on the weekends for a food fix.
This has been one of the more enlightening threads I’ve had the privledge to read here on the Dope. Thanks to all the contributors.
I find the irony in simultaneously embracing and rejecting the West quite interesting.
I know I’m repeating myself here, but most of the Bulgarians I’ve ever discussed the topic with do not want to be like us and would rather go back to communism. At least, that’s what they say. I don’t know how serious they are about it. I’ve also heard at least one person admit that while communism was better, it would be impossible to go back.
I’m not an expert, but I think freedom from jingoism would be a good place to start.
As for the polluted cities you reference – do I really need to point out they exist under all political systems? The first time I went to LA it was so hazy I was there for a week before I realized it was surrounded by mountains. Does that mean Budapest is superior to LA?
Did you arrive at this conclusion through direct experience? I suspect this Cold War-era platitude was drilled into your head by the American propaganda machine, which was equal to (or as you would assume, superior to) the Communist propaganda machine.
And I’m no apologist for the Communists. They murdered my grandfather.
There is a huge difference between wanting to throw off the yoke of your oppressor and wanting to be like America. They didn’t want to be like us, they wanted to be like themselves, minus Soviet oppression. Unfortunately, that subtlety is lost on most Americans.
We’re getting far afield from the OP.
I’m not an authority on Eastern Europe. I saw a few things growing up and learned to appreciate how lucky I was (materially) to have grown up in the US. And I spent a lot of time feeling smugly superior to people exactly like myself trapped through no fault of their own in less-fortunate circumstances. It’s a pretty shallow way to think.
Must agree. Terribly enlightening. I actually feel for the older ones who don’t know how to make decisions for themselves or how to improve themselves. Other than black marketers, I reckon entrepreneurs were rare. Hopefully, the young will help the old. It appears there’s a different set of needs there than here; i.e., a need to teach the older ones how to fend for themselves and one another.
I’m given to wonder whether Chinese state authorities studied these matters, and after the devastating effects of the “cultural revolution” — I wonder if that’s when they began to introduce capitalism into their economy. It was a smart move on their part basically to leave Hong Kong alone.
Fascinating thread. One of the best ever in General Questions. These may be anecdotes, but they are factual.
Bolding mine. I've just realised that everyone in this thread (myself included) said that communist products were clearly inferior to the western ones and the communist industry was simply unable to make high (or even decent) quality products. However, this is not entirely true. There is a slight twist: communist products sold on the **internal** market, to their own citizens, were crap. But the products meant to be exported were much better! (again, I'm speaking for Romania's case here).
An uncle of mine worked for about 10 years in the Middle East, installing extraction equipment and laying pipes for gas and oil. The equipment was made in Romania, and I guess it was quite good, otherwise those rich sheiks would have bought some western stuff. This being said, I suspect politics played a role too: some of the middle east countries were in the soviets' sphere of influence, so they were more susceptible to do business with the eastern bloc.
Another example (which I’ve read in a journal recently): back in the '80s, a romanian journalist had the opportunity to travel to western Europe (France, IIRC). He was supposed to cover a sporting event. Naturally, he went on a shopping spree, stuffing his luggage with everything, from soap to chocolate to razor blades to audio tapes to… He also wanted to buy a special gift for his daughter, like a nice dress. Sure enough, he found one, but it was quite expensive. He counted again his money, he asked his colleagues for more… but in the end he had to admit that the dress was too expensive. He bought some more chocolate instead and went home.
Several months later, back in Romania, he visited a textile factory. There was a small show-room inside the factory, where the finest products were displayed. And guess what? The dress was there! Never sold on in Romania, of course.
Anecdote aside, I clearly remember discussions adults had about how they bought some item which didn’t pass the quality control for export. “Refused for export” was actually a guarantee that the said item was a high quality product! What was happening is that some batches, meant to be exported, had minor defects and were returned. Since it would have been time consuming to correct the defects, the communist party was re-directing them to the internal market. Not only clothing, but cars, electronic equipment… as a general rule, if it was meant to be exported, it was much better than what was normally available in the shops.
So, it looks like even the communist economy was able to make decent products…if subjected to free market conditions, in which the customer was able to choose. 
Now, going back to **Kevbo**'s motorcycle, I suspect that it was properly designed and tested. It would work just fine... if fabricated according to its design specs. But this was not always the case. Let me exemplify with another example from Romania.
In the '60s, the communist party decided that Romania needed a car production facility. They wanted to buy the licence for the car and a full production line. The Renault 12 (yeah, a french car 
) was chosen. It was produced for 35 years, with very minor modifications, under the name Dacia 1300. The total production was slightly less than 2.000.000 (about 60.000 a year), which is not much, even for a small country like Romania, especially since a sizable part of the total production was exported.
The first cars were assembled from original french parts. At some point, the local industry become able to manufacture all the parts, so no more french parts were used. Fact is, the quality of the car steadily decreased during the years. The main reason is that the parts were not fabricated anymore accordingly to the original specs. The lack of raw materials (especially those that needed to be imported) and the party orders to make economies meant that low quality materials were used.
So…condoms were made in the eastern bloc (I think some polish ones could be bought in Romania, on the black market of course), though of inferior quality. Speaking of STD, these were diseases specific to the decadent capitalist society, especially AIDS. We had no AIDS in our socialist paradise, comrades…until 1990, when we found out that Romania had the highest number of AIDS infected children in Europe. No one knew what AIDS really was and how to protect against it…so it spread uncontrolled. Of course, why would one need to protect himself against AIDS when everybody knew there is no AIDS in Romania?
I recall going to a store in Warsaw that sold glass items. I picked out something, and the stone-faced clerk wrapped it in paper and tied it up with string (they were fanatics about doing that with every purchase). I tried to give her money, but she indicated that I needed to go stand in a line across the room in order to pay for it, then return to get the item.
I went to the line, which was composed almost completely of Polish folks who seemed to be uniformly dressed in gray. I stood just back of the person in front of me, giving him the usual space allotted by Americans in lines. A Polish person walked up to the space, looked at me for a moment, then stepped into the space and in front of me. Somewhat surprised and annoyed, I stepped back from him. A woman immediately walked up to the space, looked at me for a moment, and repeated what the man had done. Lesson learned: nuts to butts, everyone! Nobody to be wasting valuable space! I learned quickly that a space in line was valuable, and that personal space was a luxury.
Moscow bread store: lots of bread, surprisingly, all the same type. I made the mistake of touching a loaf to see if it was fresh. A babushka started yelling at me in Russian and the others were glowering at me. I scurried from the store, breadless. Apparently, one is supposed to use a provided spoon to tap the loaf, but never touch it. Stealing the spoons must have been unthinkable, since everyone was constantly watched.
aesop:
The free American press is a “propoganda machine”?
And whom of yours did the “not-superior” Democrats/Capitalists murder?
No, it’s just that you’re taking a turn of phrase to an absurd extreme. Let me be more specific: if America’s and Western Europe’s systems of economics and government were not superior to those of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, then why have the states of the former Eastern Bloc moved toward more closely emulating the West rather than vice versa?
No, not the free press itself, but elements of it, absolutely. If you don’t think the Greatest Country on Earth would employ propaganda as a weapon in its Arsenal of Democracy to counter the Red Menace because we’re Better Dead than Red, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Make no mistake, Hungary was awash with Communist propaganda. But the people knew it. They were not nearly so brainwashed as our own Western propaganda would have had us believe.
Side note: I remember a civil defense poster from my youth, displayed in a store in Hungary – what to do in case of nuclear attack. Hungarian schoolchildren were also advised to seek shelter under their desks. I guess no political system has the monopoly on absurdity.
Other observations/memories:
The above-mentioned civil defense poster also had advice on how to store food and water, where to go in case of attack, etc. This was in a small town, and it was the only time I saw something like that during all my time in Hungary.
The subway system in Budapest (Moscow, too, from what I’ve heard) was one of the places citizens were supposed to gather in the event of nuclear attack.
I remember at least one building in the central city that had the symbol for radiation, indicating it was a civil defense shelter.
There was no feeling that nuclear war was imminent. Neither were people waiting for the Americans to come liberate them. Remember, the Hungarians reached out for help to the West during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Despite their pleas, no one came to their rescue.
The subway cost one forint. The coin was made of aluminum. The smaller denominations, called fillers, were also made of aluminum.
Military installations had strict prohibitions against being photographed. If you drove by an army camp there would be signs of a crossed out camera reminding you not to take pictures.
Conscription was mandatory for all able-bodied males. The term was two years. College deferments merely postponed the inevitable. I never knew anyone who chose to stay in the military beyond the mandatory.
There were no four-lane highways. It took three or four hours to drive the hundred miles from Budapest to the little town where we spent half the summer. Hungary now has an excellent highway system, but to this day Romania has less than 175 miles of four-lane highway. And Romania is almost the size of Oregon.
Many, many people lived (and still do live) in large rectangular apartment blocks. They are called panel houses in Hungary. They were pre-fab, essentially featureless, and made of unpainted concrete. So yes, they perpetuated the drab grey Eastern European stereotype. I remember when a bunch of these went up in near where my grandmother lived in Budapest. They had punched up the exteriors with bright red and purple balconies.
A typical panel house flat may have 400 - 700 square feet (my guesstimate). But lots of other people had regular houses, or inside the city, lived in grand old apartment houses that had been mercilessly subdivided by the Communists.
Most of these grand old apartments were carved up, and it was done along purely functional lines without any regard for aesthetics. A 2000 square foot apartment would be converted into five or six smaller units. Consequently, the floor plans for many Hungarian flats look more like gerrymandered voting districts than living spaces.
The Royal Palace of Godollo, summer residence of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, and sometimes called the Hungarian Versailles, was in turn a Soviet military installation and then a crumbling retirement home. Until renovations began a few years ago it was a semi-ruin.
There were no Democrats/Capitalists here in Hungary prior to 1989. Most recently we’ve had communism, preceded by fascism, a regency, communism, and before that a true monarchy. So there were no Democrats/Capitalists to commit atrocities against my family. However, the Fascists rounded up many of my relatives and sent them off to places like Mauthausen and Auschwitz.
But again, if you think political murder is the exclusive province of Communists, we will have to agree to disagree.
I have no use for extremism of any kind.
It is my original statement that has been taken to an absurd extreme. Look at my words: “We weren’t superior. We just had more stuff.” The superiority I referred to was the feeling rich people sometimes have relative to poor people. We Westerners enjoyed a superior quality of life. But there was nothing innate in our character that made us superior human beings.
We can agree that people here wanted to have access to more and better goods. We can agree that people here wanted many of the freedoms Westerners take for granted. But they had absolutely no tradition of democracy to be nostalgic for. I disagree with the notion that the Hungarians wanted to set up some kind of copy of the US or the UK or France here in Hungary. They wanted the goods and the lifestyle. How they got it was not nearly as important. And as stated throughout this thread, many citizens of the former Eastern Bloc miss the old days.
Americans see the world through American-colored glasses, and we have been acculturated (dare I say “brainwashed”?) to believe everyone wants to be like Americans. It just ain’t so.
You’re living in Budapest, don’t you? I’m not living in Romania anymore, but I am visiting it 3-4 times each year. The changes are occurring so slow that probably I would miss them if I would live there.
I see aesop already clarified this issue (me too, I’ve misunderstood what he said as “democracy was no better than communism”).
Truth is, we didn’t want to be like you. We had no idea how life was in the west and what “democracy” really meant. As aesop said, we wanted to have the stuff you had. If someone would have said “ok, you can have half of what the capitalist pigs have and we stay a communist country”, I suspect most of the people would have agreed “good enough for me, we will have a lot of those western goodies AND our job security, free shelter, etc”. Heck, I’m afraid you’ll find a lot of people willing to take that deal even today. 
The problem was, the West was always inventing new stuff. You invented color TV…we wanted it. Then you invented the VHS…we wanted that too. PC, satellite TV, video games, and so on. IMO, here lies the true superiority of the democracy, in this ability to self-correct and self-improve itself. This is something that communism was never able to do.
I have no doubt that democracy is better than communism. But this was not always so obvious. I mean, there was never racial segregation in communist countries. Yet USA, the very symbol of democracy, was a racially segregated country in the '60s. What an african would have thought back then about USA and USSR? Which one would have been better in his mind?
40 years later, we know which one is better. That self-improving feature democracy has kicked in and racial segregation does not exist anymore. USA has a black president, go figure.
Would communism be able to do this, to self improve itself? Hungary, in '56, then Czechoslovakia, in '68, tried. I suspect that, if left to their own devices, both would have ended as democracies. This is what happened with Poland: when Solidarnosc managed to organize free election, the communism was over. But communist governments in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary where relatively “soft” compared to those in USSR or Romania. Actually, in Romania the opposite happened: after a period of relative overture (Ceasusescu even condemned publicly the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia, in '68), the regime become more and more authoritarian. By '89, Romania was heading to an Orwellian nightmare. Everything from “1984” was already happening: “besieged fortress” mentality, lack of basic necessities, generalized suspicion, a quasi-religious cult for the “infallible leader”. There were no video-surveillance devices in apartments, that’s the only major difference that I can think of.
And there is North Korea. I suspect that, when the communism will be over, we will find out the most extreme indoctrination and brainwashing ever performed. “1984” at its worst. Hope I’m wrong.
The only unknown is China. They seem to survive…mostly because they’re partly capitalist now.
What is this “American” press you are talking about? Canadian journals? Brazilian newspapers? 
Why do you, US-ians, speak of America like it is the same as USA? Actually, what does “USA” really means? The correct name should be “United States North of Mexico and South of Canada”, no? Or maybe you intend to take over all America, so you’ve called yourself “USA” so that you don’t have to change the name each time you were making a new conquest?
Joke aside, of course you do have propaganda. It is not (entirely) run by the state and it is more subtle than the communist one, but it exists. Take Hollywood, for instance. It is a great propaganda machinery for both the rest of the world and the americans. Like it or not, in many countries american movies are the only resource people have at hand in order to learn about US and US-style democracy. So, do you think Hollywood blockbusters are an accurate description of the american way of life? Do you think foreign cultures are accurately described in Hollywood movies, so that the american public can get a fair idea about how is to live outside US?
Let’s not forget about elections, during which most of the free press is very busy to destroy the credibility of the “enemy” party.
In communist countries, propaganda was controlled by the state. In a democracy, every group of interests spreads its own propaganda (I think companies use a different word for it … “lobby” 
). Therefore, people can compare and choose the version that suits them best, or create their own version. Free market in action.
Indeed. And former black marketers were among the most prosperous businessmen during the transition period. However, they are actually a curse in disguise. Let me explain:
In order to be successful on the black market during the communist regime, one had to be inventive, to create and maintain a (very crude) distribution network, to travel abroad (which made them more aware of cultural diversity and different ways of doing business). All of this is required in a free market economy, so that was a huge advantage for them. But… they also had to be more inclined to stretch and break the laws. Of course, they were breaking communist laws, which were unjust or plain wrong. Problem is, after the communism disappeared, they kept stretching and breaking the new laws too.
Now, it has been mentioned in this thread (by aesop, I think), that everybody was, on some level, involved in black market. So, the most part of the people were used to break the law. One may say that, in communism, breaking the law was in the interest of everybody.
But, in a democracy, the opposite is true! And here lies the problem the former communist countries have now: you have a whole nation made of individuals who think that stretching and breaking the laws is not such a big deal…if they are the ones doing it. Helping a relative not paying a speeding ticket? Yeah, what’s the problem, he was only 10 kph above the speed limit, and besides, nothing bad happened. Parking on a spot reserved for people with disabilities? Not a big deal, there was no disabled person around, and anyway I’ll park here only for 10 minutes. And so on… The result is a very “original” democracy. Hopefully, this will change.
Thanks for the link. I watched this last night, per your recommendation. It was outstanding.
Also saw that a bunch of other BBC documentaries that I have enjoyed in the past, such as the one on Chernobyl, are on YouTube Videos (Google).
This Internet thing is amazing. No wonder all of the young people like it nowadays.
Not sure what you’re referring to as ‘race’, but the forced relocation of the Kalmyks under Stalin, and the treatment of the Uighurs in China (that continues to this present day) might suggest otherwise.
I’m sure with a bit of research, you could probably dig up a few other peoples with a few million here and there that got the short end of the stick in Russia and China from 1917-2009.
To be fair, not all Eastern Bloc animation sucked. I have fond childhood memories of the polish Teddy Floppy-Ears, the Czech Mole and the East German Sandman. More modest than western animations sure, but still good. I’m Finnish BTW.
You are right, of course. I know myself a couple of families that were relocated in the '60s. Let me clarify what I meant:
In the USA, racial segregation was enforced by law. If I understood correctly, It was the official position of the states that black people were inferior human beings and second rate citizens.
AFAIK, no such law existed in the Soviet Union. People were considered equal, regardless of their skin color. The Soviets held the high moral ground on this issue. Now, the communist states are well known for breaking their own laws, so I have no doubt that racist crimes occurred in the eastern bloc. However, forced relocations are not necessarily racist. IMO, the main purpose of splitting and relocating various ethnic groups is to prevent said groups to organize and create troubles for the communists. It is easier to keep under control a mixed populace. Divide et impera, hammer&sickle version. Add to this the fact that communist regimes where often highly nationalistic, even xenophobic. Foreigners where not trusted or even hated, but they were not considered inferior human beings (at least not oficially).
Yes, I am in Budapest, and yes, the changes are very slow. Excellent posts, by the way.
I could not agree more. It’s absolutely like that today. And what you say about how breaking the law became ingrained into the culture – spot on. Disregard for the rule of unpopular laws (e.g., paying taxes) is embedded in the collective psyche.
As for Americans, on one level I truly believe our intentions are good – we want the rest of the world to enjoy the prosperity we’ve enjoyed for so long. We just need to let each country decide for itself the best route to that prosperity.
Thanks for adding your perspective. I’m glad to hear there were better cartoons than the ones I remember. My wife and I were in Prague a couple of months ago. The Mole is still very popular there. And my Hungarian friends look back fondly to the cartoons of their youth.
aesop:
I have no illusions that the government attempts to put out its own message, i.e., propoganda. But to claim that the American “propoganda machine”, which had no control over the press, little control over the educational system (even public schools were run by local rather than national authority, and private schools are allowed to exist) and did not refuse emigration of ordinary citizens to countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain (not that the desire for such emigration was so great) was the equal (or superior!) of the propoganda abilities of the closed, totalitarian societies of the Eatern Bloc is seriously mistaken.
I do not think that it is the exclusive province of Communists, but I do think that its is the near-exclusive province of totalitarian governments of any stripe. A democracy with checks and balances within the government itself and freedom of speech and press and assembly outside of it tends to moderate itself.
I don’t think anyone in America was ever led to think of the ordinary citizens of Communist countries as inferior human beings. We thought of them as oppressed by their government, and the only sense of superiority we had was regarding superiority of our political/economic system. We thought of the leaders of these countries as inferior to ours, as they held power by oppressing the masses, whereas ours merely hoodwinked us.
Yes, but if there were no inherent superiority, you’d think that there would be a roughly equal mass of Westerners wanting to change to be more like the Eastern bloc as there were Easterners wanting to change to be more like the Western nations. There isn’t such desire/movement in both directions. There’s Easterners who want to be more Western, and there’s Easterners who want to stay the way they are, but the West is uniformly content to be the way they are.
I am not under the illusion that peoples across the world want to adopt American culture and throw away the history of whatever they feel makes them great. However, as far as systems of government and economics go, there is a clear movement in the direction of Democracy and Capitalism rather than Totalitarianism and Communism.
Two issues here are that propaganda is not the unique preserve of government and that plenty of the West does still want a much more Socialist system than it has, which is far to the left (even in ‘right-wing’ countries like France, Britain and Ireland) than anything that would risk speaking its mind in the USA. Even openly right-wing parties are more nationalist and racist than they are supporters of an American-style Corporate State.
It sounds fine to talk of media freedom. But media costs money and it has to make money. So it reflects the politics of businessmen like Rupert Murdoch and it is not likely to want to antagonise Big Business it relies on for advertising revenue, or Rampant Religion with the power to command its followers to boycott stations that don’t do what it likes. That is why American broadcasting ranges from the far more bland and shy of upsetting anybody than European to roaring shockjocks of appeal to the big bigotted noises because liberals are not going to cause it trouble.
It is why a lot of European TV is remade and not taken direct in English or dubbed: it is too outspoken. Equally, Hollywood often releases cut American and uncut world versions.
Are you aware of the Bulgarian Communist Party’s attempts to “Slavify” Bulgaria’s ethnically Turkish population in the waning days of communism? It’s not exactly equivalent to Jim Crow in the US, but it was definitely an abuse of human rights aimed at one ethnically distinct minority and resulted in the largest mass migration in Europe since the end of WW2, with hundreds of thousands of Bulgarian Turks fleeing to Turkey.
I just don’t think it’s that cut and dry.
This is going nowhere. The Eastern Bloc of the late 40’s and early 50’s was a very different place from the Eastern Bloc of the 60’s, which was worlds apart from the stagnent and collapsing edifice of the 80’s.
And on the issue of racism, yes the Eastern Bloc held the moral high ground for the longest time on this issue, not only segregation etc, but many of the “free, democratic” western nations were Colonial powers who spent the 50’s and 60’s surpressing independence movements. And were supported by the United States.
This is the case in Spain as well, that ID was introduced here in the 50s.
I’ve still seen pasteurized (not UHT) in plastic bags in Spain in the 200X. Peanut butter is something most Europeans know only from movies. “Western-style cereal” is definitely American.