this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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[โ€“] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Being familiar with Bulgarian corruption, I'm going to confidently state that their percentages aren't due to a rounding error.

I was in Hungary last year and the nostalgia for communism is high and a significant portion of the population still remembers all the bad parts - Orban has really destroyed the social safety nets there and it hurts to see.

[โ€“] angel@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 month ago

Hungary was also the best part of the Soviet Bloc to live in for the people.

So it's not just that modern Hungary is worse: communist Hungary is more miss-able than communist East Germany.

Nigel Swain's two books on the subject are good:

  • Collective Farms Which Work? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

  • Hungary: The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1992)

He's writing from the perspective of a non-red English academic who's like.... "wait... this works?? how do we explain the anomaly?"

Hungary had full shelves, booming agriculture, available consumer goods.