Question

If you ask any Pole, Czech, Romanian, Baltic etc. they're likely to have an undying hatred of communism, and it's hard to push back against them without looking like an out-of-touch Westerner who doesn't understand the world.

Yes, I'm aware none of these countries achieved actual communism, because, well... they're countries - but they were all ruled by communist parties who were ostensibly working towards it.

So what's a good counterargument when someone points out the rising HDI of East Germany, Czechia, Poland etc. after the introduction of capitalism? "That wasn't actual communism"? "It was because embargoes were lifted"? Or would it be better to point out Russia itself had a decline in HDI after the Soviet collapse, but other Warsaw Pact countries didn't because... reasons?

Response (Writer #3)

A lot of communist and non-communist theorists have different ideas about why Soviet communism was so unpopular in Eastern Europe. I will summarise a few, but it is worth acknowledging that there is also a lot of nostalgia for the stability and community of those times. Solidarnosc was a minority movement, and Jaruselski continued to be one of the most popular Polish politicians well into the 90s. Similarly the uprisings of 1956 and 1968 were carried out by an elite without specified goals, and it is unclear what the majority of the population actually wanted.

With that caveat, here are a few reasons:

1. Destruction from the war. A lot of the economic issues stemmed from the destruction of the second world war, and relative underdevelopment of the Eastern European economies (even before the war). Western Europe was rebuilt with Marshall aid from the US, which communist countries did not have access to. Additionally very major industrialised region (France, the UK, West Germany, Italy, the USA, Japan), with the exception of the USSR itself, was firmly in the capitalist camp. Simultaneously, the USSR took responsibility for reconstruction of many of the most war-damaged regions of Europe (Poland, Ukraine, the Baltics, Hungary), for which is simply lacked capital.

2. Unrealistic expectations and competition with the USA. Soviet state propaganda placed the USSR as the best place to live in the world. Even without the aforementioned war damage, this was unrealistic. Eastern European living standards were far behind those of Western Europe and the USA before the October revolution, and remain so today. It would have taken decades longer to catch up, and failure to match western standards appeared as a failure of the system.

3. Oil dependency and failure to computerise. While the planned economy massively accelerated development of heavy industry from the 1920s-1960s, the top-down management structure made the system vulnerable to long-term planning mistakes. The failure of the Eastern Bloc to develop computing technology on-par with the west left them at an economic disadvantage, with many industries unable to compete internationally. As a result, the Eastern bloc became reliant on imports of high-tech consumer goods. In the 1970s the high oil prices made this tolerable, but when prices fell in the 1980s it spelled disaster. This massively contributed to economic deprivation across the Eastern Bloc, with debt crises and hard currency shortages fuelling austerity and the growth of second economies.

4. Lack of access to imperial super-profits. Related to the previous point about competition with the USA. In the west living standards are supported by third-world super-profits, where abysmal neo-colonial conditions are imposed on people in Africa, South America and South Asia in order to funnel wealth to the west. Many of the products enjoyed in the west are vastly cheaper than they would be if third-world labour were paid fairly, for example bananas and computer chips. Similarly, the low costs of imperial labour allows greater profits which can be redistributed downwards in the west. This is why incomes in the USA (for the shrinking middle-class at least) are still among the highest in the world. Imperialistic exploitation is against the principles of Marxism, so Eastern Europeans could not enjoy the same imperialist privileges as Western Europeans.

5. Political repression. Aside from the USSR and Yugoslavia, the communist states of Eastern Europe were not founded by mass revolutionary movements. They were imposed by red-army-backed parties in the aftermath of the second world war. Whether or not this was justified (almost every country in Eastern Europe fought on the side of the Nazis), the people in WPO countries knew it was a foreign imposition. In many cases it is even regarded as a 40-year occupation. It came complete with not only repression of nationalism and bourgeois tendencies, but also non-Soviet communist/socialist ideologies. The leaders of the Hungarian uprising were ostensibly communist, but opposed to Leninism. Solidarnosc was a socialist trade union at first. Leninism (and Kruschevism) worked well in the USSR but was unsuited to the material conditions of all of Eastern Europe, and the people there knew it. Beyond abstract freedom of political expression, people faced day-to-day restrictions. It was difficult to travel or go on holiday, striking was difficult (depending on specific country/year), and there were long waiting lists for luxury items.

6. Systemic issues with planned economies. While I don't believe this was the primary cause for stagnation and collapse, there are issues with planned economies which are difficult to resolve. Central planning requires a large, powerful bureaucracy, which is expensive and becomes entrenched over time. This lead to widespread corruption. A planned economy can be slower to react to fluctuations in demand for specific goods and services, leading to a 'second economy', ie. a black market. In a system with food, housing, and work guarantees, it was difficult to enforce labour discipline without Stalinist-style punishments.

7. 'Conscious' government and responsibility. Planned economies have governments in power which are responsible for economic failures. An economic failure in a communist country is directly the fault of the government, whereas an economic failure in a capitalist country is framed as being the fault of specific individuals.

The main reasons for individuals' opposition to the system was the real lack of many consumer items. I hope these quick outlines have given a brief idea of why these items were lacking, and some other reasons for the opposition. Virtually every modern communist writer has engaged with the failure of the USSR, and go into much more depth than I have here.