Which eastern bloc country had the best economy and highest standard of living?

They absolutely were not in the Eastern Bloc. They very successfully balanced a role between the West and East. I was reading recently that they may have been instrumental in preventing a Soviet invasion of Romania in the 1970s by betraying Russian troop movements to the British.

Dang.

It's shit like that that makes it especially depressing that the nation fell apart without Tito.

Soviet troops massed on the border of Hungary as well, for a possible invasion of Yugoslavia. Stalin died from natural causes soon after. According to some, the American intervention in Korea made the Soviets realise that Americans would probably intervene if Soviets attempted invading Yugoslavia. USA even shipped Shermans to Yugoslavia post-WWII.

It was a funky country.

>I was reading recently that they may have been instrumental in preventing a Soviet invasion of Romania in the 1970s by betraying Russian troop movements to the British.
Thanks, yugos.

>he proceeded to kill, imprison or exile nearly all his best officials and military personnel
actual victims of repressions were less than 1% with percentage actually rising the closer you are to the top -- for obvious reasons

>preventing a Soviet invasion of Romania
citation needed

this is bullshit,there were bunkers being built in fear of yugoslavian aggression
more horseshit, romania was a renegade country in many regards but they would try to jump ship as it would be the end of the dictator
maybe you should be reading history instead of american propaganda about evil space commies, theres still longing for that era in russia

Possibly Czechoslovakia owing to its pre-WW2 industrialization and relative lack of wartime damage. All they had to do stay as the Block's wealthiest state was not to fuck up too badly.

East Germany comes second. It was heavily subsidised by the rest of the Block owing to their status as the ideological battleground.

Poland was probably the poorest. They had it worst during the WW2 in terms of destruction and the commie leaders of Poland fucked up their policies pretty badly.

Note that I do not count Yugoslavia and Albania as these states weren't aligned with the USSR.

Undoubtedly Poland.
In 1968 Poland produced more wheat per capita than the entirety of Uklame and East Poormany combined.

Economic strength and standard of living shifted over time. E.g. living in 1950's East Germany was not as much fun as living in 1950's Poland or Czechoslovakia. This changed somewhere in the 1960s when they finally recovered from WWII. During the 1970's DDR was a better place to live then Portugal or Ireland. At least if you only look at economy an standards of living.

Yeah, there is this whole period from the end of Stalin's life in 1953 to the end of Communism in the late 1980s where life in the USSR is fairly stable and good.

I mean there is a reason why the USSR was the other superpower, it was pretty successful. Living standards were still much less than the US and civil freedoms were curtailed, but day to day life was fine for most people and improved during the period. (Not saying everything was good, the Soviets did a lot of fucked up shit even during the good years)

Poland had utter shit standard of living.

You just cherry pick one hardly irrelevant statistic.

Yeah, maybe that's one of the reasons why the Poles were so utterly pissed about bread shortages

I guess he heard something about refusal of Ceausescu to join invasion into Czechoslovakia. The rest is due to his extremely small brain or wild imagination.

In order from best to worst

- Yugoslavia (assuming it is within the list)
- GDR
- Hungary, Czechoslovakia
- Poland (before shortages of 80s)
- Bulgaria, USSR
- Romania
- Albania (assuming it is within the list)

t. oldfag from USSR

Why did commies have such cool flags?

Poland had it worse than Bulgaria, Romania and USSR's most important republics. The only exception was the brief period in early-to-mid 1970s when Polish consumption was artificially stimulated by foreign loans. It came crashing down in 1976.

I was born in Poland in Soviet family working there in 1970s, it was paradise compared even to Moscow where they came from. True in 80s they had only vinegar sold in shops but in 1970s Polaks lived better than any of Soviet republics, no kolhozes, abundance of food and other goods, Amercian films in cinema, freedom of religions, even parody of multi-party system. A lot of people lived in their own good houses, especially in former German territories, Polaks had enough brains not to destroy and shit out everything like Soviets did in Kaliningrad oblast.

The "1970s" in your post is the key. Gierek took many foreign loans in dollars and literally latgely bought food and consumer goods for it.

Like I said, it came crashing down beginning with 1976, when first loans came due. By 1980 the life was unbearable.

T.Pole

Still better than in USSR (except may be for Georgia) and of course Romania. I was there again in around 1987 or 1988 and it was not bad, visually at least.

Slavery is a great concept, enormous cost savings, rich motivation tools (whip, cane, torture, promise of liberation), possibility to buy an exotic qt, exciting gladiator games instead of stupid football, freedom from manual chores allowing for self-improvement and creativity development.

uh-uh, wrong thread

East Germany, Czechoslovakia>Hungary, Yugo>Poland, USSR>rest

Why put Romania so low? Besides the later years of Ceaușescu's regime it wasnt such a shithole

Pooland, Pooland
Willy Willy woo
Stuck in the past
And suffering flu.

Czechia Czechia
Billy Billy bye
How long will it take for
Pooland to die?

The OP asked about standards of living; Romania had a very low standard of living from the '80 upwards (probably the lowest) because Ceausescu had an obsession with paying off the foreign debt to become fully independent. That meant he starved the population, hence the violent Revolution of '89. Hunger and austerity literally made people chimp out, especially since the 60's and 70's were kind of ok. Poland was not under us because I remember my dad traveeling to Poland and bringing us illegal contraband like jeans and ...bananas; when I tasted my first banana at age 5 I was mindblown at how delicious it was. Fucking communists need to be rounded up and shot for making people be this poor and lacking
t. ro fag

>Poland was not under us because I remember my dad traveeling to Poland and bringing us illegal contraband like jeans and ...bananas

Jeans of abysmal quality were available, but bananas were not in 1980s Poland. I had my first one in early 1990s.

>it was paradise compared even to Moscow where they came from.

My mother traveled to Moscow in late 1980s, It could have been 1988 or early 1989, cause I remember it. She brought back to Poland stuff that was literally unthinkable for me, a Polish kindergarten kid. One pomegranate (we didn't know how to eat it), dried figs and a plastic toy saber just for me.

I guess it it possible that foreign guests were habitually given an opportunity to purchase stuff that was unavailable to local proles.

Like what everyone else said, you shouldn't have put Yugoslavia in there, but Yugoslavia is probably one of the best ones, since they weren't eastern block to start with.. For actual Warsaw Pact/Soviet SSRs, East Germany. It was presented as the pretty mural on the iron curtain, and had the most funds poured into it. You could get a car, a paper maché Brabant car yes, but still a car, that alone is something that was extremely rare in other SSRs.

t. commie

herp derp herppity derp derp derp
this is what you sound like this is what you act like

Damn near impossible the country would last, the country should have been more decentralised and greater autonomy should have been given to each republic. Instead it was heavily centralised and with inequality nationalistic tendencies began to grow which lead to the inevitable collapse.

>Besides the later years of Ceaușescu's regime

That is alone enough to put it that low. They made abortion illegal, and even then more than half of pregnancies ended in "miscarriage".

People literally didn't want children to born into that regime.

It wasn't that rare in Hungary, but you did have to wait years sometimes for it.

This is a question that can be answered by a simple google search. It was the GDR.
>The estimated 1984 per capita income was $9,800 ($22,600 in 2015 dollars). In 1976, the average annual growth of the GDP was approximately five percent. This made East German economy the richest in all of the Soviet Bloc until 1990 after the fall of Communism in the country.[62]

This 100%

i'd say romania in the 70s. we were tight with pretty much anyone, we were mass producing relatively good quality machines of all types ( construction shit, cars, ships, weapons, armored vehicles ), we had a shit ton of oil, no national debt ( which the eternal merchant didn't quite like ) people weren't living in a very oppresive society like in the later stage of communism in romania.

those years were called the golden age for a reason

20 rubles has been transferred to your account.
>you know the commies apart from many shit things they modernized countries rapidly?
Bullshit. You can just compare Czechoslovakia and Austria.
>but schools, commieblocks, hospitals, roads, new towns were built from basicly the ashes of a destroyed country
Yeah, because if not for communism, no one would build roads, hospitals, etc. Well, with commieblocks I of course agree.

And likely majority of it went to Russia.

Depends when. In general, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and East Germany were better off in terms of living conditions. Below them I'd guess were Romania, Poland, and the middle-developed areas of the USSR. Below that would be Albania, Bulgaria, and the remote areas of the USSR. These are just my guesses.

Haha Russia went hard as fuck

all soviet republics are represented but not the yugoslav ones?

what did you mean by this?

>and start rebranding itself a "Federation".
how should Russia "brand" itself then? you do realize that Russia exist before communism? Soviet is a meaningless term, it literally means a council

It wasn't part of the Eastern bloc but it's on the map so I'll say Yugoslavia, with Slovenia being the best of the republics.

at least there were no vodka queues in Polska

retard, look at the infrastructure, education and healtcare of states before socialism

ppl were living in houses made out of mud in the countryside, no electricity, serfdom, living in 1 room with animals, stfu and educate yourself

>Without commies Russia and Eastern Europe would still use horse carriages and air balloons in 21 century

kill yourself amerishitstain, or maybe some negro will

Shit tier bait

What did he mean by this?

East Germany had the highest GDP/Capita in the 80's and actually had better education and healthcare, less opression, and less shortsges than most of the other Bloc states.

The reason everyone wanted to cross the Berlin wall was because even if it was the best Socialist nation, West Germany and the rest of the West was substantially better off overall, at least from the mid 70's onwards, when the USSR and he Warsaw pact kind of went to shit.

Yugoslavia was a HIGHLY centralized state built around the concept that Yugoslavia was ONE republic and one republic only. In 1967 a Croatian town established a small neighbourhood watch around a suburb in the far south of the nation. In response, tito personally led a column of tanks into the city and opened fire at will, levelling it within days.
So yeah, only Yugoslavia is shown.

And yet that same Tito passed the 1974 Constitution that devolved significant authority to the individual republics, and after his death the country was run by a Presidency of 8 representatives (one for each of the 6 republics and 2 autonomous regions).

There is a sharp difference to Yugoslavia in the 60s and Yugoslavia in the 80s.

60s centralized strongman Yugoslavia was fairly stable. 80s decentralized ethnic-resurgence Yugoslavia was not.