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>> Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state. In what sense? Czechia is richer per c
by anikan_vader 4mo ago
>> Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state.
In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.
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- jakozaur 4mo agoPoland's first partly free election was on 4 June 1989, preceded by the roundtable negotiations. The protests in Czechoslovakia came later, called the Velvet Revolution, from 17 to 28 November 1989. In June 1990, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections, a year after Poland. Poland paved the way for the whole of central and eastern Europe. The Round Table produced the negotiated-exit template that Hungary built on in its own talks that summer, and that Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and the Baltics drew on as their regimes fell within months. And it did so from the deepest macroeconomic crisis of any of the satellite states: hyperinflation running into the hundreds of percent by late 1989, an unresolved sovereign default from 1981, and chronic shortages. Since then Poland has converged fastest of any of them. From a low base it has climbed to the upper-middle of central and eastern Europe by GDP per capita PPP, overtaken Hungary, and is now closing on Czechia and Slovenia.
- somenameforme 4mo agoI'm curious what this means in real terms from the perspective of a Pole. GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times. For instance Ireland has one of the highest GDP/capitas in the world -- around 50% higher than the US. But that's because of economic games with their working as a tax haven to enable corporations to avoid paying taxes to their home countries. It doesn't translate to anything for the average Irishman.
- rayiner 4mo ago> GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times. "Often" is the wrong modifier. GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person. If you look at the GDP/capita growth in India and China since 1990, or South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, since 1950, that reflects very real increases in material standards for ordinary people. There's two, relatively well-understood situations where GDP/capita isn't reflective: 1) Countries where the economy is dominated by resource extraction or tourism 2) Tax havens But it's pretty easy to tell whether one of these exceptions applies. It doesn't in the case of Poland, which has a broad, diversified economy with a high level of industrial production.
- standeven 4mo agoIsn’t GDP pretty easy to boost with deregulation and government overspending, at least in the short term? Neither of which benefits the people.
- bobthepanda 4mo agoYou can’t really keep that up over 35 years though, which is what Poland has achieved.
- philwelch 4mo agoDeregulation does benefit the people, at least if it's done in ways that lead to sustained economic growth.
- mejutoco 4mo ago> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person GDP is an average, not a median, so it might align with the average person, not the median. The average/mean can hide many things (see Anscombe s quartet) which is one of the problems with GDP IMO.
- rayiner 4mo ago
- kazinator 4mo agoThe protests in Czechoslovakia came earlier, in 1968! The Soviets rolled in the tanks in response. Poland had a mass solidarity movement rise up in 1980. The USSR didn't decide to send in the military then; they were lucky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_reaction_to_the_Polish_crisis_of_1980%E2%80%931981 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_reaction_to_the_Polish_... There was a lot of unrest in Poland, and general strikes. Martial law was imposed. If you were an immigrant from Czechslovakia in a refugee camp in Austria at around that time, you'd be learning to speak Polish.
- cromka 4mo agoSo 1990 Eastern Europe freed itself thanks to... 1968 Czechoslovakia?
- kazinator 4mo agoOf course not (but we can't say it didn't matter, either).
- keiferski 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Pozna%C5%84_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Pozna%C5%84_protests
- legulere 4mo agoEven earlier in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953 Here in Germany they very often talk about the importance of what happened in Poland for the reunification
- card_zero 4mo agoI'm enjoying the way this dispute reflects on the USSR. We were the first to try to escape! No, we were the first, years before that! No, you're both wrong, it was us!
- eduction 4mo agoSelf glorifying nonsense. Gorbachev ALLOWED Poland to not get crushed. You think Poles were any braver in 1989 than the Chinese people who laid down their lives in Tiananmen? You think your solidarity was in any way superior to what they did, what the Hungarians and Czechs did decades earlier? You succeeded due to good timing and because Gorby was your ultimate overlord rather than Deng Xiaopong. Poles should go thank him. Stephen Kotkin says this much better than I ever could. https://youtu.be/0tXvLJXkFFg?t=295&si=26yINqxrcSdOUxCv https://youtu.be/0tXvLJXkFFg?t=295&si=26yINqxrcSdOUxCv
- alkyon 4mo agoIn chronological sense. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 Round Table agreement, which paved the way to the partially free elections in 1989 won by the opposition, preceded similar events in other countries by several months including Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Fall of Berlin Wall.
- BeetleB 4mo agoRomania?
- xdennis 4mo agoRomania is still occupied by Russia. Unlike with Germany, where the East and West reunited, Romania failed to reunite with Eastern Moldova (Western Moldova is in Romania) because of Russian interference in the 1990s. The Russians invaded Transnistria (which was never Romanian) and expanded a bit west. So the Russians still occupy part of the land that is by right Romanian and still have political influence in R. Moldova. That is slowly being eroded.
- arewethereyeta 4mo ago> Romania is still occupied by Russia? I'm a Romanian and never heard such nonsense. We have nothing to do with what's going on in Eastern Moldova nor with people from that region. We do not consider them Romanians at all. While a lot of them come here and integrate well, as a general feeling in these areas, they are more russians than romanians and I assure you, should it be to a vote, we wouldn't join. And btw, Romania is not occupied by Russia stop spreading such nonsense.
- jgtrosh 4mo agoTo those who do not know about this subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Moldova_and_Romania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Moldova_and_Rom... (My external barely informed understanding is that proponents of unification are largely right wing nationalist, pro-Russians call for a unification with Bessarabia while ceding Transsinistria to Russia; Moldovans are largely against union in polls.)
- mmooss 4mo agoThe OP shows the per capita GDP growth of the former Soviet bloc states since 1990. Poland is #1 at 252%, Romania #2 at 148%; Czechia is last at 72%.
- vkou 4mo agoUkraine didn't have Russian troops occupying anything but the leased Crimean bases before the war started (and I do count the start of the war as being immediately after Euromaidan)... Yet in 2013, it was the second poorest country in Europe. (Ahead of Moldova, which has been occupied for decades, but significantly behind Belarus and Bulgaria)
- brnt 4mo agoThey didn't need troops till Maidan. They had the government already.
- drysine 4mo agoOrange revolution in 2004 changed the Ukrainian government.
- Eldt 4mo agoAnd how long does weeding out corruption take?
- drysine 4mo ago[flagged]
- distances 4mo agoDe-russification didn't really start until the Orange Revolution, though. It's a long and painful process for Ukraine as reducing corruption requires shedding all the Russian influence. Before that, a lot of the problems genuinely are because of Russia. All states escaping the Russian curse improve speedily once they join the EU, and I expect the same to happen in Ukraine.
- drysine 4mo ago>De-russification Oh, please, please elaborate on that. How do you link corruption to ethnicity and language?
- aussiegreenie 4mo ago>Czechia is richer per capita This is a very bad measure of anything, especially wealth.
- tasuki 4mo ago> Czechia is richer per capita. Are you sure about that? I'm Czech but have lived in Poland for 8 years and visit regularly. Poland used to be way poorer than Czechia, but these days it looks the other way around. I think the stats are either lagging behind or computed wrong. Note I regularly visit both the cities and the countryside in both Czechia and Poland. Btw, the article has a "GDP per capita growth in post-communist countries" table, with Poland at the top and Czechia at the bottom.
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