"Sure, East Germany, Poland and Hungary were better off than Romania, Albania, and Bulgaria, as they still are today, but considering their common historical trajectory, it's unclear if they provide any evidence that an indigenous socialism would have succeeded over the long-run where the Soviet variety did not. Cuba's relatively high state of development in 1959 helped enable the impressive degree of human development achieved in the country in the decades thereafter, but ultimately, their system as an economic model is still being at least partially abandoned today."
You know...generalizations only take you so far. Class consciousness in Romania was mostly non-existent. In the post WWII era, there were peasants, and then a small coterie of professionals and intellectuals in the capital and the few urban centers. The basic mode of transportation was horse and buggy. My grandfather, who had a job as a lowly clerk at the railway station, was considered thereby to be a "hi-tech" worker.
So, the foundations were not encouraging. Still, life under "communism" didn't take a dive until Ceausescu decided to borrow big and build an export economy. That was the kiss of death for Romania. Hard to see what that had to do with socialism.
Joanna
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