I rarely use ‘seldom’

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.

Or the CIA made it all up because Mao and Stalin et al did nothing wrong. 🙄

They made mistakes. But overall their countries were a gazillion times better from their influence.

e.g. From 1950 to 1980, life expectancy at birth in China grew from between 35 and 40 years to 65.5 years, one of the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history