this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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It's possible some ex soviet countries didn't get their dose of ethnic/cultural cleansing and maybe even had a good life under it but by no means were living standards better back then unless their countries have really gone down the toilet now and most countries are doing better now.
I can't say older people mentioned food was higher quality which might be true due to how modern companies minmax the quality of it for profit and housing market today does feel slavelike. It's probably overall better due to more freedoms but not as good as it should be due to corruption and lobbying.
Huh? Food was incredibly one sided in soviet times, that's like the one thing that everyone knows if they know anything about the soviet occupation. Like you had to have connections to get any variety. My parents for example made their own vodka and cooking greese and traded it for more varied food. What the soviets did good was apartment design because before apartments didn't commonly come with a kitchen and bathroom.
Also housing was different then, you usually got an apartment with your job and you kept it while you had that job but most of Eastern Europe still has affordable housing. Like I bought a newly built 3 room apartment in the capital for 100k euros fairly recently.
I have no idea what it was in Soviet Union but other countries have a variety of foods and candy made by local companies and people that ate those in those days and eat current ones say the quality is worse. This is backed up by the companies changing the recipes and ingredients. Though this basically happens everywhere now. 100k is fairly cheap other countries and capitals costs way more than 100k. I doubt you would get something like that even in the cheaper boroughs.
You can check Estonian real estate sites if you don't believe me. You can get a cheaper apartment easily. Like the cheapest 1 room ones are like 40k and outside the capital it's way cheaper still or it was last I checked but that was no more than 5 years ago.
Local candies and food production is definitely a thing here now but according to my parents it was less prominent during the soviet era because you were obligated to give some of your production away to the occupiers. The most famous local candy companies is definitely still running and taste the same according to my mom, they are called Kalev if you wanna look them up.
I looked at Prague prices and it's insane and Nestle bought a ton of candy companies in the EU and cheapened the product which is as expected from Nestle.
Isn't this because half the population left?
??? No idea what this is referencing, as far as I know nothing like that has happened. The soviets gulaged a lot of people and many fled during that occupation but nothing as dramatic like half the population.
I mean post Soviets, haven't all the Baltic nations seen significant depopulation?
Not really. A lot of Russian citizens left or where made to leave when Estonia got it's independence back but outside of that I don't think there has been a major population shift.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EST/estonia/population
You can see here that it's been in decline consistently for the past 20 years.
According to the Estonian census it dropped between 1990 - 2015 (period after we got our independence back) and has been on an uptick since then. Though the massive drop right after 1990 is when soviet citizens left.
No idea why that graph is predicting that the population will halve in 80 years, seems a little ridiculous considering Estonian birth rate is fine and the population has been increasing for like 8 years.