It really bothers me how, here in the US, the narrative is that the USSR and other Eastern Bloc nations were all just "inefficient" so any economic downtowns after the fall of communism are attributed to just a little bit of "readjustment". So not only does it completely minimize the suffering people like your family endured, it's also just wrong. I'm more familiar with the former GDR, but they had plenty of top notch industries like shipbuilding and optics. The capitalists in the west just came in bought up the assets for pennies and closed them down to further cement their monopolies (this happens within capitalist economies all the time). Not to mention, a lot of what capitalists call " inefficiencies are really just things like not treating workers like disposable cogs.
It really bothers me how, here in the US, the narrative is that the USSR and other Eastern Bloc nations were all just "inefficient" so any economic downtowns after the fall of communism are attributed to just a little bit of "readjustment". So not only does it completely minimize the suffering people like your family endured, it's also just wrong. I'm more familiar with the former GDR, but they had plenty of top notch industries like shipbuilding and optics. The capitalists in the west just came in bought up the assets for pennies and closed them down to further cement their monopolies (this happens within capitalist economies all the time). Not to mention, a lot of what capitalists call " inefficiencies are really just things like not treating workers like disposable cogs.