they were convinced by the propaganda, by the standard of living in the west (that they were never going to have and still don’t)

Half of this is the assumption that -- along with an idealized version of capitalism -- a transition to capitalism would leave all the social supports (e.g., housing) of socialism intact. Of course, capitalism went about dismantling the state programs that provided social support, so the result was exactly what you see in other poor capitalist countries: unfathomable wealth for a few, with poverty (or at least precarity) and a hollowed-out social state for the rest.