Jaanika Merilo’s Post

And that was last years numbers - life expectancy is in free fall in russia due to their failed invasion

Thomas Niggemeier Welcome to Lithuania! All three Baltic countries deeply value Western experience, and it’s great to hear that there are also things the West can learn from the Baltics.

What russian call "better" is always a disaster, death and terror.

Of course we did – better than anyone else in the whole USSR. It’s pure envy speaking from that direction; they didn’t know how to do it back then, and they still don’t. :) Hence all those half-truths

The Baltic countries have gone through a fantastic development after becoming independent from Russia beginning of the 90-ties. Today the Russian GDP per capita is just below 14 000 US$ or 1/2 of the GDP per capita in the Baltic countries. What a win to become independent from Russia. Congratulations!!!

Чудова перспектива

You hear the same comments from the occasional East German who does not want to get used to life in the West. Things along the lines of "but we had free child care" (yes, because everybody was needed to work in low-paid jobs) or "it felt more equal back then" (yes, money didn't make the difference, but the average person definitely didn't have the same privileges as the Politburo) or "I never noticed any Stasi repression" (sure, if you do what you're told and close your eyes). Proven facts won't convince people, especially not Russian propagandists. But when people's lives become noticeably better, they will change their tune - sometimes slowly (still an ongoing process in Germany), but in the end people will know it's better to live in a civilized country than in Gulag Central.

It's easy enough to say that these statistics were/are lies, and that is partially correct. To at least an equal degree, however, they illustrate the different ways that 'socialist' and market economies measured price, cost, product and output. In the 1980s, East German economists would claim with a straight face that the GDP of the GDR was greater than that of the UK. Absurd of course, but it's all about what you choose to count. How much of this 'production' was of any value to a consumer? How much of it was wasted and squandered? I have always liked Anders Aslund's observation: 'The Soviet economy was a vast, elaborate system designed to procure first rate raw materials and turn them into trash'.