Editing Eastern Bloc (section)

==Economies==
[[File:Destroyed Warsaw, capital of Poland, January 1945.jpg|thumb|During World War II, [[Destruction of Warsaw|85% of buildings in Warsaw were destroyed by German troops]].]]

Because of the [[Criticisms of the labour theory of value|lack of market signals]], Eastern Bloc economies experienced mis-development by [[Soviet-type economic planning|central planners]].<ref name="hardt15">{{Harvnb|Hardt|Kaufman|1995|p=15}}</ref><ref name="dale85">{{Harvnb|Dale|2005|p=85}}</ref> The Eastern Bloc also depended upon the Soviet Union for significant amounts of materials.<ref name="hardt15" /><ref>{{Harvnb|Hardt|Kaufman|1995|p=16}}</ref>

Technological backwardness resulted in dependency on imports from Western countries and this, in turn, in demand for Western currency. Eastern Bloc countries were heavily borrowing from [[Club de Paris]] (central banks) and [[London Club]] (private banks) and most of them by the early 1980s were forced to notify the creditors of their insolvency. This information was however kept secret from the citizens and propaganda promoted the view that the countries were on the best way to socialism.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.clubdeparis.org/en/traitements?tid_1=118&tid_2=All&tid=All&field_treatment_date_value%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=|title=Agreements concluded with Paris Club|website=clubdeparis.org|access-date=12 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180923113520/http://www.clubdeparis.org/en/traitements?tid_1=118&tid_2=All&tid=All&field_treatment_date_value%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=|archive-date=23 September 2018|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.clubdeparis.org/en/traitements?tid_1=97&tid_2=All&tid=All&field_treatment_date_value%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=|title=Agreements concluded with Paris Club|website=clubdeparis.org|access-date=12 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180923121046/http://www.clubdeparis.org/en/traitements?tid_1=97&tid_2=All&tid=All&field_treatment_date_value%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=|archive-date=23 September 2018|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.clubdeparis.org/en/traitements?tid_1=98&tid_2=All&tid=All&field_treatment_date_value%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=|title=Agreements concluded with Paris Club|website=clubdeparis.org|access-date=12 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180923120608/http://www.clubdeparis.org/en/traitements?tid_1=98&tid_2=All&tid=All&field_treatment_date_value%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=|archive-date=23 September 2018|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Social conditions===
{{further|Eastern Bloc emigration and defection|Eastern Bloc information dissemination|Eastern Bloc politics}}

As a consequence of [[World War II]] and the German occupations in Eastern Europe, much of the region had been subjected to enormous destruction of industry, infrastructure and loss of civilian life. In Poland alone the policy of plunder and exploitation inflicted enormous material losses to Polish industry (62% of which was destroyed),<ref>Historia Polski 1918–1945: Tom 1 Czesław Brzoza, Andrzej Sowa, p. 697, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006</ref> agriculture, infrastructure and cultural landmarks, the cost of which has been estimated as approximately €525&nbsp;billion or $640&nbsp;billion in 2004 exchange values.<ref>[http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1324630,00.html Poles Vote to Seek War Reparations] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100403152040/http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1324630,00.html |date=3 April 2010 }}, ''[[Deutsche Welle]]'', 11 September 2004</ref>

Throughout the Eastern Bloc, both in the USSR and the rest of the Bloc, Russia was given prominence and referred to as the ''naiboleye vydayushchayasya natsiya'' (the most prominent nation) and the ''rukovodyashchiy narod'' (the leading people).<ref name="graubard150">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Graubard|1991|p=150}}</ref> The Soviets promoted the reverence of Russian actions and characteristics, and the construction of Soviet structural hierarchies in the other countries of the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="graubard150"/>

[[File:Bucur Obor (1986).jpg|thumb|A line for distribution of cooking oil in [[Bucharest]], [[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]], May 1986]]
The defining characteristic of [[Stalinist]] [[totalitarianism]] was the unique symbiosis of the state with society and the economy, resulting in politics and economics losing their distinctive features as autonomous and distinguishable spheres.<ref name="hardt11"/> Initially, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of [[market economy|market economies]], [[democracy|democratic governance]] (dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state.<ref name="hardt12"/>

The Soviets mandated expropriation and ''etatisation'' of private property.<ref name="roht83">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Roht-Arriaza|1995|p=83}}</ref> The Soviet-style "replica regimes" that arose in the Bloc not only reproduced the Soviet [[command economy]], but also adopted the brutal methods employed by [[Joseph Stalin]] and Soviet-style secret polices to suppress real and potential opposition.<ref name="roht83"/>

Stalinist regimes in the Eastern Bloc saw even marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat because of the bases underlying Stalinist power therein.<ref name="Pollackxiv"/> The suppression of dissent and opposition was a central prerequisite for the security of Stalinist power within the Eastern Bloc, though the degree of opposition and dissident suppression varied by country and time throughout the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="Pollackxiv"/>

In addition, media in the Eastern Bloc were organs of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the government of the USSR with radio and television organisations being state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organisations, mostly by the local party.<ref name="oneil15"/> While over 15&nbsp;million Eastern Bloc residents migrated westward from 1945 to 1949,<ref>{{Harvard citation no brackets|Böcker|1998|pp=207–9}}</ref> emigration was effectively halted in the early 1950s, with the Soviet approach to controlling national movement emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="dowty114"/>

===Initial changes===

====Transformations billed as reforms====
[[File:Vilnius Energy and Technology Museum 48.JPG|thumb|left|Reconstruction of a typical [[Proletariat|working class]] flat interior in a [[khrushchyovka]]]]
In the USSR, because of strict Soviet secrecy under [[Joseph Stalin]], for many years after World War II, even the best informed foreigners did not effectively know about the operations of the Soviet economy.<ref name="laqueur23">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Laqueur|1994|p=23}}</ref> Stalin had sealed off outside access to the Soviet Union since 1935 (and until his death), effectively permitting no foreign travel inside the Soviet Union such that outsiders did not know of the political processes that had taken place therein.<ref name="laqueur22">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Laqueur|1994|p=22}}</ref> During this period, and even for 25 years after Stalin's death, the few diplomats and foreign correspondents permitted inside the Soviet Union were usually restricted to within a few kilometres of Moscow, their phones were tapped, their residences were restricted to foreigner-only locations and they were constantly followed by Soviet authorities.<ref name="laqueur22"/>

The Soviets also modeled economies in the rest of Eastern Bloc outside the Soviet Union along Soviet [[command economy]] lines.<ref name="turnock23">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=23}}</ref> Before World War II, the Soviet Union used draconian procedures to ensure compliance with directives to invest all assets in state planned manners, including the [[collectivisation]] of agriculture and utilising a sizeable labor army collected in the [[gulag]] system.<ref name="2turnock267"/> This system was largely imposed on other Eastern Bloc countries after World War II.<ref name="2turnock267"/> While propaganda of proletarian improvements accompanied systemic changes, terror and intimidation of the consequent ruthless Stalinism obfuscated feelings of any purported benefits.<ref name="turnock27"/>

Stalin felt that socioeconomic transformation was indispensable to establish Soviet control, reflecting the [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist–Leninist]] view that material bases, the distribution of the means of production, shaped social and political relations.<ref name="wettig36"/> Moscow trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation.<ref name="wettig36"/> Elimination of the bourgeoisie's social and financial power by expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded absolute priority.<ref name="wettig37"/>

These measures were publicly billed as reforms rather than socioeconomic transformations.<ref name="wettig37"/> Throughout the Eastern Bloc, except for [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]], "societal organisations" such as trade unions and associations representing various social, professional and other groups, were erected with only one organisation for each category, with competition excluded.<ref name="wettig37"/> Those organisations were managed by Stalinist cadres, though during the initial period, they allowed for some diversity.<ref name="wettig38"/>

====Asset relocation====
At the same time, at the war's end, the Soviet Union adopted a "[[plunder]] policy" of physically transporting and relocating east European industrial assets to the Soviet Union.<ref name="pearson29">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Pearson|1998|pp=29–30}}</ref> Eastern Bloc states were required to provide coal, industrial equipment, technology, rolling stock and other resources to reconstruct the Soviet Union.<ref name="bideleux461">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bideleux|Jeffries|2007|p=461}}</ref> Between 1945 and 1953, the Soviets received a net transfer of resources from the rest of the Eastern Bloc under this policy of roughly $14&nbsp;billion, an amount comparable to the net transfer from the United States to western Europe in the [[Marshall Plan]].<ref name="bideleux461"/><ref name="black86">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Black|English|Helmreich|McAdams|2000|p=86}}</ref> "Reparations" included the dismantling of railways in Poland and Romanian reparations to the Soviets between 1944 and 1948 valued at $1.8&nbsp;billion concurrent with the domination of [[SovRoms]].<ref name="2turnock267"/>

In addition, the Soviets re-organised enterprises as [[Joint-stock company|joint-stock companies]] in which the Soviets possessed the controlling interest.<ref name="black86"/><ref name="crampton211">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Crampton|1997|p=211}}</ref> Using that control vehicle, several enterprises were required to sell products at below world prices to the Soviets, such as uranium mines in [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]] and [[East Germany]], coal mines in [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]], and oil wells in [[People's Republic of Romania|Romania]].<ref name="black87">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Black|English|Helmreich|McAdams|2000|p=87}}</ref>

====Trade and Comecon====
{{Main|Comecon|History of the Comecon}}

The trading pattern of the Eastern Bloc countries was severely modified.<ref name="black88">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Black|English|Helmreich|McAdams|2000|p=88}}</ref> Before World War II, no greater than 1%–2% of those countries' trade was with the Soviet Union.<ref name="black88"/> By 1953, the share of such trade had jumped to 37%.<ref name="black88"/> In 1947, [[Joseph Stalin]] had also denounced the [[Marshall Plan]] and forbade all Eastern Bloc countries from participating in it.<ref name="black82">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Black|English|Helmreich|McAdams|2000|p=82}}</ref>

Soviet dominance further tied other Eastern Bloc economies<ref name="black88"/> to Moscow via the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) or [[Comecon]], which determined countries' investment allocations and the products that would be traded within Eastern Bloc.<ref name="frucht382"/> Although Comecon was initiated in 1949, its role became ambiguous because Stalin preferred more direct links with other party chiefs than the indirect sophistication of the council. It played no significant role in the 1950s in economic planning.<ref name="turnock26"/>

Initially, Comecon served as cover for the Soviet taking of materials and equipment from the rest of the Eastern Bloc, but the balance changed when the Soviets became net subsidisers of the rest of the Bloc by the 1970s via an exchange of low cost raw materials in return for shoddily manufactured finished goods.<ref name="turnock27"/> While resources such as oil, timber and uranium initially made gaining access to other Eastern Bloc economies attractive, the Soviets soon had to export Soviet raw materials to those countries to maintain cohesion therein.<ref name="2turnock267">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|2006|p=267}}</ref> Following resistance to Comecon plans to extract [[People's Republic of Romania|Romania]]'s mineral resources and heavily utilise its agricultural production, Romania began to take a more independent stance in 1964.<ref name="crampton313"/> While it did not repudiate Comecon, it took no significant role in its operation, especially after the rise to power of [[Nicolae Ceauşescu]].<ref name="crampton313"/>

===Heavy industry emphasis===
According to the official propaganda in the Soviet Union, there was unprecedented affordability of housing, health care and education.<ref name="ria.ru">{{cite web|url=http://ria.ru/history_spravki/20101108/293796130.html|title=Советская экономика в эпоху Леонида Брежнева|work=РИА Новости |date=8 November 2010|access-date=23 March 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402092007/http://ria.ru/history_spravki/20101108/293796130.html|archive-date=2 April 2015|url-status=live}}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=August 2019}} Apartment rent on average amounted to only 1 percent of the family budget, a figure which reached 4 percent when municipal services are factored in. Tram tickets were 20 kopecks, and a loaf of bread was 15 kopecks. The average monthly salary of an [[engineer]] was 140–160 [[Soviet ruble|ruble]]s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://2000.net.ua/2000/svoboda-slova/sotsium/77009 |title=Ирония нашей судьбы : Социум : Еженедельник 2000 |publisher=2000.net.ua |access-date=19 November 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131020071603/http://2000.net.ua/2000/svoboda-slova/sotsium/77009 |archive-date=20 October 2013 }}</ref>

The Soviet Union made major progress in developing the country's consumer goods sector. In 1970, the USSR produced 679&nbsp;million pairs of leather footwear, compared to 534&nbsp;million for the United States. Czechoslovakia, which had the world's highest per-capita production of shoes, exported a significant portion of its shoe production to other countries.<ref>''The world hides, skins, leather and footwear economy''. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1970. p.85</ref>

The rising standard of living under socialism led to a steady decrease in the workday and an increase in leisure. In 1974, the average workweek for Soviet industrial workers was 40 hours. Paid vacations in 1968 reached a minimum of 15 workdays. In the mid-1970s the number of free days per year-days off, holidays and vacations was 128–130, almost double the figure from the previous ten years.<ref>Planning of manpower in the Soviet Union. Progress Publishers. 1975. p. 101</ref>

Because of the lack of market signals in such economies, they experienced mis-development by central planners resulting in those countries following a path of extensive (large mobilisation of inefficiently used capital, labor, energy and raw material inputs) rather than intensive (efficient resource use) development to attempt to achieve quick growth.<ref name="hardt15"/><ref name="bideleux474"/> The Eastern Bloc countries were required to follow the Soviet model overemphasising [[heavy industry]] at the expense of light industry and other sectors.<ref name="crampton251">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Crampton|1997|p=251}}</ref>

Since that model involved the prodigal exploitation of natural and other resources, it has been described as a kind of "slash and burn" modality.<ref name="bideleux474"/> While the Soviet system strove for a [[dictatorship of the proletariat]], there was little existing proletariat in many eastern European countries, such that to create one, heavy industry needed to be built.<ref name="crampton251"/> Each system shared the distinctive themes of state-directed economies, including poorly defined property rights, a lack of market clearing prices and overblown or distorted productive capacities in comparison with corresponding market economies.<ref name="hardt11"/>

Major errors and waste occurred in the resource allocation and distribution systems.<ref name="bideleux475"/> Because of the party-run monolithic state organs, these systems provided no effective mechanisms or incentives to control costs, profligacy, inefficiency and waste.<ref name="bideleux475"/> Heavy industry was given priority because of its importance for the military-industrial establishment and for the engineering sector.<ref name="turnock29">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=29}}</ref>

Factories were sometimes inefficiently located, incurring high transport costs, while poor plant-organisation sometimes resulted in production hold-ups and knock-on effects in other industries dependent on monopoly suppliers of intermediates.<ref name="turnock24"/> For example, each country, including [[People's Republic of Albania|Albania]], built steel mills regardless of whether they lacked the requisite resource of energy and mineral ores.<ref name="crampton251"/> A massive metallurgical plant was built in [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]] despite the fact that its ores had to be imported from the Soviet Union and transported {{convert|320|km}} from the port at [[Burgas]].<ref name="crampton251"/> A Warsaw tractor factory in 1980 had a 52-page list of unused rusting, then useless, equipment.<ref name="crampton251"/>

This emphasis on heavy industry diverted investment from the more practical production of chemicals and plastics.<ref name="frucht382">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Frucht|2003|p=382}}</ref> In addition, the plans' emphasis on quantity rather than quality made Eastern Bloc products less competitive in the world market.<ref name="frucht382"/> High costs passed through the product chain boosted the 'value' of production on which wage increases were based, but made exports less competitive.<ref name="turnock24"/> Planners rarely closed old factories even when new capacities opened elsewhere.<ref name="turnock24"/> For example, the Polish steel industry retained a plant in [[Upper Silesia]] despite the opening of modern integrated units on the periphery while the last old [[Siemens-Martin process]] furnace installed in the 19th century was not closed down immediately.<ref name="turnock24"/>

Producer goods were favoured over consumer goods, causing consumer goods to be lacking in quantity and quality in the [[shortage economy|shortage economies]] that resulted.<ref name="dale85"/><ref name="bideleux474"/>

By the mid-1970s, budget deficits rose considerably and domestic prices widely diverged from the world prices, while production prices averaged 2% higher than consumer prices.<ref name="zwass12">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Zwass|1984|p=12}}</ref> Many premium goods could be bought either in a [[Second economy of the Soviet Union|black market]] or only in special stores using foreign currency generally inaccessible to most Eastern Bloc citizens, such as [[Intershop]] in [[East Germany]],<ref name="zwass34"/> [[Beryozka (Russian retail store)|Beryozka]] in the Soviet Union,<ref>Adelman, Deborah, ''The "children of Perestroika" come of age: young people of Moscow talk about life in the new Russia'', M.E. Sharpe, 1994, {{ISBN|978-1-56324-287-8}}, p. 162</ref> [[Pewex]] in [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]],<ref>Nagengast, Carole, ''Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs: Class, Culture, and the Polish State'', Westview Press, 1991, {{ISBN|978-0-8133-8053-7}}, p. 85</ref><ref name="bugajski189">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bugajski|Pollack|1989|p=189}}</ref> [[Tuzex]] in [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]],<ref name="graubard130">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Graubard|1991|p=130}}</ref> [[Corecom]] in Bulgaria, or [[Comturist]] in Romania. Much of what was produced for the local population never reached its intended user, while many perishable products became unfit for consumption before reaching their consumers.<ref name="bideleux475"/>

===Black markets===
{{See also|Second economy of the Soviet Union}}

As a result of the deficiencies of the official economy, [[black market]]s were created that were often supplied by goods stolen from the public sector.<ref name="crampton252">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Crampton|1997|p=252}}</ref><ref name="frucht204">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Frucht|2003|p=204}}</ref> The [[informal sector|second, "parallel economy"]] flourished throughout the Bloc because of rising unmet state consumer needs.<ref name="bugajski188">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bugajski|Pollack|1989|p=188}}</ref> Black and gray markets for foodstuffs, goods, and cash arose.<ref name="bugajski188"/> Goods included household goods, medical supplies, clothes, furniture, cosmetics and toiletries in chronically short supply through official outlets.<ref name="bugajski189"/>

Many farmers concealed actual output from purchasing agencies to sell it illicitly to urban consumers.<ref name="bugajski189"/> Hard foreign currencies were highly sought after, while highly valued Western items functioned as a medium of exchange or bribery in Stalinist countries, such as in [[People's Republic of Romania|Romania]], where [[Kent (cigarette)|Kent]] cigarettes served as an unofficial extensively used currency to buy goods and services.<ref name="bugajski190">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bugajski|Pollack|1989|p=190}}</ref> Some service workers [[wikt:moonlight#Verb|moonlighted]] illegally providing services directly to customers for payment.<ref name="bugajski190"/>

===Urbanization===
The extensive production [[industrialization]] that resulted was not responsive to consumer needs and caused a neglect in the service sector, unprecedented rapid urbanization, acute urban overcrowding, chronic shortages, and massive recruitment of women into mostly menial and/or low-paid occupations.<ref name="bideleux475"/> The consequent strains resulted in the widespread used of coercion, repression, [[show trials]], purges, and intimidation.<ref name="bideleux475">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bideleux|Jeffries|2007|p=475}}</ref> By 1960, massive urbanisation occurred in Poland (48% urban) and Bulgaria (38%), which increased employment for peasants, but also caused illiteracy to skyrocket when children left school for work.<ref name="bideleux475"/>

Cities became massive building sites, resulting in the reconstruction of some war-torn buildings but also the construction of drab, dilapidated, system-built apartment blocks.<ref name="bideleux475"/> Urban living standards plummeted because resources were tied up in huge long-term building projects, while industrialization forced millions of former peasants to live in hut camps or grim apartment blocks close to massive polluting industrial complexes.<ref name="bideleux475"/>

===Agricultural collectivization===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1987-0122-023, Infografik, Landwirtschaft der DDR Getreideerträge.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Graphic showing change in [[East Germany|East German]] agricultural production between 1981 and 1986]]
[[Collectivization]] is a process pioneered by [[Joseph Stalin]] in the late 1920s by which [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist–Leninist]] regimes in the Eastern Bloc and elsewhere attempted to establish an ordered socialist system in rural agriculture.<ref name="frucht144">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Frucht|2003|p=144}}</ref> It required the forced consolidation of small-scale peasant farms and larger holdings belonging to the landed classes for the purpose of creating larger modern "[[collective farms]]" owned, in theory, by the workers therein. In reality, such farms were owned by the state.<ref name="frucht144"/>

In addition to eradicating the perceived inefficiencies associated with small-scale farming on discontiguous land holdings, collectivization also purported to achieve the political goal of removing the rural basis for resistance to Stalinist regimes.<ref name="frucht144"/> A further justification given was the need to promote industrial development by facilitating the state's procurement of agricultural products and transferring "surplus labor" from rural to urban areas.<ref name="frucht144"/> In short, agriculture was reorganized in order to proletarianize the peasantry and control production at prices determined by the state.<ref name="turnock34"/>

The Eastern Bloc possesses substantial agricultural resources, especially in southern areas, such as [[People's Republic of Hungary|Hungary]]'s [[Great Hungarian Plain|Great Plain]], which offered good soils and a warm climate during the growing season.<ref name="turnock34">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=34}}</ref> Rural collectivization proceeded differently in non-Soviet Eastern Bloc countries than it did in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.<ref name="bideleux473"/> Because of the need to conceal the assumption of control and the realities of an initial lack of control, no Soviet [[dekulakisation]]-style liquidation of rich peasants could be carried out in the non-Soviet Eastern Bloc countries.<ref name="bideleux473">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bideleux|Jeffries|2007|p=473}}</ref>

Nor could they risk mass starvation or agricultural sabotage (e.g., [[holodomor]]) with a rapid collectivization through massive state farms and agricultural producers' cooperatives (APCs).<ref name="bideleux473"/> Instead, collectivization proceeded more slowly and in stages from 1948 to 1960 in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, and from 1955 to 1964 in Albania.<ref name="bideleux473"/> Collectivization in the Baltic republics of the [[Lithuanian SSR]], [[Estonian SSR]] and [[Latvian SSR]] took place between 1947 and 1952.<ref name="oconnorxx">{{Harvard citation no brackets|O'Connor|2003|p=xx–xxi}}</ref>

Unlike Soviet collectivization, neither massive destruction of livestock nor errors causing distorted output or distribution occurred in the other Eastern Bloc countries.<ref name="bideleux473"/> More widespread use of transitional forms occurred, with differential compensation payments for peasants that contributed more land to APCs.<ref name="bideleux473"/> Because [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]] and [[East Germany]] were more industrialized than the Soviet Union, they were in a position to furnish most of the equipment and fertilizer inputs needed to ease the transition to collectivized agriculture.<ref name="bideleux474">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bideleux|Jeffries|2007|p=474}}</ref> Instead of liquidating large farmers or barring them from joining APCs as Stalin had done through [[dekulakisation]], those farmers were utilised in the non-Soviet Eastern Bloc collectivizations, sometimes even being named farm chairman or managers.<ref name="bideleux474"/>

Collectivisation often met with strong rural resistance, including peasants frequently destroying property rather than surrendering it to the collectives.<ref name="frucht144"/> Strong peasant links with the land through private ownership were broken and many young people left for careers in industry.<ref name="turnock34"/> In [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]] and [[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]], fierce resistance from peasants, many of whom had resisted the Axis, led to the abandonment of wholesale rural collectivisation in the early 1950s.<ref name="bideleux474"/> In part because of the problems created by collectivisation, agriculture was largely de-collectivised in Poland in 1957.<ref name="frucht144"/>

The fact that Poland nevertheless managed to carry out large-scale centrally planned industrialisation with no more difficulty than its collectivised Eastern Bloc neighbours further called into question the need for collectivisation in such planned economies.<ref name="bideleux474"/> Only Poland's "western territories", those eastwardly adjacent to the [[Oder-Neisse line]] that were annexed from Germany, were substantially collectivised, largely in order to settle large numbers of Poles on good farmland which had been taken from German farmers.<ref name="bideleux474"/>

===Economic growth===
[[File:Robotron-KC87-1.jpg|thumb|A [[Robotron KC 87]] home computer made in [[East Germany]] between 1987 and 1989]]

There was significant progress made in the economy in countries such as the Soviet Union. In 1980, the Soviet Union took first place in Europe and second worldwide in terms of industrial and agricultural production, respectively. In 1960, the USSR's industrial output was only 55% that of America, but this increased to 80% in 1980.<ref name="ria.ru"/>{{unreliable source?|date=February 2021}}

With the change of the Soviet leadership in 1964, there were significant changes made to economic policy. The Government on 30 September 1965 issued a decree "On improving the management of industry" and the 4 October 1965 resolution "On improving and strengthening the economic incentives for industrial production". The main initiator of these reforms was Premier A. Kosygin. Kosygin's reforms on agriculture gave considerable autonomy to the collective farms, giving them the right to the contents of private farming. During this period, there was the large-scale land reclamation program, the construction of irrigation channels, and other measures.<ref name="ria.ru"/> In the period 1966–1970, the gross national product grew by over 35%. Industrial output increased by 48% and agriculture by 17%.<ref name="ria.ru"/> In the eighth Five-Year Plan, the national income grew at an average rate of 7.8%. In the ninth Five-Year Plan (1971–1975), the national income grew at an annual rate of 5.7%. In the tenth Five-Year Plan (1976–1981), the national income grew at an annual rate of 4.3%.<ref name="ria.ru"/>

The Soviet Union made noteworthy scientific and technological progress. Unlike countries with more market-oriented economies, scientific and technological potential in the USSR was used in accordance with a plan on the scale of society as a whole.<ref>Aleksandr Andreevich Guber. USSR: Intensified Economy and Progress in Science and Technology. Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1985. p. 14</ref>

In 1980, the number of scientific personnel in the USSR was 1.4&nbsp;million. The number of engineers employed in the national economy was 4.7&nbsp;million. Between 1960 and 1980, the number of scientific personnel increased by a factor of 4. In 1975, the number of scientific personnel in the USSR amounted to one-fourth of the total number of scientific personnel in the world. In 1980, as compared with 1940, the number of invention proposals submitted was more than 5&nbsp;million. In 1980, there were 10 all-Union research institutes, 85 specialised central agencies, and 93 regional information centres.<ref>Yearbook the USSR. Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1982. p. 174</ref>

The world's first nuclear power plant was commissioned on 27 June 1954 in Obninsk.{{citation needed|date=February 2023}} Soviet scientists made a major contribution to the development of computer technology. The first major achievements in the field were associated with the building of analog computers. In the USSR, principles for the construction of network analysers were developed by S. Gershgorin in 1927 and the concept of the electrodynamic analog computer was proposed by N. Minorsky in 1936. In the 1940s, the development of AC electronic antiaircraft directors and the first vacuum-tube integrators was begun by L. Gutenmakher. In the 1960s, important developments in modern computer equipment were the BESM-6 system built under the direction of S. A. Lebedev, the MIR series of small digital computers, and the Minsk series of digital computers developed by G.Lopato and V. Przhyalkovsky.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.computer.org/portal/web/awards/lebedev |title=Sergey A. Lebedev |publisher=Computer.org |access-date=19 November 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130725052538/http://www.computer.org/portal/web/awards/lebedev |archive-date=25 July 2013 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Author Turnock claims that transport in the Eastern Bloc was characterised by poor [[infrastructure|infrastructural]] maintenance.<ref name="turnock42">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=42}}</ref> The road network suffered from inadequate load capacity, poor surfacing and deficient roadside servicing.<ref name="turnock42"/> While roads were resurfaced, few new roads were built and there were very few [[Dual carriageway|divided highway]] roads, urban ring roads or bypasses.<ref name="turnock41">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=41}}</ref> Private car ownership remained low by Western standards.<ref name="turnock41"/>

{{multiple image
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| align             = right
| image1            = Trabant 601 Mulhouse FRA 001.JPG
| width1            = 200
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| image2            = AWE_Wartburg_353W,_Verkehrszentrum_des_Deutschen_Museums.JPG
| width2            = 200
| alt2              =
| caption2          =
| footer            = A [[Trabant 601]] Limousine (left), manufactured between 1964 and 1989; and a [[Wartburg 353]] (right), manufactured between 1966 and 1989; they were made in [[East Germany]] and exported throughout the Eastern Bloc.
}}
{{multiple image
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| align             = right
| image1            = ZAZ-966_front_view.jpg
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| caption1          =
| image2            = 1980_-_VAZ_2101.JPG
| width2            = 200
| alt2              =
| caption2          =
| footer            = A Soviet-made [[ZAZ Zaporozhets|ZAZ-968]], manufactured between 1971 and 1994 (left) and a [[VAZ-2101|VAZ-2101/Lada 1200]], manufactured between 1970 and 1988 (right)
}}

{{multiple image
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| image1 = Classic Moto Show (91).JPG
| width1 = 200
| alt1 =
| caption1 =
| image2 = FSO Polonez MR'83 in Museum of Technology in Warsaw.jpg
| width2 = 200
| alt2 =
| caption2 =
| footer = A Polish-made [[Fiat 126|Polski Fiat 126p]], manufactured between 1973 and 2000 (left) and an [[FSO Polonez|FSO Polonez 1500]], manufactured between 1978 and 1991 (right)
}}
{{multiple image
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| align = right
| image1 = Oltcit Auto.jpg
| width1 = 200
| alt1 =
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| image2 = 1982 Dacia 1310 (GDR export model) in Bucharest.jpg
| width2 = 200
| alt2 =
| caption2 =
| footer = A Romanian-made [[Oltcit Club]], manufactured between 1981 and 1995 (left); and a [[Dacia 1300]], manufactured between 1969 and 2004 (right)
}}
{{multiple image
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| image1 = Škoda 105 S Klasyki w FSO.jpg
| width1 = 200
| alt1 =
| caption1 =
| image2 = Tatra 613 2 at Legendy 2014.JPG
| width2 = 200
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| caption2 =
| footer = A Czechoslovak-made [[Škoda 105]], manufactured between 1976 and 1990 (left); and a [[Tatra 613]], manufactured between 1974 and 1996 (right)
}}
{{multiple image
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| image1 = 1987 Yugo GV in Burgundy, front right.jpg
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| image2 = FCC Poděbrady 2017 29a. Zastava 1100.jpg
| width2 = 200
| alt2 =
| caption2 =
| footer = A Yugoslav-made [[Yugo Koral|Zastava/Yugo Koral]], manufactured between 1980 and 2008 (left); and a [[Zastava 101]], manufactured between 1971 and 2008 (right)
}}
Vehicle ownership increased in the 1970s and 1980s with the production of inexpensive cars in [[East Germany]] such as [[Trabant]]s and the [[Wartburg (car)|Wartburg]]s.<ref name="turnock41"/> However, the wait list for the distribution of Trabants was ten years in 1987 and up to fifteen years for Soviet [[Lada]] and Czechoslovakian [[Škoda Auto|Škoda]] cars.<ref name="turnock41"/> Soviet-built aircraft exhibited deficient technology, with high fuel consumption and heavy maintenance demands.<ref name="turnock42"/> Telecommunications networks were overloaded.<ref name="turnock42"/>

Adding to mobility constraints from the inadequate transport systems were bureaucratic mobility restrictions.<ref name="turnock43"/> While outside of Albania, domestic travel eventually became largely regulation-free, stringent controls on the issue of passports, visas and foreign currency made foreign travel difficult inside the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="turnock43"/> Countries were inured to isolation and initial post-war [[autarky]], with each country effectively restricting bureaucrats to viewing issues from a domestic perspective shaped by that country's specific propaganda.<ref name="turnock43"/>

Severe [[Natural environment|environmental]] problems arose through urban traffic congestion, which was aggravated by pollution generated by poorly maintained vehicles.<ref name="turnock43">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=43}}</ref> Large thermal power stations burning [[lignite]] and other items became notorious polluters, while some hydro-electric systems performed inefficiently because of dry seasons and silt accumulation in reservoirs.<ref name="turnock39">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=39}}</ref> [[Kraków]] was covered by smog 135 days per year while [[Wrocław]] was covered by a fog of [[Chromium|chrome]] gas.{{Specify|date=September 2010}}<ref name="turnock63">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=63}}</ref>

Several villages were evacuated because of copper smelting at [[Głogów]].<ref name="turnock63"/> Further rural problems arose from piped water construction being given precedence over building sewerage systems, leaving many houses with only inbound piped water delivery and not enough sewage tank trucks to carry away sewage.<ref name="turnock64">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=64}}</ref> The resulting drinking water became so polluted in [[People's Republic of Hungary|Hungary]] that over 700 villages had to be supplied by tanks, bottles and plastic bags.<ref name="turnock64"/> Nuclear power projects were prone to long commissioning delays.<ref name="turnock39"/>

The [[Chernobyl disaster|catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukrainian SSR]] was caused by an irresponsible safety test on a reactor design that is normally safe,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.insc.anl.gov/neisb/neisb4/NEISB_3.3.A1.html|title=NEI Source Book: Fourth Edition (NEISB_3.3.A1)|date=8 September 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100908155118/http://www.insc.anl.gov/neisb/neisb4/NEISB_3.3.A1.html|archive-date=8 September 2010}}</ref> some operators lacking an even basic understanding of the reactor's processes and authoritarian Soviet bureaucracy, valuing party loyalty over competence, that kept promoting incompetent personnel and choosing cheapness over safety.<ref>{{Cite book|last = Medvedev|first = Grigori|title = The Truth About Chernobyl|publisher = VAAP. First American edition published by Basic Books in 1991|year = 1989|isbn = 978-2-226-04031-2|title-link = The Truth About Chernobyl}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last = Medvedev|first = Zhores A.|author-link = Zhores A. Medvedev|title = The Legacy of Chernobyl|url = https://archive.org/details/legacyofchernoby00medv|url-access = registration|publisher = W. W. Norton & Company|year = 1990|isbn = 978-0-393-30814-3}}</ref> The consequent release of fallout resulted in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people<ref name="Chernobyl.info">{{cite web|title=Geographical location and extent of radioactive contamination |publisher=Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation |url=http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?navID=2 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070630071332/http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?navID=2 |archive-date=30 June 2007 }} (quoting the "Committee on the Problems of the Consequences of the Catastrophe at the Chernobyl NPP: 15&nbsp;Years after Chernobyl Disaster", Minsk, 2001, pp.&nbsp;5/6 ff., and the "Chernobyl Interinform Agency, Kiev und", and "Chernobyl Committee: MailTable of official data on the reactor accident")</ref> leaving a massive desolate [[Zone of alienation]] containing extensive still-standing abandoned urban development.

[[Tourism]] from outside the Eastern Bloc was neglected, while tourism from other Stalinist countries grew within the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="turnock45">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=45}}</ref> Tourism drew investment, relying upon tourism and recreation opportunities existing before World War II.<ref name="turnock44">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=44}}</ref> By 1945, most hotels were run-down, while many which escaped conversion to other uses by central planners were slated to meet domestic demands.<ref name="turnock44"/> Authorities created state companies to arrange travel and accommodation.<ref name="turnock44"/> In the 1970s, investments were made to attempt to attract western travelers, though momentum for this waned in the 1980s when no long-term plan arose to procure improvements in the tourist environment, such as an assurance of freedom of movement, free and efficient money exchange and the provision of higher quality products with which these tourists were familiar.<ref name="turnock45"/> However, Western tourists were generally free to move about in Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia and go where they wished. It was more difficult or even impossible to go as an individual tourist to East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. It was generally possible in all cases for relatives from the west to visit and stay with family in the Eastern Bloc countries, except for Albania. In these cases, permission had to be sought, precise times, length of stay, location and movements had to be known in advance.

Catering to western visitors required creating an environment of an entirely different standard than that used for the domestic populace, which required concentration of travel spots including the building of relatively high-quality infrastructure in travel complexes, which could not easily be replicated elsewhere.<ref name="turnock45"/> Because of a desire to preserve ideological discipline and the fear of the presence of wealthier foreigners engaging in differing lifestyles, [[People's Republic of Albania|Albania]] segregated travelers.<ref name="2turnock350">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|2006|p=350}}</ref> Because of the worry of the subversive effect of the tourist industry, travel was restricted to 6,000 visitors per year.<ref name="turnock48">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=48}}</ref>

====Growth rates====
Growth rates in the Eastern Bloc were initially high in the 1950s and 1960s.<ref name="turnock23"/> During this first period, progress was rapid by European standards and per capita growth within the Eastern Bloc increased by 2.4 times the European average.<ref name="turnock24"/> Eastern Europe accounted for 12.3 percent of European production in 1950 but 14.4 in 1970.<ref name="turnock24"/> However, the system was resistant to change and did not easily adapt to new conditions. For political reasons, old factories were rarely closed, even when new technologies became available.<ref name="turnock24"/> As a result, after the 1970s, growth rates within the bloc experienced relative decline.<ref name="hardt16">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Hardt|Kaufman|1995|p=16}}</ref> Meanwhile, West Germany, Austria, France and other Western European nations experienced increased economic growth in the [[Wirtschaftswunder]] ("economic miracle"), [[Trente Glorieuses]] ("thirty glorious years") and the [[post-World War II boom]].

From the end of World War II to the mid-1970s, the economy of the Eastern Bloc steadily increased at the same rate as the economy in Western Europe, with the non-reformist Stalinist nations of the Eastern Bloc having a stronger economy than the reformist-Stalinist states.<ref>{{Harvard citation no brackets|Teichova|Matis|2003|p=152}}</ref> While most western European economies essentially began to approach the [[per capita]] [[gross domestic product]] (GDP) levels of the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Eastern Bloc countries did not,<ref name="hardt16"/> with per capita GDPs trailing significantly behind their comparable western European counterparts.<ref name="hardt17">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Hardt|Kaufman|1995|p=17}}</ref>

The following table displays a set of estimated growth rates of GDP from 1951 onward, for the countries of the Eastern Bloc as well as those of Western Europe as reported by [[The Conference Board]] as part of its ''[[Total Economy Database]]''. In some cases data availability does not go all the way back to 1951.
{|class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: left"
|- "
!GDP growth rates in percent for the given years<ref>{{cite web|title=Total Economy Database, November 2016. Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity, 1950–2016|url=https://www.conference-board.org/retrievefile.cfm?filename=TED_1_NOV20161.xlsx&type=subsite|access-date=4 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170517180734/https://www.conference-board.org/retrievefile.cfm?filename=TED_1_NOV20161.xlsx&type=subsite|archive-date=17 May 2017|url-status=live}}</ref>
!1951
!1961
!1971
!1981
!1989
!1991
!2001
!2015
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Socialist Republic of Albania||6.608||4.156||6.510||2.526||2.648||−28.000||7.940||2.600
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Republic of Bulgaria||20.576||6.520||3.261||2.660||−1.792||−8.400||4.248||2.968
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Hungarian People's Republic||9.659||5.056||4.462||0.706||−2.240||−11.900||3.849||2.951
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Polish People's Republic||4.400||7.982||7.128||−5.324||−1.552||−7.000||1.248||3.650
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Socialist Republic of Romania||7.237||6.761||14.114||−0.611||−3.192||−16.189||5.592||3.751
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/[[Czech Republic]]||–||–||5.215||−0.160||1.706||−11.600||3.052||4.274
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/Slovakia||–||–||–||–||1.010||−14.600||3.316||3.595
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Soviet Union/Russia||–||7.200||4.200||1.200||0.704||−5.000||5.091||−3.727
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Austria||6.840||5.309||5.112||−0.099||4.227||3.442||1.351||0.811
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Belgium||5.688||4.865||3.753||−1.248||3.588||1.833||0.811||1.374
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Denmark||0.668||6.339||2.666||−0.890||0.263||1.300||0.823||1.179
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Finland||8.504||7.620||2.090||1.863||5.668||−5.914||2.581||0.546
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|France||6.160||5.556||4.839||1.026||4.057||1.039||1.954||1.270
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Germany (West)||9.167||4.119||2.943||0.378||3.270||5.108||1.695||1.700
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Greece||8.807||8.769||7.118||0.055||3.845||3.100||4.132||−0.321
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Ireland||2.512||4.790||3.618||3.890||7.051||3.098||9.006||8.538
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Italy||7.466||8.422||1.894||0.474||2.882||1.538||1.772||0.800
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Netherlands||2.098||0.289||4.222||−0.507||4.679||2.439||2.124||1.990
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Norway||5.418||6.268||5.130||0.966||0.956||3.085||2.085||1.598
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Portugal||4.479||5.462||6.633||1.618||5.136||4.368||1.943||1.460
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Spain||9.937||12.822||5.722||0.516||5.280||2.543||4.001||3.214
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Sweden||3.926||5.623||2.356||−0.593||3.073||−1.146||1.563||3.830
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Switzerland||8.097||8.095||4.076||1.579||4.340||−0.916||1.447||0.855
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|United Kingdom||2.985||3.297||2.118||−1.303||2.179||−1.257||2.758||2.329
|}
The [[United Nations Statistics Division]] also calculates growth rates, using a different methodology, but only reports the figures starting in 1971 (for Slovakia and the constituent republics of the USSR data availability begins later). Thus, according to the United Nations growth rates in Europe were as follows:
{|class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: left"
|-
!GDP growth rates in percent for the given years<ref>{{cite web|title=UN Statistics Division, December 2016. Growth Rate of GDP and its breakdown|url=https://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnltransfer.asp?fID=16|access-date=4 August 2017}}</ref>
!1971
!1981
!1989
!1991
!2001
!2015
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Socialist Republic of Albania||4.001||5.746||9.841||−28.002||8.293||2.639
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Republic of Bulgaria||6.897||4.900||−3.290||−8.445||4.248||2.968
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Hungarian People's Republic||6.200||2.867||0.736||−11.687||3.774||3.148
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Polish People's Republic||7.415||−9.971||0.160||−7.016||1.248||3.941
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Socialist Republic of Romania||13.000||0.112||−5.788||−12.918||5.592||3.663
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/[[Czech Republic]]||5.044||−0.095||0.386||−11.615||3.052||4.536
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/Slovakia||–||–||–||−14.541||3.316||3.831
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Soviet Union/Russia||5.209||5.301||6.801||−5.000||5.091||−3.727
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Ukraine||–||–||–||−8.699||8.832||−9.870
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Lithuania||–||–||–||−5.676||6.524||1.779
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Yugoslavia/Serbia||9.162||1.400||1.500||−11.664||4.993||0.758
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Austria||5.113||−0.144||3.887||3.442||1.351||0.963
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Belgium||3.753||−0.279||3.469||1.833||0.812||1.500
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Denmark||3.005||−0.666||0.645||1.394||0.823||1.606
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Finland||2.357||1.295||5.088||−5.914||2.581||0.210
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|France||5.346||1.078||4.353||1.039||1.954||1.274
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Germany (West)||3.133||0.529||3.897||5.108||1.695||1.721
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Greece||7.841||−1.554||3.800||3.100||4.132||−0.219
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Ireland||3.470||3.325||5.814||1.930||6.052||26.276
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Italy||1.818||0.844||3.388||1.538||1.772||0.732
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Netherlands||4.331||−0.784||4.420||2.439||2.124||1.952
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Norway||5.672||1.598||1.038||3.085||2.085||1.611
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Portugal||6.632||1.618||6.441||4.368||1.943||1.596
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Spain||4.649||−0.132||4.827||2.546||4.001||3.205
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Sweden||0.945||0.455||2.655||−1.146||1.563||4.085
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Switzerland||4.075||1.601||4.331||−0.916||1.447||0.842
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|United Kingdom||3.479||−0.779||2.583||−1.119||2.726||2.222
|}
[[File:Eastern bloc economies GDP 1990.jpg|thumb|upright=1.8|Per capita GDP in the Eastern Bloc from 1950 to 2003 (1990 base [[International dollar|Geary-Khamis dollars]]) according to [[Angus Maddison]]]]
<!-- several errors{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: left"
|-
!GDP per Capita, according to the [[UN]]<ref>{{cite web|title=Un statistics Division December 2016, GDP per capita|url=https://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnltransfer.asp?fID=9|access-date=7 August 2017}}</ref>
!1970
!1989
!2015
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|United Kingdom||$2,350||$16,275||$44,162
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Italy||$2,112 ||$16,239||$30,462
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Austria||$2,042 ||$17,313||$44,118
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Japan||$2,040 ||$25,054||$34,629
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Soviet Union/Russia||{{color|red|$1,789}}||{{orange|$2,711}}||$9,243
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Ukraine||-||-||$2,022
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Lithuania||-||-||$14,384
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Greece||$1,496 ||$7,864||$17,788
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Ireland||$1,493 ||$11,029||$60,514
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Spain||$1,205||$10,577||$25,865
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/[[Czech Republic]]||{{color|red|$1,136}}||{{color|orange|$3,764}}||$17,562
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/Slovakia||-||-||$16,082
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Republic of Bulgaria||{{color|red|$1,059}}||{{color|orange|$2,477}}||$6,847
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Socialist Republic of Albania||{{color|red|$1,053}}||{{color|orange|$904}}||$3,984
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Cyprus||$1,004 ||$9,015||$21,942
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Polish People's Republic||{{color|red|$1,000}}||{{color|orange|$2,229}}||$12,355
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Portugal||$935||$6,129||$19,239
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Yugoslavia/Serbia||{{color|red|$721}}||{{color|orange|$4,197}}||$5,239
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Cuba||{{color|red|$653}}||{{color|red|$2,577}}||{{color|red|$7,657}}
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Socialist Republic of Romania||{{color|red|$619}}||{{color|orange|$2,424}}||$9,121
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Hungarian People's Republic||{{color|red|$615}}||{{color|orange|$3,115}}||$12,351
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|China||{{color|red|$111}}||{{color|red|$406}}||{{color|red|$8,109}}
|-style="text-align:center;"
|style="text-align:left;"|Vietnam||{{color|red|$64}}||{{color|red|$94}}||{{color|red|$2,068}}
|} -->
[[File:GDP per capita of the Eastern Bloc.png|thumb|450px|GDP per capita of the Eastern Bloc in relations with the GDP per capita of the United States during 1900–2010]]
The following table lists the level of [[nominal GDP]] per capita in certain selected countries, measured in [[US dollar]]s, for the years 1970, 1989, and 2015:
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: left"
|- "
!Nominal GDP per Capita, according to the [[UN]]<ref>{{cite web|title=Un statistics Division December 2016|url=https://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnllist.asp|access-date=7 March 2017}}</ref>
!1970
!1989
!2015
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|United Kingdom||$2,350||$16,275||$44,162
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Italy||$2,112 ||$16,239||$30,462
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Austria||$2,042 ||$17,313||$44,118
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Japan||$2,040 ||$25,054||$34,629
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Soviet Union/[[Russia]]||{{color|red|$1,789}}||{{orange|$2,711}}||$9,243
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|[[Ukraine]]||-||-||$2,022
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|[[Lithuania]]||-||-||$14,384
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Greece||$1,496 ||$7,864||$17,788
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Ireland||$1,493 ||$11,029||$60,514
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Spain||$1,205||$10,577||$25,865
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/[[Czech Republic]]||{{color|red|$1,136}}||{{color|orange|$3,764}}||$17,562
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|[[Slovakia]]||-||-||$16,082
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|People's Republic of Bulgaria||{{color|red|$1,059}}||{{color|orange|$2,477}}||$6,847
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|People's Socialist Republic of Albania||{{color|red|$1,053}}||{{color|orange|$904}}||$3,984
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Cyprus||$1,004 ||$9,015||$21,942
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Polish People's Republic||{{color|red|$1,000}}||{{color|orange|$2,229}}||$12,355
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Portugal||$935||$6,129||$19,239
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Yugoslavia/[[Serbia]]||{{color|red|$721}}||{{color|orange|$4,197}}||$5,239
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Cuba||{{color|red|$653}}||{{color|red|$2,577}}||{{color|red|$7,657}}
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Socialist Republic of Romania||{{color|red|$619}}||{{color|orange|$2,424}}||$9,121
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Hungarian People's Republic||{{color|red|$615}}||{{color|orange|$3,115}}||$12,351
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|China||{{color|red|$111}}||{{color|red|$406}}||{{color|red|$8,109}}
|- style="text-align:center;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Vietnam||{{color|red|$64}}||{{color|red|$94}}||{{color|red|$2,068}}
|}
While it can be argued the [[World Bank]] estimates of GDP used for 1990 figures underestimate Eastern Bloc GDP because of undervalued local currencies, per capita incomes were undoubtedly lower than in their counterparts.<ref name="hardt17"/> [[East Germany]] was the most advanced industrial nation of the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="zwass34">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Zwass|1984|p=34}}</ref> Until the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, East Germany was considered a weak state, hemorrhaging skilled labor to the West such that it was referred to as "the disappearing satellite".<ref name="graubard8">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Graubard|1991|p=8}}</ref> Only after the wall sealed in skilled labor was East Germany able to ascend to the top economic spot in the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="graubard8"/> Thereafter, its citizens enjoyed a higher quality of life and fewer shortages in the supply of goods than those in the Soviet Union, Poland or Romania.<ref name="zwass34"/>

While official statistics painted a relatively rosy picture, the [[Economy of the German Democratic Republic|East German economy]] had eroded because of increased central planning, economic autarky, the use of coal over oil, investment concentration in a few selected technology-intensive areas and labor market regulation.<ref name="lipschitz52">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Lipschitz|McDonald|1990|p=52}}</ref> As a result, a large productivity gap of nearly 50% per worker existed between East and West Germany.<ref name="lipschitz52"/><ref name="Teichova72"/> However, that gap does not measure the quality of design of goods or service such that the actual per capita rate may be as low as 14 to 20 per cent.<ref name="Teichova72"/> Average gross monthly wages in East Germany were around 30% of those in West Germany, though after accounting for taxation the figures approached 60%.<ref name="lipschitz53">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Lipschitz|McDonald|1990|p=53}}</ref>

Moreover, the purchasing power of wages differed greatly, with only about half of East German households owning either a car or a color television set as late as 1990, both of which had been standard possessions in West German households.<ref name="lipschitz53"/> The ''[[East German mark|Ostmark]]'' was only valid for transactions inside East Germany, could not be legally exported or imported<ref name="lipschitz53"/> and could not be used in the East German [[Intershop]]s which sold premium goods.<ref name="zwass34"/> In 1989, 11% of the East German labor force remained in agriculture, 47% was in the secondary sector and 42% in services.<ref name="Teichova72">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Teichova|Matis|2003|p=72}}</ref>

Once installed, the economic system was difficult to change given the importance of politically reliable management and the prestige value placed on large enterprises.<ref name="turnock24">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=24}}</ref> Performance declined during the 1970s and 1980s due to inefficiency when industrial input costs, such as energy prices, increased.<ref name="turnock24"/> Though growth lagged behind the West, it did occur.<ref name="frucht382"/> Consumer goods started to become more available by the 1960s.<ref name="frucht382"/>

Before the Eastern Bloc's dissolution, some major sectors of industry were operating at such a loss that they exported products to the West at prices below the real value of the raw materials.<ref name="turnock25">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=25}}</ref> [[People's Republic of Hungary|Hungarian]] steel costs doubled those of western Europe.<ref name="turnock25"/> In 1985, a quarter of Hungary's state budget was spent on supporting inefficient enterprises.<ref name="turnock25"/> Tight planning in [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]]'s industry meant continuing shortages in other parts of its economy.<ref name="turnock25"/>

===Development policies===
[[File:Wohnbebauung-Ernst-Thaelmann-Park-09-2018c.jpg|left|thumb|[[East Germany|East German]] [[Plattenbau]] apartment blocks]]
In social terms, the 18 years (1964–1982) of Brezhnev's leadership saw real incomes grow more than 1.5 times. More than 1.6 billion square metres of living space were commissioned and provided to over 160&nbsp;million people. At the same time, the average rent for families did not exceed 3% of the family income. There was unprecedented affordability of housing, health care and education.<ref name="ria.ru"/>

In a survey by the Sociological Research Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1986, 75% of those surveyed said that they were better off than the previous ten years. Over 95% of Soviet adults considered themselves "fairly well off". 55% of those surveyed felt that medical services improved, 46% believed public transportation had improved and 48% said that the standard of services provided public service establishments had risen.<ref>Update USSR, Vol. 53. April 1986. N.W.R. Publications. p. 11</ref>

During the years 1957–1965, housing policy underwent several institutional changes with industrialisation and urbanisation had not been matched by an increase in housing after World War II.<ref name="sillince36">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|pp=36–37}}</ref> Housing shortages in the Soviet Union were worse than in the rest of the Eastern Bloc due to a larger migration to the towns and more wartime devastation and were worsened by Stalin's pre-war refusals to invest properly in housing.<ref name="sillince36"/> Because such investment was generally not enough to sustain the existing population, apartments had to be subdivided into increasingly smaller units, resulting in several families sharing an apartment previously meant for one family.<ref name="sillince36"/>

The prewar norm became one Soviet family per room, with the toilets and kitchen shared.<ref name="sillince36"/> The amount of living space in urban areas fell from 5.7 square metres per person in 1926 to 4.5 square metres in 1940.<ref name="sillince36"/> In the rest of the Eastern Bloc during this time period, the average number of people per room was 1.8 in [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]] (1956), 2.0 in [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]] (1961), 1.5 in [[People's Republic of Hungary|Hungary]] (1963), 1.7 in [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]] (1960), 1.4 in [[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]] (1966), 2.4 in [[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] (1961) and 0.9 in 1961 in [[East Germany]].<ref name="sillince36"/>

After Stalin's death in 1953, forms of an economic "New Course" brought a revival of private house construction.<ref name="sillince36"/> Private construction peaked in 1957–1960 in many Eastern Bloc countries and then declined simultaneously along with a steep increase in state and co-operative housing.<ref name="sillince36"/> By 1960, the rate of housebuilding per head had picked up in all countries in the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="sillince36"/> Between 1950 and 1975, worsening shortages were generally caused by a fall in the proportion of all investment made housing.<ref name="sillince48">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=748}}</ref> However, during that period the total number of dwellings increased.<ref name="sillince49">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=49}}</ref>

During the last fifteen years of this period (1960–1975), an emphasis was made for a supply side solution, which assumed that industrialised building methods and high rise housing would be cheaper and quicker than traditional brick-built, low-rise housing.<ref name="sillince49"/> Such methods required manufacturing organisations to produce the [[prefabricated]] components and organisations to assemble them on site, both of which planners assumed would employ large numbers of unskilled workers-with powerful political contacts.<ref name="sillince49"/> The lack of participation of eventual customers, the residents, constituted one factor in escalating construction costs and poor quality work.<ref name="sillince50">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=50}}</ref> This led to higher demolition rates and higher costs to repair poorly constructed dwellings.<ref name="sillince50"/> In addition, because of poor quality work, a black market arose for building services and materials that could not be procured from state monopolies.<ref name="sillince50"/>

In most countries, completions (new dwellings constructed) rose to a high point between 1975 and 1980 and then fell as a result presumably of worsening international economic conditions.<ref name="sillince7">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=7}}</ref> This occurred in Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania (with an earlier peak in 1960 also), Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia while the Soviet Union peaked in 1960 and 1970.<ref name="sillince7"/> While between 1975 and 1986, the proportion of investment devoted to housing actually rose in most of the Eastern Bloc, general economic conditions resulted in total investment amounts falling or becoming stagnant.<ref name="sillince48"/>

The employment of socialist ideology in housing policy declined in the 1980s, which accompanied a shift in authorities looking at the need of residents to an examination of potential residents' ability to pay.<ref name="sillince48"/> Yugoslavia was unique in that it continuously mixed private and state sources of housing finance, stressed self-managed building co-operatives along with central government controls.<ref name="sillince48"/>

===Shortages===
The initial year that shortages were effectively measured and shortages in 1986 were as follows:<ref name="sillince11">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|pp=11–12}}</ref>
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: left"
|+Housing shortages in the Eastern Bloc and Yugoslavia
|-
!Country
!Initial year
!Initial year shortage
!% of total stock
!1986 shortage
!1986% of total stock
|-
|align=left|[[People's Republic of Albania|Albania]] || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a
|-
|align=left|[[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]] || 1965 || 472,000 || 23.0% || 880,400 || 27.4%
|-
|align=left|[[People's Republic of Hungary|Hungary]] || 1973 || 6,000 || 0.2% || 257,000 || 6.6%
|-
|align=left|[[East Germany]] || 1971 || 340,000 || 5.6% || 1,181,700 || 17.1%
|-
|align=left|[[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]] || 1974 || 1,357,000 || 15.9% || 2,574,800 || 23.9%
|-
|align=left|[[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]] || 1966 || 575,000 || 11.0% || 1,157,900 || 14.0%
|-
|align=left|[[Soviet Union]] || 1970 || 13,690,000 || 23.1% || 26,662,400 || 30.2%
|-
|align=left|[[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]] || 1970 || 438,000 || 9.9% || 877,600 || 15.3%
|-
|align=left|[[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] || n/a || n/a || n/a || 1,634,700 || 23.9%
|}
These are official housing figures and may be low. For example, in the Soviet Union the figure of 26,662,400 in 1986 almost certainly underestimates shortages for the reason that it does not count shortages from large Soviet rural-urban migration; another calculation estimates shortages to be 59,917,900.<ref name="sillince17">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=17}}</ref> By the late 1980s, [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]] had an average 20-year wait time for housing while Warsaw had between a 26- and 50-year wait time.<ref name="sillince27">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=27}}</ref><ref name="turnock25"/> In the Soviet Union, widespread illegal subletting occurred at exorbitant rates.<ref name="sillince33">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=33}}</ref> Toward the end of the Eastern Bloc allegations of misallocations and illegal distribution of housing were raised in Soviet [[CPSU]] Central Committee meetings.<ref name="sillince33"/>

In [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]], housing problems were caused by slow rates of construction, poor home quality (which was even more pronounced in villages) and a large black market.<ref name="sillince2"/> In [[People's Republic of Romania|Romania]], social engineering policy and concern about the use of agricultural land forced high densities and high-rise housing designs.<ref name="sillince3">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=3}}</ref> In [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]], a prior emphasis on monolithic high-rise housing lessened somewhat in the 1970s and 1980s.<ref name="sillince3"/> In the Soviet Union, housing was perhaps the primary social problem.<ref name="sillince3"/> While Soviet housing construction rates were high, quality was poor and demolition rates were high, in part because of an inefficient building industry and lack of both quality and quantity of construction materials.<ref name="sillince3"/>

[[East Germany|East German]] housing suffered from a lack of quality and a lack of skilled labor, with a shortage of materials, plot and permits.<ref name="sillince4">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=4}}</ref> In staunchly Stalinist [[People's Republic of Albania|Albania]], housing blocks (''panelka'') were spartan, with six-story walk-ups being the most frequent design.<ref name="sillince4"/> Housing was allocated by workplace trade unions and built by voluntary labor organised into brigades within the workplace.<ref name="sillince4"/> [[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] suffered from fast urbanisation, uncoordinated development and poor organisation resulting from a lack of hierarchical structure and clear accountability, low building productivity, the monopoly position of building enterprises and irrational credit policies.<ref name="sillince4"/>