wrobel said:
looks like the "rest of Europe" consists of the first rate people and the "buffer" consists of the second rate ones.
Actually it was like this, at least in the 20th century. Eastern Europe, especially the Baltic states were the most luxurious part of the USSR , meanwhile after the breakup of the USSR we were looked at as the most degraded and left behind part of Europe, together with maybe Romania and only above countries like Albania , Ukraine etc.
In a sense this is true because our standard were indeed above the USSR average, we surpassed Ukraine, Kazakhstan etc and most of Russia but it was not as high as that attained by people living in capitalist democracies like west Germany, UK, France. Therefore we have always been somewhat in the middle.
Sure enough and most of us here share no illusion that if WW2 did not happen and there was no USSR occupation (but most importantly if the USSR wasn't marxist/communist), we the Baltics would have had a western European life standard all along.
Back in the 1920's and 30's we had a decent little economy going for us. This thread is not the right place for it but we were gaining steam back then.To note some interesting historical facts, we even had some world first's like the company VEF which was a national electronics manufacturer produced the worlds first miniature spy camera "VEF Minox" , invented by a Latvian born German inventor Walter Zapp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minox
During the Soviet times we participated in a lot of science research and technology development but most of it was incorporated within classified military secrets and the real inventors and scientists never got the world fame they would have gotten if they worked from an independent country. Much of the success was simply written off for the USSR as a whole.
Many really good drugs got invented but sure enough they never got the true recognition they deserved as it all came from "USSR". The drug Mildronate is one good example. It's a heart drug that helps many and has almost no side effects, so much so professional athletes use it until it got included into the "anti doping" list.
https://www.usada.org/spirit-of-sport/education/meldonium/During the USSR few got to ever go out the "Iron curtain" so Baltics was a popular tourist destination from all across the USSR. Our beaches in the 60's , 70's and 80's looked like this daily. In that image there is everyone Ukrainians, Russians, all the "stans" etc.
What you don't see and what today's youth has not learned while those that are too old have forgotten is how all these people were actually a burden for a planned economy like that of the USSR. In a capitalist system this much people would mean money, lots of it, in the USSR this much people in one place meant empty store shelves and endless lines.
The electric trains passing from capital to this resort did pass every 5 minutes but each of them was full to the roof, we Latvians sometimes felt like guests in our own land...This is how it feels being in the middle especially if that middle is a Russian made Marxist superstate with planned economy and social life from George Orwell's "1984"
