@@mv_5878 Whatever this "wealth of a country" means, it is not per capita. If you look at the map 3:25, you can see that "rich countries" (green) are those with large populations (including Russia), "poor countries" (red) are those with small populations (including Luxembourg). The only exception is Ukraine.
GDP (in USD) per capita: Luxembourg 135,605 Finland 54,507 Sweden 55,216 Russia 13,006 Belarus 7,477 Ukraine 5,225 Estonia 30,998 Latvia 24,929 Lithuania 28,482 Poland 22,393 Czech Republic 30,475 Slovenia 32,350 Spain 33,090 Portugal 26,879 Italy 37,146
He really tried hard for the data to fit his narrative even when it didn’t, taking some countries off the map just so he could show the mystical “Iron Curtain” still exists :// It’s sad as he actually did some research, if he analyzed it with no bias it could’ve been a great video, sadly he really wanted to push the catchy title. I can only say one thing, “Pisał pod tezę”
Spain has more hdi, gdp pp, gdp pcc, gdp per capita, gdp, quality of life, average salary and low salary, exports, 3 best health system in Europe and the country with the highest life expectancy in Europe with Italy and Switzerland, happiness than poland and chezia lmaoo poland and czech republic are poor countries xd
@@iidk. bro, im studying economics and i know all of the statistics very well, but the difference is that Spain and Portugal are in non ending crisis since 2008, without basically any possibilities to change it, mostly because for instance in Spain the same gov and people are in power, the same people that put this country into this situation, and on the other hand you have Poland and Czechia that are in non ending growth since 1989, and a lot of possibilities. Just a short explanation with the most basic and easy things, it’s not becasuse i’m nationalistic or sth, i’m actually from Belgium soooo XD
This is oversimplified and stereotypical. Selection of pictures tells a lot about it as almost all of them are taken in early 90-ties. I recommend the author to go visit Prague, Tallin, Lublana, Krakow or Split and compare it to some Greek, Portuguese or Italian cities.
They are all very small cities, of course they are well kept same as in the west. Compare Bucarest,Sofia,Budapest,Chișinăuand Prague to big cities in Western Europe such as Milan,Paris,Frankfurt or London and you will see a major difference in development.
@@Alexander-rr6yn well, the thesis of the vid seems to be - Eastern Europe has been poor and still remains poor compared to the west 35 years after collapse of the iron curtain. A bunch of pictures from early 90-ies support this thesis. Whereas true picture is much more complex. Most of the former Soviet block countries (specifically new EU member states) have reduced the distance to the Western counterpart by 30-70%, and some of them have already surpassed some of the Western European countries. I encourage you to visit and compare Slovenia to Portugal or Czechia to Greece.
@@Alexander-rr6yn but these “western” cities aren’t well kept. Also what difference in development should I see? The fact that they’re stuck in 90s with digitalisation in Germany and Italy?
@@PK1999 Eastern Europe is still poorer than Western Europe in many respects,yes the difference was reduced in the last 2 decades but to become on par with western countries they need to develop their own industries and not relying on western companies moving factories there for cheap labor. Regarding Portugal and Greece, those countries were already much poorer and dysfunctional than the western average and only a bit richer than some eastern countries.
@@Alexander-rr6yn nobody questions that the Western Europe is generally richer then the countries of the former Soviet block. My point is that the map dividing Europe in two - rich countries in the West and poor countries in the East is no longer relevant as the picture became a bit more complexed over the past 3 decades.
Your thumbnail map is wrong: 1. Czech, Slovakia, Slovenia, Baltic countries are already advanced economies with 25k$+ GDP/Capita. 2. Poland and Hungary are upper-middle income already richer than Turkey/Brazil... 3. Romania and Bulgaria are middle-income and growing fast not poor
All the countries you mentioned are grabbing money from the EU and are also enjoying from western delocalization into their countries, they're nowehere near western standards.
yeah tbh, the most simple way you can tell this is that the visegrad group, baltic states and slovenia are the prosperous countries of eastern europe and actually Poland is quite prosperous if you look at the gdp per capita ppp it's higher than Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Croatia and Slovakia so i'd say Poland is of a quite similar prosperity level as other countries mentioned
@@Alexander-rr6ynActually in many aspects Italy was already worse than Czechia and Slovenia. Northern Italy is fine, but central Italy has for example same wages and purchasing power as Czechia. There are many Italians recently moving to Prague from central and southern Italian regions, because there is much much higher youth unemployment and salaries are comparable. I just helped my friend to migrate here from Bologna into marketing job, cause she was unable to find job in her studied field for two years in multiple Italian regions for more than 1,5k before tax, staying with her parents being 30yo. Here she has 2k after tax, found a job in 2 weeks and actually has much better healthcare quality and affordability here + Czechia and Slovenia are significantly safer, being in top10 safest countries in the world for long tjme. In 2022 and 2018 there were international high school tests in math, science and reading and Italy ended more than 10 places behind Slovenia and Czechia. And Slovenia is even wealthier. It has the same human development index as Austria, which is crazy. The only thing where Italy scores better is personal wealth per person, cause between 60s and 00s Italians acummulated a lot of wealth. But in recent years i would really be sure that life quality is better in Czechia and even better in Slovenia.
Colonialism doesn't tell the full story... Scandinavia, Ireland, Finland, Switzerland, Austria didn't benefit from colonialism. Germany had a colonial empire but after WW2 the benefits of that colonies became null thanks to the devastation of the war. Italy had a colonial empire but the resources extracted weren't a catalyst for its development. Libya was considered just a "box of sand"(remember that the vast oil deposits weren't used at the time), Ethiopia was Italian for MAX 5 years and while Eritrea and Somalia had contributed in resources and cheap labour that couldn't be the catalyst for develoment of Italy. The biggest factors for western European development was competition and institutions created by capitalism and liberalism in the prior centuries. Eastern European countries gained independence too late from the empires that dominated those centuries(Germany, Austria, Turkey and Russia) which tended to be authoritarian and repressive. Another big factor is population, the only big countries in Eastern Europe are Russia, Poland and Ukraine with the 1st one that always exploited the other Eastern European and isn't rich because of its policies and their focus on an economy based on natural resources. Poland was created, destroyed, recerated and exploited for all its history, with only this 30+ years to build wealth and Ukraine wasn't independent till 1991, filled with corruption, oligarcs and wars(as well as Russia). And one last criticism is that the last 30 years aren't (obviously) a big enough time to catch up but some trends are really encouraging for eastern Europe. Slovenia has the GDP per capita of Spain, Japan or SK; Estonia,Czechia and Lithuania are at Portugals level while Romania and Poland are always having fantastic growth per year.
As a Pole I will write it down from my perspective that may apply to other countries in the region. Since the medieval era we were lagging behind the Western Europe, because Poland was sparsely populated compared to France, for instance and technologically less developed. The feudal fragmentation of XII and XIII centuries brought a lot of German settlers and new technologies, however the lack of central authority certainly did not help. In the XIV century the threat from the neighbours (especially the Teutonic Order) forced Polish kings and states to modernize quickly. As we entered XV century, we still weren’t as wealthy as Italy or the Netherlands, but technologically we were on the same level and our economy improved. Look at the equipment of the Polish army during battle of Grunwald in 1410 or Orsza in 1515 - they were mostly well equipped heavy knight cavalry (the allies had different formations, as the Poles). When Poland united with Lithuania it got vast underdeveloped lands ruled by boyars that possessed absolute power. Poland during the renaissance was compared to England with its parliament and legislature, however contrary to England it degenerated , not developed during revolutions in XVII century, slowly becoming corrupt oligarchy. These political factors and being dragged into devastating wars even worse than WWII for Poland crushed the economy that only slowly started to recover before the partitions of the Commonwealth (Poland-Lithuania). During the partitions Poles were divided and all the Polish provinces became the peripheries of the partitioning powers. The exception was socially and technologically obsolete Russian Empire that invested a lot in Poland, however compared to the west Poland was extremely poor, especially in Austria-Hungary. After regaining independence 35% of the population was illiterate, there were almost no paved routes, the industry was lacking, the rural economy was particularly in Russian and Austrian parts a testimony from the feudal era, thus taking it all into account the Polish state was poor. The worst came, however during the WWII. We lost 1/6 of the population, 60% of the economy (there was some growth during the Second Polish Republic, nonetheless mediocre) and 1/5 of total size being moved to the west forcefully. During communism there was huge social growth. Rural population moved to cities fastest in the Polish history, Poland became industrialized, illiteracy was eliminated, public schooling effective, electrification conducted, and so on. Unfortunately, it lacked economic vision and civil rights thus ending in crisis that toppled previous oppressive government. After the economic transformation we achieved stunning economic progress, but most of our industry is foreign and only now we are starting to build our own again. The future isn’t that bright, because we suffer from population decline, so we are forced to take migrants that actually come eagerly to Poland, as it’s visible in Polish cities. The people tend to blame communism, but actually it was a period of really rapid economic growth 1945-1955 then stagnating, artificially accelerating in the seventies, then falling into deep crisis.
The formation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the XVI century. It was the unification of Poland and Lithuania for the sake of strengthening their power. The history of the united state is small, but sad: in recent decades, neighbors have actively interfered in its state affairs and structure, although at the beginning of its existence, the association almost seized power in Russia during the Time of Troubles. It was eliminated after the division of the territory between 3 countries.
Slovenia, Estonia are NOT poor countries anymore. Poland, Czechia, Latvia earn more than the international average. In Europe with the exception of a few countries like Russia and Ukraine most countries are above average income countries. They are NOT poor.
They're still, by and large, poorer than the rest of Europe. Europe as a whole is pretty rich by world standards, and even in the worst period of the Communist collapse and its aftermath, the Second World was still generally wealthier than most of the Third. But the East-West division is certainly still present.
Also this is BS. Nominal GDP per capita does not reflect actual living standards. For example, Ireland, being a tax haven for the largest tech corporations does not proportionally reflect their rank in GDP in the quality of life.
Although I agree with most of the reasons you outlined, I disagree that the region is not catching up. You have to consider the "starting point" after all. 50 years of totalitarianism cannot be undone in 30 years, but growth and progress especially in the countries that've joined the EU have been very strong.
My great-grandfather was a logistics officer in the Soviet army after the war. He transported factories and machine tools from Europe to the USSR. Also, they looted luxury items, art and gold for the state. Need to mention that 5 million Axis POWs worked as slaves to rebuild the USSR. Stalin extracted three times more money from Eastern Europe and former Nazi Germany than the entire Marshall plan. This is one of the reasons why Eastern Europe is poor
It is very interesting and actually touching to hear from a descendant from the other side. Here in Czechia (Czechoslovakia) we had been listening to stories of people who witnessed exactly that. The latest personal (within family) was from eighties, when my uncle was employed as “liquidator” for insurance company (I don’t know the proper term in English - the task was to enumerate damage after damage was reported) … and he got called to train damaged somehow (don’t remember details). The train was destined for USSR and the wagons were filled with cans, reportedly labeled as some cabbage vegetable mix. As he was tasked for examination - all the cans were actually preserved meat inside! Meat itself is not that expensive or high tech or something… just the nature of this deception was revolting. (Of course we officially were selling everything, so changing label meant that there was a train worth of something three times more expensive than accounted. Something witnessed by sheer freak accident and something he was prevented to report). That said aside from this, I had to rely on some reports. I don’t remember that mich, reportedly actually some factories/machinery as your Great-grandpa witnessed. And what stuck most to my mind was the Uran mined for USSR and nuclear technology - as we were technologically very advanced, it was confiscated/transported to the East in the early fifties.
@@neelektronikfollowing your logic you can say that Italy or Spain are poor because there are countries in “western” Europe that are richer than them. There’s no poor country in Europe except Ukraine and Moldova, which are on African level in many fields and completely far behind these central-eastern ones.
Mean time in reality - Poland, Estonia, Czechia, and Lithuania in GDP per capita PPP is better than Portugal and Greece. Last 2 almost equal to Spain. So few former socialist countries take over capitalist ones in 30 years. This Video collection of missinformations and poor explanation.
Slovenia, Czechia, Lithuania and Estonia should be west from rich/poor line in order to separate rich Western Europe from poor Eastern Europe correctly as these Eastern European countries are richer than Portugal which is in Western Europe.
As soon as I saw Finland included as a country in the western portion of Europe, I could no longer take this video seriously. Finland is East of most of Europe, so to pretend otherwise is absurd especially if your argument is "Eastern Europe is (blank)" because your just ruling out an entire nation just to fit the narrative you’ve already decided on.
or at least north lol also he forgot to say when "COMMUNISM" was gone in east eu the capitalists rushed in to bankrupt most companies. oh and the US who hates communism while now having it in their homeland did anything it could to try to fuck over the USSR or any "communist" country let alone the middle east
This video is horribly unnuanced, but Finland from cultural and economic perspective is west. Those brave mofos fought off Russians, so communism hasn’t left a mark on them. Go Finland.
finland was under russia still as a protectorate the only reason they later hated russia was for going communist lol also id say if it was under sweeded still id be a shithole as sweedes didn't care about finns @@89itis
LoL, all those clips in your video of eastern Europe look like they were taken from before the year 2000. ruclips.net/user/shortsWKXfSXmLOYc Poland GDP 1992: 80.6 billion France GDP 1992: 1.404 Trillion In 1992 France's GDP was approx 16x larger than Poland's Poland GDP 2023: 842 billion France GDP 2023: 3.049 Trillion In 2023 France's GDP is approx 3.5x larger than Poland's. I think eastern europe is catching up with western europe at record speeds. Nice try though with your flawed logic
While oooook, this video is also very biased by omission.... Important to note the following. Phase 1: Post Roman Empire (more so from 1453) to 1918: Eastern Europe was largely a colonial playgrounds of Prussia/Ottoman Empire/Hapsburgs/Russian Empires. Suffering development setbacks until their liberation(s) from mid 19th to early 20th centuries. Phase 2: 1919-1945: Eastern Europe is generally the centrepiece of interwar instability (dictatorships and civil strife) and later WWII. The holocaust and the slaughter of the eastern front in WWII does unimaginable and irreparable economic damage in both material and human capital knocking it back decades while already behind from phase 1. Phase 3:1945-1991 (ie, the only section this video seems to be interested in for clearly political reasons.) The video is fair in how Soviet (neo-Russian) Imperialism kept European developments down in both the Warsaw Pact and other 14 Soviet subordinate republics. While the video does seemed biased for omitting the previous two phases for context, it's fair in its assessment of post WWII Eastern bloc suppression. BUT also bearing in mind the USSR had suffered massive economic and infrastructure damage and human loss of life (human capital) from WWII while the USA got to sit an ocean away from both Major theaters with little risk or damages. So the USSR had to both manage its new "colonies" (satellites) in Eastern Europe while taking on massive rebuilding projects while the US could just pump out the Marshall Plan without any need to rebuild and repair. This video is well made... but I question if it's well done. The fact you leave out European Russia on your definition of "Eastern Europe" (a popular move by RUclipsrs post Feb. 2022) speaks volumes in the currency of bias. Just remember, just because it's popular, doesn't mean it's correct.
Even before 1453, eastern Europe was devastated by central Asian invasions and suffered greatly even under the Byzantine empire, where slavs were the first source of slavery for them and also for the HRE and the italian states such as Venice. Moreover, eastern Europe was never well connected like western Europe was, thus it has always been logistically and economically poorer, not to mention that not having access to both the mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean has also always been a great handicap for the region. There's probably no period in history where eastern Europe has been more rich and powerful/influential than western Europe.
Don't forget Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth which was self sufficient and been advanced in many fields. For example they had Statute, kind of constitution which was far ahead most of Europe.
At 3:15 what are you trying to say? You marked Russia green along with Germany, UK etc. Russia is not a wealthy country, GDP per capita is much lower than Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia or Poland which have now passed countries like Greece or Portugal and are on their way to catch up to Spain and Italy.
Doesn't mean any of these Eastern European countries (Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia or Poland) are richer than Portugal. Plus, these countries are going through demographic collapse and so will never come close to Spain or Italy. Also, do you not realise how massive Italy's economy is? It's over 2 trillion.
@@jasonhaven7170 Nominal GDP per capita: Portugal - $24.5k, Czech Republic - $27k so yes Czech Republic is not only richer than Portugal, it’s exonomy is growing faster. When measured at PPP, most Eastern EU members are wealthier than Portugal. When measured at PPP, eastern EU countries have 70% - 80% the standard of living of Western Europe. Regarding population collapse: EU avg fertility rate: 1.5 children Germany: 1.5 Italy: 1.3 Spain: 1.3 Poland: 1.5 Czechia: 1.7 You don’t seem to know what you’re talking about. What population collapse?!?! The whole Europe will collapse together unfortunatelly…
And Luxemburg is a red. If there would be Monaco, Liechtenstein and Iceland on the map, they would also be "very poor" countries :D Versed took a L with that map.
Poland is not the front runner of ex socialist countries. Its Czechia, Slovenia long term and recently Estonia and Lithuania. Poland would be considered 5th in wealth and gdp per capita. Its richer than Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria though, quite close to Lithuania and Estonia, but less wealthy than Czechia, Slovenia and Estonia (but Estonia got hit hard last 3 years).
@@Aggoenix With all the respect but it is obvious that those smaller countries will have larger gdp per capita. I like Lithuania but I have been there and their villages look like they are still stuck in the 90s and by just a look of this I wouldn’t say that life there is better than in Poland.
@@Hubabe008 I wouldnt say its that much more diversified. Poland exports to Germany 20%, China 12% and Italy 5%, then all under 4%. Czechia goes 31% Germany, 8,5% Slovakia, 7% Poland and 5% France and Austria. Diversification of economy is measured in economic complexity index which also measures how complex the products/services are and Czechia is 7th in the world while Poland 28th. If you look at Global innovation index Czechia is 27th wordly, Poland 39th. In Human capital (education, know how) Czechia is 22th and Poland 31th. They are absolutely same in Doing Bussiness index. What is interesting they have almost the same USD ammount of export, Czechia exports products worth 90% of Polish exports, but is smaller, the difference is Czechia is more export oriented economy, while Poland is more inner-market oriented, it exports and imports much less of its %gdp. The car industry youve said was much more relevant 20 years ago, Czechia produces 1,2mil cars a year, which is per capita less than more european nations, Slovakia for example produces 1,2mil cars with 50% of the population, so its much more autoindustry reliant. Yes automobile industry was a driving factor in the 90sand 00s, but the country considers different products and services as their key strategy, automobiles are not long funded by the state, the state funds batteries, weapons, software like Czech Avast, chips and lithium batteries (because one of the largest lithium deposits in Europe, even major in the world sit unmined in Czechia). Poland is obviously larger market, but i really wouldnt call Czechia less diversified, actually it might be even more diversified im sure there are exact data for this.
@@Hubabe008 Also if you count how much is worth the sum of all the products services in the country, you get gdp per capita, which is used as main wealth/economical indicator: Estonia 30,998 Czech Republic 30,475 Lithuania 28,482 Bahrain 28,464 Portugal 26,879 Latvia 24,929 Slovakia 24,471 Greece 23,173 Poland 22,393
As a Serb, this video means nothing to me, if I were born again, I would like to be a Serb, money is important, but not everything in life, I see that some members of the Slavic people are annoyed by it, there is no need, these are all numbers that in things don't mean anything, I have a car and I go to the sea and the mountains every year like a king 😃 I lived in the old Yugoslavia and I can tell you that it was the most beautiful country in the world to live in in every sense, and that such a country will never happen again, today's Norway is nothing to the old Yugoslavia, people lived there with all human senses, they those who lived know what I'm talking about 😃
Because communism. P.s. I am not going to waste my time by replying to everyone. Communism is my first answer because my country suffered from it. Discuss everything also below in the comments. 🤗
The difference between e.g. Moldova and Czechia is larger than between Czechia and Germany, also the difference between e.g. Switzerland and Spain is larger than between Spain and Czechia. That is to say, yes there is kind of a gradual decrease of wealth as you go from North/West to South/East, but the stark divide in the thumbnail is wrong. And your introduction sounds as if the Iron Curtain is still there? Aand finally the countries you make out as Eastern Europe are partially not really Eastern Europe.
Me as Eastern European we hate when some one calls our nations “poor” it really damage reputation even trough now they not that poor but still litle behind west here in Poland,Czechoslovakia,Hungary We had active resistance almost every one hated communist regimes im From Czechia And we tried to overthrow our socialist regime two times 1968 and 1989 what was suscessfull even communist nations like Soviet Union was tooking our products from ČKD or Skoda works from tanks to trains we were in comparision to other communist block states we were pretty rich but every higher post was occupied only by KSČ (Czechoslovak communist party) members if you wanted to be on higher post you must joined the communist party
Glad to see someone delving deeper into reasons for Easter Europe being poorer, such as geography and colonization (though I would say geography plays the major role). I would just get even more into the past. Eastern Europe was also subject to various invasions from the east such as ones done by Mongols and Turks. So while regions such as today's Germany enjoyed large decentralization, first universities, flourishing of art and craftsmanship, Mongols were lurking the Eastern European plain, while Balkans were slowly but surely falling under Ottoman absolute monarchy. I'm not denying there were wars in western Europe as well, but still they were significantly done differently than ones in Eastern Europe. Not to mention that occupiers in Eastern Europe often practiced different religion so subjected peoples had even worse status due to such difference.
And by Magyars, who destroyed Great Moravia with Franks. If Great Moravia wasn't destroyed, it would be a powerfull force in "Eastern Europe", like any other western country.
technology can fix landlocked. image solar powered automatic canal builders, nuclear fusion powered trains, vacuum subways, remote controlled robots allowing central asians to work in america, iran, india, arabia, eastern, northern africa.
This division is losing relevance by the day. While in general terms there is still a difference, already the wealthiest Eastern European countries are wealthier and with higher QoL than the poorest of the West. Not to mention, do yourself a service and look at GDP per capita, preferably at purchasing power parity, for a more decent comparison.
I think there is another factor that goes further back in history. This idea was formulated by historian Brian Tierney. The West had factors that favored freedom which ironically came from its poverty. The rich part of the Roman Empire was really in the East. The Romans kind of abandoned the West because it was poor and barbarous compared to the East. But this had a long-term positive consequence. Because the West was so politically fragmented, the papacy became the most stable authority. But eventually, when the West became more prosperous and developed nation-states like France, Spain, the Netherlands, and England, this created a tension. If someone was unhappy with his king, he could complain to the pope. If someone was unhappy with the pope, he could complain to his king. Sometimes kings would even attack the papacy and try to overthrow the pope. This created some space for more freedom of thought and action in the West. In the Byzantine Empire, which influenced Russia quite a bit, there was more harmony between the Church and the State. So you might notice that in countries like Romania and Greece that are Orthodox, the state often tries to suppress non-Orthodox churches. There is a concept that just by being a citizen of that country, you are a member of its national church. So I think this has made the Orthodox world, and somewhat all countries that came under Russian domination, less dynamic. Now, as you say in your video, Romania has now become a more dynamic society. They were lucky to get into the EU.
Ok, but how about Eastern European countries which adopted Western Christianity and never formed strong cultural ties with Byzantine Emipire, for instance Poland, Czechia, Hungary?
I don't quite buy that explanation. Being dynamic isn't a recipe for economic development. Going as far back as the middle ages to explain economic disparities today, without explaining the process of change those countries had is not a good model to explain much of anything. A much more useful theory has to do with the development of cities in western europe, which would gradually erode the power of the nobles in the benefit of merchant elites. This transformation was one of the reasons for the development of absolutism in western territories, as the king would counterbalance the power of the nobles by giving titles to the merchant elites, eventually centralizing all power around his figure, which would make the need to delegate its authority. This would gradually be morphed to resemble the modern states of today, which had much more developed institutions than the east of Europe such as banks, criminal courts and more efficient bureaucracy. All of this would make western europe much more safe for investment and eventually, the technical innovations for the industrial revolution, giving it the upper hand in economic output and the emergency of modern industry. Much of the industry in eastern Europe would only emerge in the late 19th and middle 20th century. OFC this is a really gross way of summarize centuries of economic and political history, but it's my best explanation I could come up when reading about that in Uni.
@@hostedbysimples5416 I don't think that idea and Tierney's are really mutually exclusive. The point of both is that centralization was easier in the areas that were under Byzantine influence. Now, as you point out, there was something called absolutism that goes from maybe 1450 to the French Revolution. The papacy actually played a part in that. There was a conciliarist movement that existed from about 1350 to 1450, an attempt to reform the Roman Church through councils. It threatened to reduce papal supremacy, and the popes were able to defeat it by getting various monarchs to take their side. So really, the pope became one of the monarchs of Western Europe. But eventually absolutism collapsed. The power of monarchs couldn't be sustained as the role of the urban merchant class grew. Someone pointed out another disadvantage of Russia was that it was conquered by the Mongols in the Middle Ages. This is actually a competing theory for why Russian government has tended to be despotic. There's a book called "Oriental Despotism" on this by a writer named Wittfogel. I think certainly it did damage Russian society. But I don't think it would be adequate to explain Russia's despotism.
@@Deveriell well, of course one problem is they eventually fell under Soviet domination after World War II. One other disadvantage they had is less access to the oceans for world trade.
Just in case you didn't know Lithuania GDP per capita is bigger than Portugal. Maybe it breaks your theory? And I think this is nonsense to compare GDP without population capacity. For example Lithuania for GDP per capita is above Hungary and Poland. But of course by absolute measures it is not. Which on the other hand is not realistic in my opinion. And I would simplify the answer to smth like Bolsheviks never have been good in economics plus neighboring Russia is bad for economy. Nevertheless north Europe countries are better in this field the south of Europe. Even south was less devastated by Bolsheviks.
Finland is geographically east but I assume you’re making this more about modern day so you included them in the West for this. Makes sense but should probably say that. Great video overall but definitely a controversial one. Comments boutta go crazy 😉
@@SnowWhiteArches ok, maybe not Latvia. But to their defense, almost half of their population Is Russian and actively despise democracy and capitalist attitudes
Czechia, Slovenia, Estonia and Lithuania are richer than Greece and Portugal, having higher salaries. Czechia for example overtook even Italy and Spain 2019 in gdp per capita and was almost on the same height as New Zealand and Japan, there were many articles around the world about this.
that's a great vid and really well-balanced opinion, thank you! Only con is to see how you've used stock footage of my hometown in Ukraine to illustrate poorness of Eastern Europe (however I do get why). Nevertheless, thanks for a relly good material
And not rich eaither. Baltic states getting overhyped like Canada being the best country in the world (lol!) Baltic states are meh very meh. 3 of them combined have population of St Petersburg and nowhere near the fun St Peterburg provides.
Your GDP maps are really dumb. You should take GDP per capita. Also do not forget that eastern european countries were exploited by Moscow. Once this ended Czechia Poland Slovakia started to get rich quickly
One big point as someone from CENTRAL Europe. There is not only East and West, there actually is CENTRAL Europe from both political AND geographical point of view consisting of Poland/Czechia/Slovakia/Hungary that have a christian katholic history and use normal Latin characters. We hate being called "Eastern Europe" because that separation of West/East was invented by UN to satisfy Stalin to get him to join UN. Central Europe is NOT culturally and also in economically part of the "Eastern Europe" stereotype by any means.We spent hundreds of years being part of the "Concert of Europe" and cannot be wiped by 40 years of quasi-occupation by USSR's influence. The per-capite GDP and average salary is today in these countries 2,5 times of for example Russia, even more of Balcans, Belorussia and Ukraine because we managed to integrate to the EU's economic wealth. EDIT: And anyone who tries to tell me that nonsense of "but you are all slavs" my argument (which is nonsense linquistic cathegory, not cultural) is just look at Germany, France, UK are all "anglo-saxon" language tree and that didn't stopped these three to be culturally extremelly different.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are in a better economic situation than other former Soviet countries. This map 3:25 doesn't show wealth per person, but the total wealth of the entire country. You can see that "rich countries" (green) are those with large populations (including Russia), "poor countries" (red) are those with small populations (including Luxembourg).
GDP (in USD) per capita: Luxembourg 135,605 Finland 54,507 Sweden 55,216 Russia 13,006 Belarus 7,477 Ukraine 5,225 Estonia 30,998 Latvia 24,929 Lithuania 28,482 Poland 22,393 Czech Republic 30,475 Slovenia 32,350 Spain 33,090 Portugal 26,879 Italy 37,146
Very interesting and well made. I noticed though that Turkey was lacking from most numbers, although it would be an interesting addition as it was generally always part of the "Western" sphere, yet as poor as most other Eastern European nations. The same would partially apply to Greece and Portugal too. Being Western, yet poor.
The simple answer is look at the map and the fact it all was part of the Soviet empire at one point or even going further back. Russia has been bringing cultural and economic devastation everywhere it goes.
They're not. These are free countries and freer than most African countries. Eastern European countries like Poland have no reason to be poor now. @@89itis
@@jasonhaven7170 you’re right, they are free countries and most of them are succeeding, catching up to Western Europe at a rapid pace. Same goes for African-Americans as they are free people in a free country where hard work is rewarded like nowhere else…
The economic disparity goes far further back than the 20th century. During the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century, the populations of Western Europe were decimated far harder than the populations of Eastern Europe. The sudden lack of peasant labor caused Western Europe to slowly abolish its feudal system and start giving the lower classes more economic power, spurring political, social, and scientific development. Conversely, Eastern Europe kept using feudalism well until the late 19th century, and Russia’s hard autocratic system lasted well past the fall of Romanovs, employed by the USSR as a means of keeping central control over its vast territories. Communism was just an excuse for the new ruling class of Russia to retain their newfound power. Long before Stalin came to power, Eastern Europe had been economically falling behind Western Europe for a few centuries already. Europe today isn’t about seeing one century’s worth of economic disparity, it’s seven.
5:18 communist hangover is insane. I am currently 25 Ive been college a little too long at this point, but the years Ive tried to get internship in ever corner I could look up Im not in the capital (hungary) and the mindset is staggering. The second worse staggering turndowns I had I “since I didnt start with dual education (electric engineering) I cannot get an intership job) You classes are the same but you cannot change it. I tried it on my own no responses, I tried with my own connection. This one guys dad ran an automations company they needed extra help with documentations and he decided not to hire me because he didnt want to educate “competition”. The despair I felt at that. At firsts glance it seems unrelated. But what communist hangover produces is extreme selfishness this can be found in any job and field the old ones from that era would never ever never help. The feeling of isolation especially for the more complicated jobs. Bleeding of talent is real in these regions anyone with ambitions leaves fast as possible. I had friend who received no support with minimal ambition make it 10 fold better what I could by now in the west. And one with hyper ambitions pop off. The corruption that communism left cannot be understated.
its more likely that the other Central Europe like nations around Germany (Baltics included) will over time get closer by GDP/Capita and surpass more and more the Southern ones (Eastern ones are already behind) - due to the same mentality/circumstances. The only thing they need to do is actually acting pragmatic and avoid the mistakes of the big and other ones. Estland, Czech, Slovenia surpassed already Portugal, Greece and are close to surpass Spain. The other Baltics, Poland, Slovakia will follow. Without the cold war (anticapitalist/socialists experiments) they were already on par. There is also another aspect. Within the EU/Schengen over time the situation is getting similar to the US - with a high mobility/fluctuation between the different regions/'states' of Europe. This means, wealthy people and middle class might rather move to the safer other central european countries for safety reasons but also due to simple aspects like getting a house cheaper for the money while staying basically within the same cultural sphere. And no, being at an Ocean doesnt matter much anymore. Bohemia was wealthy back then. Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg (all not at a sea/ocean) etc. are not wealthy? Forget this geography argument and focus rather on correct aspects like being in more prosperous 4 season region in one of the wealthy hotspot of the world.
In 2,500 years of scholarship, none have better explained this phenomenon than the Father of History himself: “Custom is king of all.” It is why there is no violent crime in Japan, it is why there is corruption in China, it is why the Middle East produces theologians, but no engineers. People are people, but our societies are guided and defined by the attitudes and beliefs of the individuals who inhabit them. It is not geography. It is not race. It is culture.
nope, countries that have good geography always say its culture. britian and us cant get invaded, have good climate for productivity, access to the sea, huge amounts of natural resources (they dont want to share australia with 2.5 billion asians). japan has corruption but its legalized, and hidden away. China is often corrupted by richer countries, and they may be more transparent in talking about it. Middle east has engineers too, but they sometimes move to the west because their nations have been sabatoged by Western interests like US removing democracy from iran, proxy wars like iran-iraq and terrorism, sanctions, coups, etc...
@@aoeu256 Yep. Only countries with backward cultures blame geography. Many cannot even access their own natural resources without Western assistance. If you truly believe that commonly held ideas, beliefs, and attitudes of different societies make no difference in their success or failure, why bother engaging with or objecting to anything?
Its’s a circle. 150 years ago Ireland was starving and Ottoman Empire sending them food. Now it’s the opposite . Eastern Europe may be like in money welt but thanks to communism they were higher in culture and education. But as they are now getting higher monetary welfare. In about 50 years they’ll pass Western Europe . They do a few things better than Western Europe. First is they do not take too many refugees second they have their own population still in a healthy increase level to feed their elderly and retired.
Eastern Europe 'higher in education and CULTURE'under communism?With all the horrendous atrocities and asian-russian type of barbarism there?🤣🤣🤣You really have a great sense of humour!Congratulations!
People follow the money unfortunately. Any talent that does develop in Eastern Europe's goal is to move to western europe to earn a good living. Eastern europe will develop eventually, it will just be a slow process.
Man, you are not up to speed. We make a good living here and I bet I make more than you. We are not going anywhere, except maybe for skiing in Alps or getting some sun at Tenerife
Becouse of a long history of imperialism. Also the socialist economic model wich didn't incentivised planed economic growth and not chased growth at all cost. Also neoliberal shock therapy and privatization have done their tool. Western companies buying up land and industry to grow their capital. This very diverse region sadly never had autonomy. Some places are doing better then others, but overall the same reasons apply across it.
Yeah, Finland was never an imperialist country, instead we Finns were the subjects of imperialism. The same goes for Ireland. On the other hand Russia was and still is an actual empire (nobody thinks it's an federation), but still they're poor.
@@FINNSTIGAT0R- Russia might be poor in terms of GDP per capita and GDP in general, but Russia is resource-rich, and Russia has ownership and control of vast amounts of varying natural resources that are valuable and needed, and so in other ways the Russian economy is more secure.
@@sunflower9680 I was talking strictly about the people. It's a disgrace that a country so rich in natural resources has a population which is generally quite poor. It shouldn't be that way, but it's the curse of many countries which have the kind of natural wealth Russia has, that somehow the people still see very little of the benefits. It's sometimes been said, that countries with much natural resources make the leaders uncaring of the population, as the country's income is not dependent on the taxpayer, but mostly selling oil/gas/minerals etc. In this Russia is not alone
In your maps you imply that Greece was communist. Greece was never communist we even fought a civil war against the communists that were backed by the Yugoslavs.
The 5 biggest economies in Europe also have the 5 biggest populations clearly the creator of this video does not understand how GDP works. China's per capita is poor but when you have 1.4 billion people you will have a large economy. You need to base your analysis on GDP per capita to see how economies grow over time.
Because Western Europe was always free. Eastern Europe had always problems with invaders. The Balkans Christians had the Turks, which captured them for nearly half a milenia. While Eastern Europe had the Mongols, the Turks again and the Russian afterwards in very recent times. Eastern Europe is very smart and competent, and has been serving as a protection shield for western europe. When are the Western Europeans going to pay their due?
@@jacobmcnamara7234 You are talking about the War of Reconquest from the Muslims in Iberia. Ok that was a very long time ago. Spain is free for at least 700 years. The Balkans are completely free for like 100 Years, and Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union for the last 30 years. When Greece got its independence from the Ottomans, Greece was a BARE ROCK. We had a few villages, and towns, no cities, a few fortresses and ruins. Same goes for the rest of the Balkan civs. The Ottomans threw held back our civilizations for half a milenia. And it wasnt partial conquest as it was with Spain. It was full conquest. You get my point.
What are you carrying? Russia itself was a tributary of the Golden Horde and lost a lot of things during the Yoke, and secondly, do not forget about World War 2, it devastated all of Eastern Europe
I twas always like that and always will be like that, if no special measures are taken. This divide goes back hundreds of years - and no, it's not the west's fault. You see, eastern europe was historically a buffer zone, where the most of wars - or conflicts in general - took place. Mongol invasions, turk invasions et cetera. With exception of WW1 which took most fighting in the west, eastern europe has been a place of strife and bloodshed for centuries. You can't build a prosperous, functioning society overnight on a rubble. Communism had huge impact in restoration of eastern europe since USSR vampired resources and industry here - resources and technology from eastern europe has been exchanged for... weapons. Even USSR considered eastern europe a mere buffer zone, that's why eastern european countries were so heavily militarized up until 1990's. Useful in times of peace, expendable in times of war. Unless new, impenetrable iron curtain is built between russia and europe, and until eastern europe have means of ultimate self defense and diplomacy, our fate is always dependant on those wielding the reins of hegemony. Until then, we are just an expendable buffer zone inhabited by cannon fodder.
Okay then so even though the Eastern Front was super poor and broken due to WWII, why did they progress just as fast as the west even though they had not only a disadvantage but according to you "Socialism" unless of course, your wrong. I also find it funny that these nations economies broke in the late 90s when they adapted Capital and Free Market Trade Ideas, quite Interesting, no?
How appropriate is it to make classifications of regions from the viewpoint of people who can't even tell the difference between Czech Republic and Poland vs. Belarus and Russia? You deserve a negative vote just for the video thumbnail. In between Russia and France there is something called "Central Europe", "Zentraleuropa", "Mitteleuropa", etc. Please get familiar with the term, otherwise you are being offensive.
There exist a Cultural border along Elbe, Danaub, Alps. This follow much of the borders of the Roman Empire and the cultural diversification between Rule of Law and rule of Force have stayed the same for 2000 years, not 78! The idea of Legal Person, rhetoric further development of this , The Litited Responsability of. Limited Companyof shareholders. Equality in law. De ocre y. Female rights. Etc. etc. all comes from west of ELBE.
What communism? I understand dictatorship, but Portugal was never a commie country. One of the deals between Hitler and Salazar was exactly for the latter to keep communism out of Portugal, if I recall correctly.
@@sledgehog1He is trying to blame the Carnation revolution which ended the Salazar regime and brought multi-party democracy which was achieved by Leftist. They never had Commies in power, they only a "Socialist party" Social Democrats that had leftist policies on power, this gets debunked easily as many Nordic countries had Leftist governments.
@@sledgehog1true. But you see, just like how Eastern Europeans are now fully wary of Communism and other left-wing totalitarian ideologies because they had to live under those systems for decades (as well as right-wing totalitarian ideologies that they suffered from when the Germans invaded WWII), while Portugal, Spain and Greece had for much of the 20th Century right-wing authoritarian regimes but they never really had Communism (even though Communists tried to take over Spain in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939 and Greece in the Greek Civil War between 1946 and 1949). That's why Communism and Socialism is low key admired by certain sectors of Portuguese, Spanish and Greek societies while it's for the most part shunned in all of the ex-Communist Europe. Which is why, for example, student associations in Eastern European universities usually have no strong political undertones other than probably nationalism, while in Spanish, Portuguese and Greek universities student associations with strong Communist undertones are the norm, not the exception.
40 years of communism, you've just saved 11 minutes of your life, thank me later. Countries like Russia or Ukraine lived under commies much longer and before they had car which was really not that better for them, so in 1989, they had a massive disadvantage compared to countries like Czech Republic or Poland who already had freedom and democracy before and were able to renew their old bussineses and companies, older people still remembered capitalism in 1989 here and knew how it works, but instead of transforming and upgrading our companies to some natural state how it should be, political mafians stole all former state property, former commies became milionares and it took another 20 years to at least partly get rid of this mafia. For example here in Czech Republic, this mafia is represented mainly by our former prime minister and president Václav Klaus. Also, his propaganda is responsible for that we still don't have euro. But these people are in their 80s now, they will die soon and world will be pink again. Another problem is that western companies act toward us like if we were second grade people, they pay us 1/4 of their salary for the same qualified work in their companies and because of Klaus and such people, we lost our original products with added value, because everything was sold to western companies, but it's slowly changing, we are already too expensive for Germans to move their assembling factories here and our local mayors and governments don't allow all factories to go here, in the past, everything was corrupt, western company gave a bribe to mayor and they could build factory on the best black soil, it's not happening that often now, which is really good, we have our conditions and when they don't want to follow them, they can move to China or something. I work as CNC operator/programmer for almost 10 years and I see how we massively improved our work efficiency in last 10 years. Few years ago, every problem was solved by people doing more hours and doing weekends, but we have no people, especially for well qualified places (no, bring more Romanians and Ukrainians will not solve that) so there is a massive push to improve work efficiency. We were doing nonstop (even weekends and holidays) with 4 people on my work palce, now we can do the same (or even more) work just with standard 8 hours day shift with only 2 people! Just because we got angry and pushed some changed, even when it was something what owner or other bosses were against, but we just forced them to do some changes to improve it, because doing 12+ hours and weekends is not a solution as they were thinking like 10 years ago. Sometimes you just have to say "buy this, or find someone instead of me" and magic starts happening if they really need you, everything is possible now.
@@Pidalin Then don't say it is, use the correct term, *Socialism.* because then people who are not educated properly get the wrong idea, its like taking away Free Markets and literal Dollar bills from Capitalism. Don't call it something that it is not, because then it would be a lie. and if that's not the point, what is your "point" are you saying that Socialism failed in the eastern block? because if so, that would also be another Lie.
For hungarians that is an easy question. We been one of the richest realm in Europe. Then we fought the Ottomans for hundreds of years, lost half of our population, because of that we became an easy prey. We became an austrian colony for hundreds of years, than two world wars. After that soviet occupation. In times of peace, and during some kind of independence we were booming, (1867-1914, 1919-1941,1989 onward).
if you say that Hungary was Ausrian colony than logically you shoud have no imperializm behavior and thoughts. But Orban says OPPOSITE - he DOES says that Hungary should take territories of Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine etc. How it is called - Big Hungary?) so, you should not put yourself in position of poor colony
@@biancogasto then you just dont know) you maybe also dont remember that football scarf of Greater Hungary...))) Orban is imperialist as also some (i dont know how many of them since no polls took place) hungarian people
@@Diminho822 Oh I see, I'm talking to a nazi, who says untermensch hungarians are bad people and you need your final solution. That map on that scarf was historical Hungary, I don't know what Greater Hungary is. Why do you think that knowing our history makes us shovinistic? Oh wait I know, because you are a hungarophob. My house is full with that map, because of history books. Shall I burn them? 🤡
I think you miss several key points. 1) The west Europe was massively helped by the USA after WW2 while the most destroyed parts were the East 2) USSSR trading block was poorer 3) It was less effective if you use the capitalistic metric of course, their economy was not in constant competition so it was more stagnant, even though lot of services were for free. 4) The collapse of USSSR was terrible for the block, because of corrupt privatization directed by the west. 5) The eastern block was also acting often like a colony/puppet to the USSSR - siphoning their wealth and blocking their initiatives.
Eastern European is often not just geography but culture, notably Slavic peoples, and history, which is why people consider countries like Poland, and Czechia to be eastern (even though many don't like to be associated with this term due to its connotations)
You may discuss Poland but Czechia is definitely not an eastern country. And "Slavic" is way overused - the languages and folklore might be related but the overall culture is hugely different: atheist Czechs, catholic Poles and orthodox Russians are pretty far away from each other, closer to Dutch, Italians and Chinese respectively in their citizen-government relations...
Historically Poland and Czechia were always closer to Germany in terms of culture, which unfortunately was caused by German imperialism and it's desire to expand beyond it's borders :( The term Eastern Europe and Western Europe was created only during the Cold War to distinguish capitalist and communist countries. Nevertheless the culture of Poland and Czechia that has developed during hundreds of years, luckily didn't disappear during communism. Saying that those two Western Slavic nations are on pair with Russia or other post communist countries culturally is like saying that Greece and Norway have similar culture only because they weren't behind the iron curtain. It's silly to say the least. Let's remember that those countries didn't choose to be behind the iron curtain. Those countries were mostly destroyed and weak after the WW2 and thus were easily forced to be the USSR's satelite states.
@@julianhaban2812 modern Greece is a medium income country (for Europe standards), and most notably it is an Orthodox country (even being a state religion, something most countries in Western Europe don't have). It's culturally closer to Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania than it is to France or Belgium and it's closer culturally to Russia and even certain parts of the Middle East (Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel) than it is to Scandinavia or the British Isles. As opposed to Slovenia and Croatia which despite being Slavic they are Catholic countries with a great amount of ties to Austria and Italy, so if "Cultural Westerness" was a thing, I'd say Slovenia and Croatia rank the same as Greece (and this is taking into account the fact than Ancient Greece did indeed influence much of the roots of the West, without taking that contribution into account I'd definitely put Slovenia and Croatia above Greece)
This video is a groooooossss oversimplification of very complex economic issues. And it is... quite frankly not even necessarily true. Perhaps if we observe the economic output of the states as lone actors sure....
@@juehju I mean see that you're a profound fan of communism, without having the chance to experience it. But don't comment on things you have absolutely no idea about.
@@dudarsky "I mean see that you're a profound fan of communism" Nope, not a "Fan" at all but I would not mind advocating for it over Capitalism. either way I prefer *Socialism, Not Communism.* "without having the chance to experience it." Unfortunately For Myself "But don't comment on things you have absolutely no idea about." This is not an Argument, try again. If you can't create one then so be it, you lose. However don't reply if so, I'd prefer to not waste my time with an *Ignorant Fool* You say "Communism" made Eastern Europe Poor yet fail to even state 1 reason why that is, in fact, you're already wrong, because *There was not even a single Communist Country in Europe in the 1900's. Your Ignorance and Stubbornness Thrives, sadly.*
One other factor that's worth considering that predates the Iron Curtain is that the line through Germany has a counterpart that runs through Poland - specifically the German-Russian border pre-WW1. The source of that particular one is that the nations we consider Western Europe were early adopters into the Industrial Revolution, while the eastern Great Powers of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey lagged behind. Come to think on it, this might even be a contributing factor to Russia going communist in the first place: Western European nations had reached the point where most of the population was benefiting from industrialisation, while Russia was still at a point where most of the wealth was just going to the aristocracy. (Also, I have heard of studies that suggest that most colonisation efforts were actually a net loss - it's more that the western states could afford it because they were wealthy rather than the other way around.)
Communism is part of the answer but not the entire reason. For example was always the eastern parts of Germany poorer than the western parts. In the same way was Austria hungry poorer than more western countries and the industry was mostly located in today’s Austrian and Czech Republic and hungry was the poorer part. Then they had horrible 20th century with wars, reparations to Soviet and communism which didn’t make things better but don’t put all the blame on communism
A comparison of countries' nominal GDP without taking population size into account is kind of pointless.
Indeed, makes zero sense when comparing how economically successful countries are.
Pretty sure it's GDP per capita
Even when taking into account gdp per capta, Eastern Europe is poorer than Western Europe
@@mv_5878 Whatever this "wealth of a country" means, it is not per capita. If you look at the map 3:25, you can see that "rich countries" (green) are those with large populations (including Russia), "poor countries" (red) are those with small populations (including Luxembourg). The only exception is Ukraine.
GDP (in USD) per capita:
Luxembourg 135,605
Finland 54,507
Sweden 55,216
Russia 13,006
Belarus 7,477
Ukraine 5,225
Estonia 30,998
Latvia 24,929
Lithuania 28,482
Poland 22,393
Czech Republic 30,475
Slovenia 32,350
Spain 33,090
Portugal 26,879
Italy 37,146
Bro really includes Portugal and Spain to „rich” part of Europe but for instance Czechia and Poland are in „poor” XD
He really tried hard for the data to fit his narrative even when it didn’t, taking some countries off the map just so he could show the mystical “Iron Curtain” still exists :// It’s sad as he actually did some research, if he analyzed it with no bias it could’ve been a great video, sadly he really wanted to push the catchy title. I can only say one thing, “Pisał pod tezę”
Spain has more hdi, gdp pp, gdp pcc, gdp per capita, gdp, quality of life, average salary and low salary, exports, 3 best health system in Europe and the country with the highest life expectancy in Europe with Italy and Switzerland, happiness than poland and chezia lmaoo poland and czech republic are poor countries xd
Even the GDP of Madrid (Spain) is higher than the GDP of Poland XD
@@iidk. even that were the case, so what? show the statistics :)
@@iidk. bro, im studying economics and i know all of the statistics very well, but the difference is that Spain and Portugal are in non ending crisis since 2008, without basically any possibilities to change it, mostly because for instance in Spain the same gov and people are in power, the same people that put this country into this situation, and on the other hand you have Poland and Czechia that are in non ending growth since 1989, and a lot of possibilities.
Just a short explanation with the most basic and easy things, it’s not becasuse i’m nationalistic or sth, i’m actually from Belgium
soooo XD
This is oversimplified and stereotypical. Selection of pictures tells a lot about it as almost all of them are taken in early 90-ties.
I recommend the author to go visit Prague, Tallin, Lublana, Krakow or Split and compare it to some Greek, Portuguese or Italian cities.
They are all very small cities, of course they are well kept same as in the west. Compare Bucarest,Sofia,Budapest,Chișinăuand Prague to big cities in Western Europe such as Milan,Paris,Frankfurt or London and you will see a major difference in development.
@@Alexander-rr6yn well, the thesis of the vid seems to be - Eastern Europe has been poor and still remains poor compared to the west 35 years after collapse of the iron curtain. A bunch of pictures from early 90-ies support this thesis. Whereas true picture is much more complex. Most of the former Soviet block countries (specifically new EU member states) have reduced the distance to the Western counterpart by 30-70%, and some of them have already surpassed some of the Western European countries. I encourage you to visit and compare Slovenia to Portugal or Czechia to Greece.
@@Alexander-rr6yn but these “western” cities aren’t well kept. Also what difference in development should I see? The fact that they’re stuck in 90s with digitalisation in Germany and Italy?
@@PK1999 Eastern Europe is still poorer than Western Europe in many respects,yes the difference was reduced in the last 2 decades but to become on par with western countries they need to develop their own industries and not relying on western companies moving factories there for cheap labor. Regarding Portugal and Greece, those countries were already much poorer and dysfunctional than the western average and only a bit richer than some eastern countries.
@@Alexander-rr6yn nobody questions that the Western Europe is generally richer then the countries of the former Soviet block. My point is that the map dividing Europe in two - rich countries in the West and poor countries in the East is no longer relevant as the picture became a bit more complexed over the past 3 decades.
Your thumbnail map is wrong:
1. Czech, Slovakia, Slovenia, Baltic countries are already advanced economies with 25k$+ GDP/Capita.
2. Poland and Hungary are upper-middle income already richer than Turkey/Brazil...
3. Romania and Bulgaria are middle-income and growing fast not poor
🤓
Romania is upper middle income state too check
But you forget about Russia , Ukraine , Belarus and Albania people , who lived in this territory still poor
All the countries you mentioned are grabbing money from the EU and are also enjoying from western delocalization into their countries, they're nowehere near western standards.
yeah tbh, the most simple way you can tell this is that the visegrad group, baltic states and slovenia are the prosperous countries of eastern europe and actually Poland is quite prosperous if you look at the gdp per capita ppp it's higher than Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Croatia and Slovakia so i'd say Poland is of a quite similar prosperity level as other countries mentioned
so why is portugal poorer then estonia, czechia, slovenia and they are close to pass italy too but still east are not catching up , explain it to me
Czechia and Slovenia passing Italy is a bit of an overstatement. They are still behind by a decent margin.
i think they are like 5000 euro in gpd per capita behind and if you look at spain or portugal they are nearly same or better@@Alexander-rr6yn
Italy is fucked as well.
@@Alexander-rr6ynActually in many aspects Italy was already worse than Czechia and Slovenia. Northern Italy is fine, but central Italy has for example same wages and purchasing power as Czechia. There are many Italians recently moving to Prague from central and southern Italian regions, because there is much much higher youth unemployment and salaries are comparable. I just helped my friend to migrate here from Bologna into marketing job, cause she was unable to find job in her studied field for two years in multiple Italian regions for more than 1,5k before tax, staying with her parents being 30yo. Here she has 2k after tax, found a job in 2 weeks and actually has much better healthcare quality and affordability here + Czechia and Slovenia are significantly safer, being in top10 safest countries in the world for long tjme. In 2022 and 2018 there were international high school tests in math, science and reading and Italy ended more than 10 places behind Slovenia and Czechia. And Slovenia is even wealthier. It has the same human development index as Austria, which is crazy. The only thing where Italy scores better is personal wealth per person, cause between 60s and 00s Italians acummulated a lot of wealth. But in recent years i would really be sure that life quality is better in Czechia and even better in Slovenia.
Colonialism doesn't tell the full story...
Scandinavia, Ireland, Finland, Switzerland, Austria didn't benefit from colonialism.
Germany had a colonial empire but after WW2 the benefits of that colonies became null thanks to the devastation of the war.
Italy had a colonial empire but the resources extracted weren't a catalyst for its development. Libya was considered just a "box of sand"(remember that the vast oil deposits weren't used at the time), Ethiopia was Italian for MAX 5 years and while Eritrea and Somalia had contributed in resources and cheap labour that couldn't be the catalyst for develoment of Italy.
The biggest factors for western European development was competition and institutions created by capitalism and liberalism in the prior centuries.
Eastern European countries gained independence too late from the empires that dominated those centuries(Germany, Austria, Turkey and Russia) which tended to be authoritarian and repressive.
Another big factor is population, the only big countries in Eastern Europe are Russia, Poland and Ukraine with the 1st one that always exploited the other Eastern European and isn't rich because of its policies and their focus on an economy based on natural resources. Poland was created, destroyed, recerated and exploited for all its history, with only this 30+ years to build wealth and Ukraine wasn't independent till 1991, filled with corruption, oligarcs and wars(as well as Russia).
And one last criticism is that the last 30 years aren't (obviously) a big enough time to catch up but some trends are really encouraging for eastern Europe. Slovenia has the GDP per capita of Spain, Japan or SK; Estonia,Czechia and Lithuania are at Portugals level while Romania and Poland are always having fantastic growth per year.
As a Pole I will write it down from my perspective that may apply to other countries in the region. Since the medieval era we were lagging behind the Western Europe, because Poland was sparsely populated compared to France, for instance and technologically less developed. The feudal fragmentation of XII and XIII centuries brought a lot of German settlers and new technologies, however the lack of central authority certainly did not help. In the XIV century the threat from the neighbours (especially the Teutonic Order) forced Polish kings and states to modernize quickly. As we entered XV century, we still weren’t as wealthy as Italy or the Netherlands, but technologically we were on the same level and our economy improved. Look at the equipment of the Polish army during battle of Grunwald in 1410 or Orsza in 1515 - they were mostly well equipped heavy knight cavalry (the allies had different formations, as the Poles). When Poland united with Lithuania it got vast underdeveloped lands ruled by boyars that possessed absolute power. Poland during the renaissance was compared to England with its parliament and legislature, however contrary to England it degenerated , not developed during revolutions in XVII century, slowly becoming corrupt oligarchy. These political factors and being dragged into devastating wars even worse than WWII for Poland crushed the economy that only slowly started to recover before the partitions of the Commonwealth (Poland-Lithuania). During the partitions Poles were divided and all the Polish provinces became the peripheries of the partitioning powers. The exception was socially and technologically obsolete Russian Empire that invested a lot in Poland, however compared to the west Poland was extremely poor, especially in Austria-Hungary. After regaining independence 35% of the population was illiterate, there were almost no paved routes, the industry was lacking, the rural economy was particularly in Russian and Austrian parts a testimony from the feudal era, thus taking it all into account the Polish state was poor. The worst came, however during the WWII. We lost 1/6 of the population, 60% of the economy (there was some growth during the Second Polish Republic, nonetheless mediocre) and 1/5 of total size being moved to the west forcefully. During communism there was huge social growth. Rural population moved to cities fastest in the Polish history, Poland became industrialized, illiteracy was eliminated, public schooling effective, electrification conducted, and so on. Unfortunately, it lacked economic vision and civil rights thus ending in crisis that toppled previous oppressive government. After the economic transformation we achieved stunning economic progress, but most of our industry is foreign and only now we are starting to build our own again. The future isn’t that bright, because we suffer from population decline, so we are forced to take migrants that actually come eagerly to Poland, as it’s visible in Polish cities. The people tend to blame communism, but actually it was a period of really rapid economic growth 1945-1955 then stagnating, artificially accelerating in the seventies, then falling into deep crisis.
The formation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the XVI century. It was the unification of Poland and Lithuania for the sake of strengthening their power. The history of the united state is small, but sad: in recent decades, neighbors have actively interfered in its state affairs and structure, although at the beginning of its existence, the association almost seized power in Russia during the Time of Troubles. It was eliminated after the division of the territory between 3 countries.
Slovenia, Estonia are NOT poor countries anymore. Poland, Czechia, Latvia earn more than the international average. In Europe with the exception of a few countries like Russia and Ukraine most countries are above average income countries. They are NOT poor.
The majority of European countries are high income countries. Except Ukraine, Moldova and some Balkans
They're still, by and large, poorer than the rest of Europe. Europe as a whole is pretty rich by world standards, and even in the worst period of the Communist collapse and its aftermath, the Second World was still generally wealthier than most of the Third. But the East-West division is certainly still present.
Russia is an above average income country btw, if you do not know.
They never were, tbh. Not even the darkest red days. The author seems to struggle with a secondary school essay.
Also this is BS. Nominal GDP per capita does not reflect actual living standards. For example, Ireland, being a tax haven for the largest tech corporations does not proportionally reflect their rank in GDP in the quality of life.
Although I agree with most of the reasons you outlined, I disagree that the region is not catching up. You have to consider the "starting point" after all. 50 years of totalitarianism cannot be undone in 30 years, but growth and progress especially in the countries that've joined the EU have been very strong.
My great-grandfather was a logistics officer in the Soviet army after the war. He transported factories and machine tools from Europe to the USSR. Also, they looted luxury items, art and gold for the state. Need to mention that 5 million Axis POWs worked as slaves to rebuild the USSR. Stalin extracted three times more money from Eastern Europe and former Nazi Germany than the entire Marshall plan. This is one of the reasons why Eastern Europe is poor
Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia ARE NOT POOR.
@@89itis Such a cope. Compared to the Western European countries, they're are. Their GDP is pretty tiny
It is very interesting and actually touching to hear from a descendant from the other side.
Here in Czechia (Czechoslovakia) we had been listening to stories of people who witnessed exactly that.
The latest personal (within family) was from eighties, when my uncle was employed as “liquidator” for insurance company (I don’t know the proper term in English - the task was to enumerate damage after damage was reported) … and he got called to train damaged somehow (don’t remember details). The train was destined for USSR and the wagons were filled with cans, reportedly labeled as some cabbage vegetable mix. As he was tasked for examination - all the cans were actually preserved meat inside! Meat itself is not that expensive or high tech or something… just the nature of this deception was revolting. (Of course we officially were selling everything, so changing label meant that there was a train worth of something three times more expensive than accounted. Something witnessed by sheer freak accident and something he was prevented to report).
That said aside from this, I had to rely on some reports. I don’t remember that mich, reportedly actually some factories/machinery as your Great-grandpa witnessed. And what stuck most to my mind was the Uran mined for USSR and nuclear technology - as we were technologically very advanced, it was confiscated/transported to the East in the early fifties.
Eastern Europe is so poor that mother Russia FORCED Germany, UK and Netherlands into the RECESSION and ALL at ONCE. 😂😂😂😂 Enjoy. @@neelektronik
@@neelektronikfollowing your logic you can say that Italy or Spain are poor because there are countries in “western” Europe that are richer than them.
There’s no poor country in Europe except Ukraine and Moldova, which are on African level in many fields and completely far behind these central-eastern ones.
Mean time in reality - Poland, Estonia, Czechia, and Lithuania in GDP per capita PPP is better than Portugal and Greece. Last 2 almost equal to Spain. So few former socialist countries take over capitalist ones in 30 years. This Video collection of missinformations and poor explanation.
Slovenia, Czechia, Lithuania and Estonia should be west from rich/poor line in order to separate rich Western Europe from poor Eastern Europe correctly as these Eastern European countries are richer than Portugal which is in Western Europe.
As soon as I saw Finland included as a country in the western portion of Europe, I could no longer take this video seriously. Finland is East of most of Europe, so to pretend otherwise is absurd especially if your argument is "Eastern Europe is (blank)" because your just ruling out an entire nation just to fit the narrative you’ve already decided on.
or at least north lol
also he forgot to say when "COMMUNISM" was gone in east eu the capitalists rushed in to bankrupt most companies. oh and the US who hates communism while now having it in their homeland did anything it could to try to fuck over the USSR or any "communist" country let alone the middle east
This video is horribly unnuanced, but Finland from cultural and economic perspective is west. Those brave mofos fought off Russians, so communism hasn’t left a mark on them. Go Finland.
finland was under russia still as a protectorate the only reason they later hated russia was for going communist lol
also id say if it was under sweeded still id be a shithole as sweedes didn't care about finns @@89itis
@@BostonElton true, but that's because people keep making exceptions for it for whatever reason.
@@somedesertdude1308
The communists bankrupted most companies. All the capitalists did was come in to buy them out.
LoL, all those clips in your video of eastern Europe look like they were taken from before the year 2000.
ruclips.net/user/shortsWKXfSXmLOYc
Poland GDP 1992: 80.6 billion
France GDP 1992: 1.404 Trillion
In 1992 France's GDP was approx 16x larger than Poland's
Poland GDP 2023: 842 billion
France GDP 2023: 3.049 Trillion
In 2023 France's GDP is approx 3.5x larger than Poland's.
I think eastern europe is catching up with western europe at record speeds. Nice try though with your flawed logic
Only Poland, Czechia and Slovenia are catching up. They're more developed than any other country in the region.
I had a great time in Prague, Bratislava, Kraków, Gdańsk, Belgrade, Riga, and Tirana!
I too had a great time in Tirana ,i ve since returned, my watch is still having a great time there...
@@Georgi_Slavov79 Lmfaooo, i've never heard someone getting mugged randomly since the 90s. What happened
While oooook, this video is also very biased by omission.... Important to note the following.
Phase 1: Post Roman Empire (more so from 1453) to 1918: Eastern Europe was largely a colonial playgrounds of Prussia/Ottoman Empire/Hapsburgs/Russian Empires. Suffering development setbacks until their liberation(s) from mid 19th to early 20th centuries.
Phase 2: 1919-1945: Eastern Europe is generally the centrepiece of interwar instability (dictatorships and civil strife) and later WWII. The holocaust and the slaughter of the eastern front in WWII does unimaginable and irreparable economic damage in both material and human capital knocking it back decades while already behind from phase 1.
Phase 3:1945-1991 (ie, the only section this video seems to be interested in for clearly political reasons.) The video is fair in how Soviet (neo-Russian) Imperialism kept European developments down in both the Warsaw Pact and other 14 Soviet subordinate republics. While the video does seemed biased for omitting the previous two phases for context, it's fair in its assessment of post WWII Eastern bloc suppression. BUT also bearing in mind the USSR had suffered massive economic and infrastructure damage and human loss of life (human capital) from WWII while the USA got to sit an ocean away from both Major theaters with little risk or damages. So the USSR had to both manage its new "colonies" (satellites) in Eastern Europe while taking on massive rebuilding projects while the US could just pump out the Marshall Plan without any need to rebuild and repair.
This video is well made... but I question if it's well done. The fact you leave out European Russia on your definition of "Eastern Europe" (a popular move by RUclipsrs post Feb. 2022) speaks volumes in the currency of bias. Just remember, just because it's popular, doesn't mean it's correct.
See my comment above.
Even before 1453, eastern Europe was devastated by central Asian invasions and suffered greatly even under the Byzantine empire, where slavs were the first source of slavery for them and also for the HRE and the italian states such as Venice.
Moreover, eastern Europe was never well connected like western Europe was, thus it has always been logistically and economically poorer, not to mention that not having access to both the mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean has also always been a great handicap for the region.
There's probably no period in history where eastern Europe has been more rich and powerful/influential than western Europe.
Don't forget Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth which was self sufficient and been advanced in many fields. For example they had Statute, kind of constitution which was far ahead most of Europe.
@@SuperJuvexxxwhich way was Marco Polo going to?
Slovenia in poor countries? And Italy or Portugal as Rich? And what about East Germany ? Was part of east as well
Italy is definitely richer than Slovenia
Italy is poor and a horrible place to live.
@@Alexander-rr6yn OP was probably referring to Southern Italy only.
At 3:15 what are you trying to say? You marked Russia green along with Germany, UK etc. Russia is not a wealthy country, GDP per capita is much lower than Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia or Poland which have now passed countries like Greece or Portugal and are on their way to catch up to Spain and Italy.
Doesn't mean any of these Eastern European countries (Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia or Poland) are richer than Portugal. Plus, these countries are going through demographic collapse and so will never come close to Spain or Italy. Also, do you not realise how massive Italy's economy is? It's over 2 trillion.
@@jasonhaven7170 Nominal GDP per capita: Portugal - $24.5k, Czech Republic - $27k so yes Czech Republic is not only richer than Portugal, it’s exonomy is growing faster. When measured at PPP, most Eastern EU members are wealthier than Portugal. When measured at PPP, eastern EU countries have 70% - 80% the standard of living of Western Europe.
Regarding population collapse: EU avg fertility rate: 1.5 children
Germany: 1.5
Italy: 1.3
Spain: 1.3
Poland: 1.5
Czechia: 1.7
You don’t seem to know what you’re talking about. What population collapse?!?! The whole Europe will collapse together unfortunatelly…
And Luxemburg is a red. If there would be Monaco, Liechtenstein and Iceland on the map, they would also be "very poor" countries :D
Versed took a L with that map.
Literally Poland's fertility rate is 1.38. Stop lying. Eastern Europe will collapse while the UK and France continue growing. @@89itis
Yeah strange map. It’s gdp without taking population into account. Idk what he is trying to say with this
This is no longer true. The Czech Republic and Poland are already overtaking the countries of Southern Europe
Poland is not the front runner of ex socialist countries. Its Czechia, Slovenia long term and recently Estonia and Lithuania. Poland would be considered 5th in wealth and gdp per capita. Its richer than Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria though, quite close to Lithuania and Estonia, but less wealthy than Czechia, Slovenia and Estonia (but Estonia got hit hard last 3 years).
@@Aggoenix With all the respect but it is obvious that those smaller countries will have larger gdp per capita. I like Lithuania but I have been there and their villages look like they are still stuck in the 90s and by just a look of this I wouldn’t say that life there is better than in Poland.
@@Aggoenix Also, Polish economy is well diversified while Czech Republic is very dependent on German vehicle industry
@@Hubabe008 I wouldnt say its that much more diversified. Poland exports to Germany 20%, China 12% and Italy 5%, then all under 4%. Czechia goes 31% Germany, 8,5% Slovakia, 7% Poland and 5% France and Austria. Diversification of economy is measured in economic complexity index which also measures how complex the products/services are and Czechia is 7th in the world while Poland 28th. If you look at Global innovation index Czechia is 27th wordly, Poland 39th. In Human capital (education, know how) Czechia is 22th and Poland 31th. They are absolutely same in Doing Bussiness index. What is interesting they have almost the same USD ammount of export, Czechia exports products worth 90% of Polish exports, but is smaller, the difference is Czechia is more export oriented economy, while Poland is more inner-market oriented, it exports and imports much less of its %gdp. The car industry youve said was much more relevant 20 years ago, Czechia produces 1,2mil cars a year, which is per capita less than more european nations, Slovakia for example produces 1,2mil cars with 50% of the population, so its much more autoindustry reliant. Yes automobile industry was a driving factor in the 90sand 00s, but the country considers different products and services as their key strategy, automobiles are not long funded by the state, the state funds batteries, weapons, software like Czech Avast, chips and lithium batteries (because one of the largest lithium deposits in Europe, even major in the world sit unmined in Czechia). Poland is obviously larger market, but i really wouldnt call Czechia less diversified, actually it might be even more diversified im sure there are exact data for this.
@@Hubabe008 Also if you count how much is worth the sum of all the products services in the country, you get gdp per capita, which is used as main wealth/economical indicator:
Estonia 30,998
Czech Republic 30,475
Lithuania 28,482
Bahrain 28,464
Portugal 26,879
Latvia 24,929
Slovakia 24,471
Greece 23,173
Poland 22,393
As a Serb, this video means nothing to me, if I were born again, I would like to be a Serb, money is important, but not everything in life, I see that some members of the Slavic people are annoyed by it, there is no need, these are all numbers that in things don't mean anything, I have a car and I go to the sea and the mountains every year like a king 😃
I lived in the old Yugoslavia and I can tell you that it was the most beautiful country in the world to live in in every sense, and that such a country will never happen again, today's Norway is nothing to the old Yugoslavia, people lived there with all human senses, they those who lived know what I'm talking about 😃
make this video 5 years later it will be ironic😂
да сча посмотрим что с ес станет без ресурсов россии )) китай займет весь рынок )
ну и индия конечно )
Because communism.
P.s. I am not going to waste my time by replying to everyone. Communism is my first answer because my country suffered from it. Discuss everything also below in the comments. 🤗
Bro is THE Russian bot 💀💀
Saying because of communism means communism was bad?
How is (was) communism bad?
OFFEND YOU, hast du etwas Zeit für mich?
Not only comunism there are many other factors
It was poorer even before communism
The difference between e.g. Moldova and Czechia is larger than between Czechia and Germany, also the difference between e.g. Switzerland and Spain is larger than between Spain and Czechia.
That is to say, yes there is kind of a gradual decrease of wealth as you go from North/West to South/East, but the stark divide in the thumbnail is wrong.
And your introduction sounds as if the Iron Curtain is still there?
Aand finally the countries you make out as Eastern Europe are partially not really Eastern Europe.
Imagine not blaming austrochungarians and ottomans too
based ottomans
Austria actually developed Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and other parts of countries.
Me as Eastern European we hate when some one calls our nations “poor” it really damage reputation even trough now they not that poor but still litle behind west here in Poland,Czechoslovakia,Hungary We had active resistance almost every one hated communist regimes im From Czechia And we tried to overthrow our socialist regime two times 1968 and 1989 what was suscessfull even communist nations like Soviet Union was tooking our products from ČKD or Skoda works from tanks to trains we were in comparision to other communist block states we were pretty rich but every higher post was occupied only by KSČ (Czechoslovak communist party) members if you wanted to be on higher post you must joined the communist party
Glad to see someone delving deeper into reasons for Easter Europe being poorer, such as geography and colonization (though I would say geography plays the major role). I would just get even more into the past. Eastern Europe was also subject to various invasions from the east such as ones done by Mongols and Turks. So while regions such as today's Germany enjoyed large decentralization, first universities, flourishing of art and craftsmanship, Mongols were lurking the Eastern European plain, while Balkans were slowly but surely falling under Ottoman absolute monarchy. I'm not denying there were wars in western Europe as well, but still they were significantly done differently than ones in Eastern Europe. Not to mention that occupiers in Eastern Europe often practiced different religion so subjected peoples had even worse status due to such difference.
And by Magyars, who destroyed Great Moravia with Franks. If Great Moravia wasn't destroyed, it would be a powerfull force in "Eastern Europe", like any other western country.
technology can fix landlocked. image solar powered automatic canal builders, nuclear fusion powered trains, vacuum subways, remote controlled robots allowing central asians to work in america, iran, india, arabia, eastern, northern africa.
This division is losing relevance by the day. While in general terms there is still a difference, already the wealthiest Eastern European countries are wealthier and with higher QoL than the poorest of the West. Not to mention, do yourself a service and look at GDP per capita, preferably at purchasing power parity, for a more decent comparison.
I think there is another factor that goes further back in history. This idea was formulated by historian Brian Tierney. The West had factors that favored freedom which ironically came from its poverty. The rich part of the Roman Empire was really in the East. The Romans kind of abandoned the West because it was poor and barbarous compared to the East. But this had a long-term positive consequence. Because the West was so politically fragmented, the papacy became the most stable authority. But eventually, when the West became more prosperous and developed nation-states like France, Spain, the Netherlands, and England, this created a tension. If someone was unhappy with his king, he could complain to the pope. If someone was unhappy with the pope, he could complain to his king. Sometimes kings would even attack the papacy and try to overthrow the pope. This created some space for more freedom of thought and action in the West. In the Byzantine Empire, which influenced Russia quite a bit, there was more harmony between the Church and the State. So you might notice that in countries like Romania and Greece that are Orthodox, the state often tries to suppress non-Orthodox churches. There is a concept that just by being a citizen of that country, you are a member of its national church. So I think this has made the Orthodox world, and somewhat all countries that came under Russian domination, less dynamic.
Now, as you say in your video, Romania has now become a more dynamic society. They were lucky to get into the EU.
Ok, but how about Eastern European countries which adopted Western Christianity and never formed strong cultural ties with Byzantine Emipire, for instance Poland, Czechia, Hungary?
I don't quite buy that explanation. Being dynamic isn't a recipe for economic development. Going as far back as the middle ages to explain economic disparities today, without explaining the process of change those countries had is not a good model to explain much of anything.
A much more useful theory has to do with the development of cities in western europe, which would gradually erode the power of the nobles in the benefit of merchant elites. This transformation was one of the reasons for the development of absolutism in western territories, as the king would counterbalance the power of the nobles by giving titles to the merchant elites, eventually centralizing all power around his figure, which would make the need to delegate its authority. This would gradually be morphed to resemble the modern states of today, which had much more developed institutions than the east of Europe such as banks, criminal courts and more efficient bureaucracy. All of this would make western europe much more safe for investment and eventually, the technical innovations for the industrial revolution, giving it the upper hand in economic output and the emergency of modern industry. Much of the industry in eastern Europe would only emerge in the late 19th and middle 20th century.
OFC this is a really gross way of summarize centuries of economic and political history, but it's my best explanation I could come up when reading about that in Uni.
@@hostedbysimples5416 I don't think that idea and Tierney's are really mutually exclusive. The point of both is that centralization was easier in the areas that were under Byzantine influence. Now, as you point out, there was something called absolutism that goes from maybe 1450 to the French Revolution. The papacy actually played a part in that. There was a conciliarist movement that existed from about 1350 to 1450, an attempt to reform the Roman Church through councils. It threatened to reduce papal supremacy, and the popes were able to defeat it by getting various monarchs to take their side. So really, the pope became one of the monarchs of Western Europe. But eventually absolutism collapsed. The power of monarchs couldn't be sustained as the role of the urban merchant class grew.
Someone pointed out another disadvantage of Russia was that it was conquered by the Mongols in the Middle Ages. This is actually a competing theory for why Russian government has tended to be despotic. There's a book called "Oriental Despotism" on this by a writer named Wittfogel. I think certainly it did damage Russian society. But I don't think it would be adequate to explain Russia's despotism.
@@Deveriell well, of course one problem is they eventually fell under Soviet domination after World War II. One other disadvantage they had is less access to the oceans for world trade.
During Roman times agriculture was the business. Now it is non business.
The video is correct but the map on the thumbnail is wrong, Czechs are part of western Europe and are quite wealthy.
Why you steal the OG veterans logo. It was a pro standoff 2 team from years ago brotha just completely stole the design for his channel.
Just in case you didn't know Lithuania GDP per capita is bigger than Portugal. Maybe it breaks your theory? And I think this is nonsense to compare GDP without population capacity. For example Lithuania for GDP per capita is above Hungary and Poland. But of course by absolute measures it is not. Which on the other hand is not realistic in my opinion.
And I would simplify the answer to smth like Bolsheviks never have been good in economics plus neighboring Russia is bad for economy. Nevertheless north Europe countries are better in this field the south of Europe. Even south was less devastated by Bolsheviks.
Finland is geographically east but I assume you’re making this more about modern day so you included them in the West for this. Makes sense but should probably say that. Great video overall but definitely a controversial one. Comments boutta go crazy 😉
I was looking for this comment. Baltics, just like Finland, is North Eastern Europe. Baltics also have the highest gdp per capita in "eastern Europe"
@@karkeviciusyeah especially Latvia
It's a widely known fact that Finland ticks the West boxes.
@@SnowWhiteArches ok, maybe not Latvia. But to their defense, almost half of their population Is Russian and actively despise democracy and capitalist attitudes
Czechia, Slovenia, Estonia and Lithuania are richer than Greece and Portugal, having higher salaries. Czechia for example overtook even Italy and Spain 2019 in gdp per capita and was almost on the same height as New Zealand and Japan, there were many articles around the world about this.
that's a great vid and really well-balanced opinion, thank you!
Only con is to see how you've used stock footage of my hometown in Ukraine to illustrate poorness of Eastern Europe (however I do get why). Nevertheless, thanks for a relly good material
Don't worry, brother, if they used footage of my hometown in Bulgaria it would have looked exactly the same... Слава на Украйна! Слава на героите!
With all poverty the answer is if you start poor, you can at best be slightly less poor if you work very hard.
Estonia isnt poor
And not rich eaither. Baltic states getting overhyped like Canada being the best country in the world (lol!) Baltic states are meh very meh. 3 of them combined have population of St Petersburg and nowhere near the fun St Peterburg provides.
@@_Epsilon_ I've been Estonia and latvia
Latvia was run down
Estonia was nice
@@_Epsilon_ These days population numbers are not most important. Don't you think? Otherwise Asia is the best.
@@expert69able He is russian, so he's Asian.
Your GDP maps are really dumb. You should take GDP per capita. Also do not forget that eastern european countries were exploited by Moscow. Once this ended Czechia Poland Slovakia started to get rich quickly
Dont think he ever said otherwise
@@BeyondLuxury But maps were by total GDP, not per capita.
One big point as someone from CENTRAL Europe.
There is not only East and West, there actually is CENTRAL Europe from both political AND geographical point of view consisting of Poland/Czechia/Slovakia/Hungary that have a christian katholic history and use normal Latin characters. We hate being called "Eastern Europe" because that separation of West/East was invented by UN to satisfy Stalin to get him to join UN. Central Europe is NOT culturally and also in economically part of the "Eastern Europe" stereotype by any means.We spent hundreds of years being part of the "Concert of Europe" and cannot be wiped by 40 years of quasi-occupation by USSR's influence. The per-capite GDP and average salary is today in these countries 2,5 times of for example Russia, even more of Balcans, Belorussia and Ukraine because we managed to integrate to the EU's economic wealth.
EDIT: And anyone who tries to tell me that nonsense of "but you are all slavs" my argument (which is nonsense linquistic cathegory, not cultural) is just look at Germany, France, UK are all "anglo-saxon" language tree and that didn't stopped these three to be culturally extremelly different.
I always assumed Estland und Lettland were better off than their former Soviet States.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are in a better economic situation than other former Soviet countries. This map 3:25 doesn't show wealth per person, but the total wealth of the entire country. You can see that "rich countries" (green) are those with large populations (including Russia), "poor countries" (red) are those with small populations (including Luxembourg).
GDP (in USD) per capita:
Luxembourg 135,605
Finland 54,507
Sweden 55,216
Russia 13,006
Belarus 7,477
Ukraine 5,225
Estonia 30,998
Latvia 24,929
Lithuania 28,482
Poland 22,393
Czech Republic 30,475
Slovenia 32,350
Spain 33,090
Portugal 26,879
Italy 37,146
Why Greece is not western and Finland is?
Were those countries not also poorer places prior to communism?
There is more to wealth than government action / inaction....
Very interesting and well made. I noticed though that Turkey was lacking from most numbers, although it would be an interesting addition as it was generally always part of the "Western" sphere, yet as poor as most other Eastern European nations. The same would partially apply to Greece and Portugal too. Being Western, yet poor.
The simple answer is look at the map and the fact it all was part of the Soviet empire at one point or even going further back. Russia has been bringing cultural and economic devastation everywhere it goes.
They're all free countries, they can do what they want.
I bet you'd be the type to tell Africans to get over colonisation and African-Americans to get over slavery.
@@jasonhaven7170 your comments are are contradictory. Pick your narrative…
They're not. These are free countries and freer than most African countries. Eastern European countries like Poland have no reason to be poor now. @@89itis
@@jasonhaven7170 you’re right, they are free countries and most of them are succeeding, catching up to Western Europe at a rapid pace. Same goes for African-Americans as they are free people in a free country where hard work is rewarded like nowhere else…
The economic disparity goes far further back than the 20th century. During the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century, the populations of Western Europe were decimated far harder than the populations of Eastern Europe. The sudden lack of peasant labor caused Western Europe to slowly abolish its feudal system and start giving the lower classes more economic power, spurring political, social, and scientific development. Conversely, Eastern Europe kept using feudalism well until the late 19th century, and Russia’s hard autocratic system lasted well past the fall of Romanovs, employed by the USSR as a means of keeping central control over its vast territories. Communism was just an excuse for the new ruling class of Russia to retain their newfound power. Long before Stalin came to power, Eastern Europe had been economically falling behind Western Europe for a few centuries already. Europe today isn’t about seeing one century’s worth of economic disparity, it’s seven.
The only disparity is between the French Revolution at the end of 18th century and the Bolshevik Revolution after the WWI
Poland is in CENTRAL Europe, not eastern, and is now on the level od Portugal and Greece, only half that indebted.
5:18 communist hangover is insane. I am currently 25 Ive been college a little too long at this point, but the years Ive tried to get internship in ever corner I could look up Im not in the capital (hungary) and the mindset is staggering.
The second worse staggering turndowns I had I “since I didnt start with dual education (electric engineering) I cannot get an intership job)
You classes are the same but you cannot change it.
I tried it on my own no responses, I tried with my own connection.
This one guys dad ran an automations company they needed extra help with documentations and he decided not to hire me because he didnt want to educate “competition”.
The despair I felt at that. At firsts glance it seems unrelated.
But what communist hangover produces is extreme selfishness this can be found in any job and field the old ones from that era would never ever never help.
The feeling of isolation especially for the more complicated jobs.
Bleeding of talent is real in these regions anyone with ambitions leaves fast as possible.
I had friend who received no support with minimal ambition make it 10 fold better what I could by now in the west.
And one with hyper ambitions pop off.
The corruption that communism left cannot be understated.
The Western European countries are more corrupt.
its more likely that the other Central Europe like nations around Germany (Baltics included) will over time get closer by GDP/Capita and surpass more and more the Southern ones (Eastern ones are already behind) - due to the same mentality/circumstances. The only thing they need to do is actually acting pragmatic and avoid the mistakes of the big and other ones. Estland, Czech, Slovenia surpassed already Portugal, Greece and are close to surpass Spain. The other Baltics, Poland, Slovakia will follow. Without the cold war (anticapitalist/socialists experiments) they were already on par. There is also another aspect. Within the EU/Schengen over time the situation is getting similar to the US - with a high mobility/fluctuation between the different regions/'states' of Europe. This means, wealthy people and middle class might rather move to the safer other central european countries for safety reasons but also due to simple aspects like getting a house cheaper for the money while staying basically within the same cultural sphere. And no, being at an Ocean doesnt matter much anymore. Bohemia was wealthy back then. Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg (all not at a sea/ocean) etc. are not wealthy? Forget this geography argument and focus rather on correct aspects like being in more prosperous 4 season region in one of the wealthy hotspot of the world.
Eastern Europe is beautiful, and most of the countries there are not as poor as you think.
Incredible channel
MR UZBEK
Dude, you know nothing about the economy.
What about Portugal lol
Germany didn't really participate in colonization. It is still rich tho
Finland is Eastern Europe
In 2,500 years of scholarship, none have better explained this phenomenon than the Father of History himself: “Custom is king of all.”
It is why there is no violent crime in Japan, it is why there is corruption in China, it is why the Middle East produces theologians, but no engineers. People are people, but our societies are guided and defined by the attitudes and beliefs of the individuals who inhabit them. It is not geography. It is not race. It is culture.
nope, countries that have good geography always say its culture. britian and us cant get invaded, have good climate for productivity, access to the sea, huge amounts of natural resources (they dont want to share australia with 2.5 billion asians). japan has corruption but its legalized, and hidden away. China is often corrupted by richer countries, and they may be more transparent in talking about it. Middle east has engineers too, but they sometimes move to the west because their nations have been sabatoged by Western interests like US removing democracy from iran, proxy wars like iran-iraq and terrorism, sanctions, coups, etc...
@@aoeu256 Yep. Only countries with backward cultures blame geography. Many cannot even access their own natural resources without Western assistance.
If you truly believe that commonly held ideas, beliefs, and attitudes of different societies make no difference in their success or failure, why bother engaging with or objecting to anything?
Its’s a circle. 150 years ago Ireland was starving and Ottoman Empire sending them food. Now it’s the opposite . Eastern Europe may be like in money welt but thanks to communism they were higher in culture and education. But as they are now getting higher monetary welfare. In about 50 years they’ll pass Western Europe . They do a few things better than Western Europe. First is they do not take too many refugees second they have their own population still in a healthy increase level to feed their elderly and retired.
Eastern Europe 'higher in education and CULTURE'under communism?With all the horrendous atrocities and asian-russian type of barbarism there?🤣🤣🤣You really have a great sense of humour!Congratulations!
People follow the money unfortunately. Any talent that does develop in Eastern Europe's goal is to move to western europe to earn a good living. Eastern europe will develop eventually, it will just be a slow process.
Man, you are not up to speed. We make a good living here and I bet I make more than you. We are not going anywhere, except maybe for skiing in Alps or getting some sun at Tenerife
eastern europe is landlocked compared to west, like how do you make factories if you cant import export stuff?
So, they have a lot of years ahead of them to develop, but they are developing.
Portugal being a Eastern European country in sea of Western Europe.
This quality of this was far from "Versed"... 🤦
Becouse of a long history of imperialism.
Also the socialist economic model wich didn't incentivised planed economic growth and not chased growth at all cost.
Also neoliberal shock therapy and privatization have done their tool.
Western companies buying up land and industry to grow their capital.
This very diverse region sadly never had autonomy. Some places are doing better then others, but overall the same reasons apply across it.
Yeah, Finland was never an imperialist country, instead we Finns were the subjects of imperialism. The same goes for Ireland.
On the other hand Russia was and still is an actual empire (nobody thinks it's an federation), but still they're poor.
@@FINNSTIGAT0R-
Russia might be poor in terms of GDP per capita and GDP in general, but Russia is resource-rich, and Russia has ownership and control of vast amounts of varying natural resources that are valuable and needed, and so in other ways the Russian economy is more secure.
@@sunflower9680
I was talking strictly about the people.
It's a disgrace that a country so rich in natural resources has a population which is generally quite poor. It shouldn't be that way, but it's the curse of many countries which have the kind of natural wealth Russia has, that somehow the people still see very little of the benefits.
It's sometimes been said, that countries with much natural resources make the leaders uncaring of the population, as the country's income is not dependent on the taxpayer, but mostly selling oil/gas/minerals etc. In this Russia is not alone
@@FINNSTIGAT0Rbecause the others now having the natural resources exploited by the foreigners are very rich
In your maps you imply that Greece was communist. Greece was never communist we even fought a civil war against the communists that were backed by the Yugoslavs.
Most Greeks were for socialism, but Britain and the United States were against it.
so that´s why slovak is richer on average than german .
The 5 biggest economies in Europe also have the 5 biggest populations clearly the creator of this video does not understand how GDP works. China's per capita is poor but when you have 1.4 billion people you will have a large economy. You need to base your analysis on GDP per capita to see how economies grow over time.
Because Western Europe was always free. Eastern Europe had always problems with invaders. The Balkans Christians had the Turks, which captured them for nearly half a milenia. While Eastern Europe had the Mongols, the Turks again and the Russian afterwards in very recent times.
Eastern Europe is very smart and competent, and has been serving as a protection shield for western europe. When are the Western Europeans going to pay their due?
Well that’s a lie. Spain was literally conquered for almost a Millenia and Western European countries have conquered each other.
@@jacobmcnamara7234 You are talking about the War of Reconquest from the Muslims in Iberia. Ok that was a very long time ago. Spain is free for at least 700 years. The Balkans are completely free for like 100 Years, and Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union for the last 30 years.
When Greece got its independence from the Ottomans, Greece was a BARE ROCK. We had a few villages, and towns, no cities, a few fortresses and ruins. Same goes for the rest of the Balkan civs. The Ottomans threw held back our civilizations for half a milenia.
And it wasnt partial conquest as it was with Spain. It was full conquest.
You get my point.
What are you carrying? Russia itself was a tributary of the Golden Horde and lost a lot of things during the Yoke, and secondly, do not forget about World War 2, it devastated all of Eastern Europe
@@konstantinfromkrasnoyarsk5941 same as the Spaniard above... russia was free for over 700 years. The Balkans and eastern europe no.
@@georgebethanis3188 Western Europe was always richer then Eastern Europe, even before communism.
I twas always like that and always will be like that, if no special measures are taken.
This divide goes back hundreds of years - and no, it's not the west's fault.
You see, eastern europe was historically a buffer zone, where the most of wars - or conflicts in general - took place. Mongol invasions, turk invasions et cetera. With exception of WW1 which took most fighting in the west, eastern europe has been a place of strife and bloodshed for centuries.
You can't build a prosperous, functioning society overnight on a rubble. Communism had huge impact in restoration of eastern europe since USSR vampired resources and industry here - resources and technology from eastern europe has been exchanged for... weapons. Even USSR considered eastern europe a mere buffer zone, that's why eastern european countries were so heavily militarized up until 1990's. Useful in times of peace, expendable in times of war.
Unless new, impenetrable iron curtain is built between russia and europe, and until eastern europe have means of ultimate self defense and diplomacy, our fate is always dependant on those wielding the reins of hegemony. Until then, we are just an expendable buffer zone inhabited by cannon fodder.
And Portugal is poor just surrounded by rich countries
One reason for this difference ......Socialism.
Okay then so even though the Eastern Front was super poor and broken due to WWII, why did they progress just as fast as the west even though they had not only a disadvantage but according to you "Socialism" unless of course, your wrong. I also find it funny that these nations economies broke in the late 90s when they adapted Capital and Free Market Trade Ideas, quite Interesting, no?
Türkiye is not Europe, but country in Asia Middle-East around 5% is in Europe rest in Asia😂
How appropriate is it to make classifications of regions from the viewpoint of people who can't even tell the difference between Czech Republic and Poland vs. Belarus and Russia? You deserve a negative vote just for the video thumbnail. In between Russia and France there is something called "Central Europe", "Zentraleuropa", "Mitteleuropa", etc. Please get familiar with the term, otherwise you are being offensive.
Because of Colonial past
Turkey is Europe???
There exist a Cultural border along Elbe, Danaub, Alps. This follow much of the borders of the Roman Empire and the cultural diversification between Rule of Law and rule of Force have stayed the same for 2000 years, not 78! The idea of Legal Person, rhetoric further development of this , The Litited Responsability of. Limited Companyof shareholders. Equality in law. De ocre y. Female rights. Etc. etc. all comes from west of ELBE.
E. Europe was devastated and depopulated by WW2. And not an industrial powerhose (with the exception of Cechs and Russians) before that.
I love it when the algorithm nails its suggestions. This is quality content.
No, it's not a quality content. More like badly researched, lazy, and fake content. But i guess that's enough for you.
Portugal is also poor like ex soviet/Warsaw pact countries, because of our bad politcs and communism
What communism? I understand dictatorship, but Portugal was never a commie country. One of the deals between Hitler and Salazar was exactly for the latter to keep communism out of Portugal, if I recall correctly.
@@sledgehog1He is trying to blame the Carnation revolution which ended the Salazar regime and brought multi-party democracy which was achieved by Leftist. They never had Commies in power, they only a "Socialist party" Social Democrats that had leftist policies on power, this gets debunked easily as many Nordic countries had Leftist governments.
@@sledgehog1true. But you see, just like how Eastern Europeans are now fully wary of Communism and other left-wing totalitarian ideologies because they had to live under those systems for decades (as well as right-wing totalitarian ideologies that they suffered from when the Germans invaded WWII), while Portugal, Spain and Greece had for much of the 20th Century right-wing authoritarian regimes but they never really had Communism (even though Communists tried to take over Spain in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939 and Greece in the Greek Civil War between 1946 and 1949). That's why Communism and Socialism is low key admired by certain sectors of Portuguese, Spanish and Greek societies while it's for the most part shunned in all of the ex-Communist Europe. Which is why, for example, student associations in Eastern European universities usually have no strong political undertones other than probably nationalism, while in Spanish, Portuguese and Greek universities student associations with strong Communist undertones are the norm, not the exception.
Poland and the Czech Republic are not eastern europe.
Simple answer. East had communism. Privatization. And never been colonizing other nations.
East colonized wdym
Russia colonized Alaska
Courland (modern Latvia) colonized some small islands
40 years of communism, you've just saved 11 minutes of your life, thank me later.
Countries like Russia or Ukraine lived under commies much longer and before they had car which was really not that better for them, so in 1989, they had a massive disadvantage compared to countries like Czech Republic or Poland who already had freedom and democracy before and were able to renew their old bussineses and companies, older people still remembered capitalism in 1989 here and knew how it works, but instead of transforming and upgrading our companies to some natural state how it should be, political mafians stole all former state property, former commies became milionares and it took another 20 years to at least partly get rid of this mafia. For example here in Czech Republic, this mafia is represented mainly by our former prime minister and president Václav Klaus. Also, his propaganda is responsible for that we still don't have euro. But these people are in their 80s now, they will die soon and world will be pink again.
Another problem is that western companies act toward us like if we were second grade people, they pay us 1/4 of their salary for the same qualified work in their companies and because of Klaus and such people, we lost our original products with added value, because everything was sold to western companies, but it's slowly changing, we are already too expensive for Germans to move their assembling factories here and our local mayors and governments don't allow all factories to go here, in the past, everything was corrupt, western company gave a bribe to mayor and they could build factory on the best black soil, it's not happening that often now, which is really good, we have our conditions and when they don't want to follow them, they can move to China or something. I work as CNC operator/programmer for almost 10 years and I see how we massively improved our work efficiency in last 10 years. Few years ago, every problem was solved by people doing more hours and doing weekends, but we have no people, especially for well qualified places (no, bring more Romanians and Ukrainians will not solve that) so there is a massive push to improve work efficiency. We were doing nonstop (even weekends and holidays) with 4 people on my work palce, now we can do the same (or even more) work just with standard 8 hours day shift with only 2 people! Just because we got angry and pushed some changed, even when it was something what owner or other bosses were against, but we just forced them to do some changes to improve it, because doing 12+ hours and weekends is not a solution as they were thinking like 10 years ago.
Sometimes you just have to say "buy this, or find someone instead of me" and magic starts happening if they really need you, everything is possible now.
ouch your already wrong, good try though. of course though if your so confident, name 5 Nations that were Communist in Europe; through 1910-2010
@@juehju Oh Jesus, please don't start again with that "it was not real communism." That's not the point, we all know it was not actual communism.
@@Pidalin Then don't say it is, use the correct term, *Socialism.* because then people who are not educated properly get the wrong idea, its like taking away Free Markets and literal Dollar bills from Capitalism. Don't call it something that it is not, because then it would be a lie. and if that's not the point, what is your "point" are you saying that Socialism failed in the eastern block? because if so, that would also be another Lie.
World most Welty county AR Norway.. so not true in you video
When i think of europe the first city i think if is Moscow 💀
Greece and Portugal are almost equal. So Greece is poor and portugal is rich. Nice
We muss unite Europe
Because they don't use a? visa or Mastercard
TLDR: Communism
TLDR: *You're Factually Wrong*
For hungarians that is an easy question. We been one of the richest realm in Europe. Then we fought the Ottomans for hundreds of years, lost half of our population, because of that we became an easy prey. We became an austrian colony for hundreds of years, than two world wars. After that soviet occupation. In times of peace, and during some kind of independence we were booming, (1867-1914, 1919-1941,1989 onward).
if you say that Hungary was Ausrian colony than logically you shoud have no imperializm behavior and thoughts. But Orban says OPPOSITE - he DOES says that Hungary should take territories of Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine etc. How it is called - Big Hungary?) so, you should not put yourself in position of poor colony
@@Diminho822 He never said anything like that. Nor any leading politican, leftist, liberal or conservative. And Hungary never had colonies.
@@biancogasto then you just dont know) you maybe also dont remember that football scarf of Greater Hungary...))) Orban is imperialist as also some (i dont know how many of them since no polls took place) hungarian people
@@Diminho822
Oh I see, I'm talking to a nazi, who says untermensch hungarians are bad people and you need your final solution.
That map on that scarf was historical Hungary, I don't know what Greater Hungary is.
Why do you think that knowing our history makes us shovinistic?
Oh wait I know, because you are a hungarophob.
My house is full with that map, because of history books. Shall I burn them? 🤡
Slovenia is above many countries in the west.
I think you miss several key points.
1) The west Europe was massively helped by the USA after WW2 while the most destroyed parts were the East
2) USSSR trading block was poorer
3) It was less effective if you use the capitalistic metric of course, their economy was not in constant competition so it was more stagnant, even though lot of services were for free.
4) The collapse of USSSR was terrible for the block, because of corrupt privatization directed by the west.
5) The eastern block was also acting often like a colony/puppet to the USSSR - siphoning their wealth and blocking their initiatives.
It's not that hard bro. The reason is communism.
*Wrong,* Go ahead and name 3 "Communist" Nations during the time of Europe.
Eastern European is often not just geography but culture, notably Slavic peoples, and history, which is why people consider countries like Poland, and Czechia to be eastern (even though many don't like to be associated with this term due to its connotations)
Well tough nuts. They're Eastern European and always will be.
You may discuss Poland but Czechia is definitely not an eastern country. And "Slavic" is way overused - the languages and folklore might be related but the overall culture is hugely different: atheist Czechs, catholic Poles and orthodox Russians are pretty far away from each other, closer to Dutch, Italians and Chinese respectively in their citizen-government relations...
Historically Poland and Czechia were always closer to Germany in terms of culture, which unfortunately was caused by German imperialism and it's desire to expand beyond it's borders :( The term Eastern Europe and Western Europe was created only during the Cold War to distinguish capitalist and communist countries. Nevertheless the culture of Poland and Czechia that has developed during hundreds of years, luckily didn't disappear during communism. Saying that those two Western Slavic nations are on pair with Russia or other post communist countries culturally is like saying that Greece and Norway have similar culture only because they weren't behind the iron curtain. It's silly to say the least. Let's remember that those countries didn't choose to be behind the iron curtain. Those countries were mostly destroyed and weak after the WW2 and thus were easily forced to be the USSR's satelite states.
Sorry mate, they're all Eastern European. @@jacekpliszka5326
Well, it's the reality. You're Eastern European.@@SebJann
Communism and protectionism.
I know Greene is east, but cultural it’s more western.
What does western culture mean?
I would actually argue that Greece is also culturally Eastern, and in fact slightly more "Eastern" than Slovenia or Croatia.
@@ivanmacgar6447 sorry Croatia und Slovenia are more eastern that Greece, Greece is the ancient start of the western democratic world.
@@julianhaban2812 modern Greece is a medium income country (for Europe standards), and most notably it is an Orthodox country (even being a state religion, something most countries in Western Europe don't have).
It's culturally closer to Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania than it is to France or Belgium and it's closer culturally to Russia and even certain parts of the Middle East (Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel) than it is to Scandinavia or the British Isles. As opposed to Slovenia and Croatia which despite being Slavic they are Catholic countries with a great amount of ties to Austria and Italy, so if "Cultural Westerness" was a thing, I'd say Slovenia and Croatia rank the same as Greece (and this is taking into account the fact than Ancient Greece did indeed influence much of the roots of the West, without taking that contribution into account I'd definitely put Slovenia and Croatia above Greece)
This video is a groooooossss oversimplification of very complex economic issues. And it is... quite frankly not even necessarily true.
Perhaps if we observe the economic output of the states as lone actors sure....
do not balame flat terrain ... for invading not every country invade flat terrains... look at all aurope how flat it is... lol 😂
Your opening point by a giant skew ignored Prague and Vienna right, because then your opening would look quite silly.
Stopped the video immediately just to comment.
Communism. That's why.
Thats *Inncorect* my Friend, try again.
@@juehju I mean see that you're a profound fan of communism, without having the chance to experience it. But don't comment on things you have absolutely no idea about.
@@dudarsky "I mean see that you're a profound fan of communism"
Nope, not a "Fan" at all but I would not mind advocating for it over Capitalism. either way I prefer *Socialism, Not Communism.*
"without having the chance to experience it."
Unfortunately For Myself
"But don't comment on things you have absolutely no idea about."
This is not an Argument, try again. If you can't create one then so be it, you lose. However don't reply if so, I'd prefer to not waste my time with an *Ignorant Fool*
You say "Communism" made Eastern Europe Poor yet fail to even state 1 reason why that is, in fact, you're already wrong, because *There was not even a single Communist Country in Europe in the 1900's. Your Ignorance and Stubbornness Thrives, sadly.*
@@dudarsky Not communism, although that was a small cause too, but colonialism. That's the main cause.
@@RaduRadonys communism is in practice a dictatorship, meaning that obviously it's colonialism.
One other factor that's worth considering that predates the Iron Curtain is that the line through Germany has a counterpart that runs through Poland - specifically the German-Russian border pre-WW1. The source of that particular one is that the nations we consider Western Europe were early adopters into the Industrial Revolution, while the eastern Great Powers of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey lagged behind. Come to think on it, this might even be a contributing factor to Russia going communist in the first place: Western European nations had reached the point where most of the population was benefiting from industrialisation, while Russia was still at a point where most of the wealth was just going to the aristocracy.
(Also, I have heard of studies that suggest that most colonisation efforts were actually a net loss - it's more that the western states could afford it because they were wealthy rather than the other way around.)
To look at this without taking the population into account is nonsense - can be seen as switzerland is not put into the top bracket
Communism is part of the answer but not the entire reason. For example was always the eastern parts of Germany poorer than the western parts. In the same way was Austria hungry poorer than more western countries and the industry was mostly located in today’s Austrian and Czech Republic and hungry was the poorer part. Then they had horrible 20th century with wars, reparations to Soviet and communism which didn’t make things better but don’t put all the blame on communism
landlocked and western sabotage also play roles.
Just you think like that.
Communism. Obviously.
*That's Incorrect,* It was mainly WWII and the Capitalist Ideology.