this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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they were also built in the context of a country recovering from a civil war and then a world war
Yeah I was kind of lumping that all into the economic conditions umbrella. The stuff messing with the USSR was a laundry list of totally insane threats. Since its founding it was ostracized by the world. Had the revolution. Then it got invaded by the Nazis. Then it had to rebuild half of europe. Try to get a huge population of reactionaries who had just invaded it under control. Half the countries on its borders (Iran, China, India/Pakistan) were in states of upheaval too. The fact they did so much is a complete miracle of state planning.
This is widely repeated and only partially true. Prior to WW2, the Eastern Block was mostly preindustrial, meaning 90%ish of people lived rural peasant lives in rural areas and rural housing. They literally had to build housing in cities for half of the population of the eastern block, and they successfully did it in record time.