60% + of Eastern Europeans Say they were Better Off Under Communism

This article from Aeon shatters the simplistic narrative about the Good Guys winning the Cold War. The authors get many things right. But they don't tell what was good about communism. They miss the key point: Democracy. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Eastern European governments were vassals of the Soviet Union, unable to respond to the wishes of the local people. But in present day Eastern Europe, democracy is constrained by the European Union, which manages national economies in the interest of the European Central Bank.

Particularly in the US, labour supporters and social liberals who desire an expanded role for the state hope to save the democratic socialist baby from the authoritarian bathwater. Fiscal conservatives and nationalists deploy memories of purges and famines to discredit even the most modest arguments in favour of redistributive politics.