Grab Atlas VPN for just $1.83/mo + 3 months extra before the BIG DEAL deal expires: get.atlasvpn.com/Hakim Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/ComradeHakim Twitter: @YaBoiHakim The illegal and anti-democratic dissolution of Socialism in Eastern Europe was the single greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the past century. My editor was rushed due to a variety of factors when making this video, please ignore the few spelling mistakes in the title headers. *Sources:* www.reuters.com/article/us-serbia-population-idUSKCN1B315O dorf-alwine.business.site Depopulated and Abandoned Areas in Serbia in the 21st Century-From a Local to a National Problem www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-07-21/eastern-europe-population-decline-rural-bulgaria www.euronews.com/green/2023/01/18/living-in-a-ghost-town-meet-the-moldovans-who-refuse-to-be-climate-migrants THE DEMOGRAPHIC IMPACT OF SUDDEN IMPOVERISHMENT: EASTERN EUROPE DURING THE 1989-94 TRANSITION web.natur.cuni.cz/ksgrrsek/acta/1999/AUC_1999_34_Rychtarikova_Is_Eastern_Europe.pdf www.oecd.org/els/emp/4383228.pdf www.worldbank.org/en/region/eca/publication/youth-unemployment-in-south-east-europe-10-key-messages ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/documents/publication/wcms_142377.pdf www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/icemss-13/8673 www.ppesydney.net/content/uploads/2020/04/Marxs-reserve-army-still-relevant-100-years-on.pdf data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?end=2021&locations=LV&start=1960 www.foreigner.bg/eastern-europe-experiencing-deep-demographic-crisis/ intellinews.com/population-decline-to-take-emerging-europe-back-to-the-early-20th-century-253068/ worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-declining-population www.deturope.eu/pdfs/det/2022/01/09.pdf hypeandhyper.com/brain-drain-in-central-and-eastern-europe/ www.tcd.ie/Economics/assets/pdf/SER/2021/eastern-eu-niamh-howley.pdf www.ft.com/content/c5d3e0ae-36eb-11ea-ac3c-f68c10993b04 eeca.unfpa.org/en/news/what-do-about-eastern-europes-population-crisis www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/future-of-aging-populations-and-economic-growth-in-eastern-europe-petrakis www.oecd.org/els/public-pensions/PAG2021-country-profile-Hungary.pdf www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-pension-idUSKCN1C60Z6 www.reuters.com/article/us-croatia-pensions-idUSKBN1W4123 www.helvetas.org/en/eastern-europe/about-us/follow-us/helvetas-mosaic/article/March2021/demographic-decline-southeast-europe www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/future-of-aging-populations-and-economic-growth-in-eastern-europe-petrakis\ www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1994-806-30-Johnson.pdf www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05775132.2015.1012402?journalCode=mcha20
As a Romanian it is depressing to see my nation lose more and more people. Romania's population has dropped from 23million to under 19 million. If you go and travel through the countryside you will see old people or abandoned buildings. The village that my grandparents live in has nearly no young people in it, as there are no jobs from which young people to be able to make a living from. Nearly all villages through the nation are like this. Despite all of these villages having great sceanery, plenty of cheap land and decent infrastructures, there are no jobs so only retired people live there.
Don't fear what you don't understand. Yes, many towns in romania are experiencing this. This is NORMAL, and what we want. Every other nation that joined the eu earlier than us did the same exact thing. You go to other countries that pay higher wages, but your life is back home, and you return in a few years with money and a career. Around 80% of all romanians that leave the country return before 4 years. 96% of romanians that have left have said they plan on returning. This is how the eu is made to function.
@@tortellinifettuccine Some of my tovarishchi in Romania don't get to see their fathers often cause they're abroad, working. Does that seem like a good system? Does having to go abroad to get enough money for your family to prosper seem like a positive thing for the populace? The "per capita" wages in Romania (which are not a good measurement anyway) have been lower than commie wages until the 2010s, and even then, they fluctuated. Also, I can't find any sources to back up your claims, mind sending the names of the publications?
As a Bulgarian, I can say that this is an obvious issue here. Not only is our population falling rapidly, what is left is getting concentrated in the cities, with much of the countryside being a handful of older people, with their kids/grandkids either in the cities, or out of the country completely. I can't lie, I'm very worried
That is not an eastern issue. Or rather this is an issue you start seeing in the east first due to a lack of funding. Almost all wealth creation today is happening in cities. Sure we need farms, but if you look at how many people one farmer can feed today, rural areas should be so thinly populated. Keeping the same standard of living in a rural area as in a city is much more expensive. Longer electric cables, larger distances for you internet connection, more roads, longer commutes and so on. Big cities are more expensive because the people already there resist the population densities and construction required to make them efficient and thus cheap, it is not an inherent feature of cities. Thriving rural areas are a luxury, not an investment. You need money to make them possible. Many people feel like you, so rich western countries spend the money. But it is only delaying the inevitable. The most remote rural areas in western Germany, just to give you an example, have started emptying out.
@@oneukum but especially germany shows that it is possible to balance things out a bit. Especially in the two wealthy south states, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, where there are hundreds of small companies in the rural areas, manufacturing some state of the art products, paying high wages for the workers, who are living nearby and spending the main part of their money in theese rural areas. And since working from home became big, even more people are moving to the villages again, because living there is just cheaper than in big cities and brings much more quality of life.
This also happens in some Western European regions. In Spain we have an area that is known as "España vaciada" (Emptied Spain), which is a mostly rural area that has lost most of their population, as they migrated both to the main cities and to other countries like France, Germany or the UK. This process began in the late 1950s with the restoration of international relations between Spain and those countries (after WW2). By the way, there is an excellent comedy film from 1971 parodying those migrations called "Vente a Alemania, Pepe" (Come to Germany, Pepe), in which a young rural man called José [Pepe is a Spanish way of calling Josés too] decides to try his luck working in Germany to earn money as the wages there are higher. He ends up being worked to the bone in three jobs (one main job and two part-time jobs).
Same in Portugal. And Italy. What is happening is thanks to the EU rules, that attributed agriculture quotas to each state, which meant many countries that had large agrarian history saw thousands of farms closed, and the population headed to the big cities. The EU nations have largely became tertiary economies, based on services. All industrial capacity was moved overseas, and we depend on foreign food products. The war in Ukraine and the souring of relations with Russia (the barn of the planet), has sent the EU into deep crisis. The EU is now in deep recession, and i suspect the worst is yet to come. All thanks to disastrous policies by Brussels, and their subservience to Washington.
German supermarkets have taken over the market in Europe, food contaminated with pesticides and above all Spanish vegetables and fruits are a nightmare - in the countryside in poland where i live a lot of people came from england/ usa and thanks to that they built houses and opened small businesses such as sawmills, construction companies etc. The most important thing is a positive attitude and willingness to work in Poland we have a problem with the birth rate but several million Ukrainians came to us - mainly women and children 😂
This happens in the US as well, with the best and brightest leaving both rural and rust belt areas for affluent and modern urban areas. And quite often there's a cultural/political rift because education tends to create a liberal cosmopolitan outlook that clashes with the Trump supporting relatives left behind.
@@auggieeast Concentrating brightest minds is one of the factors that make US so successful. EU just follows suit. Poor US regions are poor because they have backward mindset. One manifestation is voting for Trump. These people exist in all countries, also in the EU. And everywhere, they are poor because of their mindset. They tend to shift the blame to others - rich capitalists, West, government, globalists but never blame themselves.
@@Sven-ql3ch I think they mean the Liberalization of Western Europe - which is progressing into late stage capital, while Eastern Europe was accelerated in its "Liberalization" of markets. Eastern Europe was gutted and the Nobles (Corrupt business/political class) where anointed during the transition. Will is referencing a "race to the bottom" you made the mistake of associating "ahead" as positive.
When I was in my final year of high-school a few years ago here in post Yugoslavia, we had all the different university faculties come to our schools, and every single one of them used "once you finish your degree, we will help you find a job in the EU", i.e study hard now you you can abandon your countire's economy later and work in Germany for a slightly better wage. Brain drain is a very big part of modern imperialism.
Damn, it's almost like capitalism creates a class of traitors who consciously sabotage the national project for their own interests. You know those people get kickbacks for trafficking labor to the west.
Except it is nothing new for the ex yu countries at all, people working in the west supported yugoslavian economy in every crisis since early 70s, when i was in school, early 80s in georgraphy we learnt that yugoslavia at that time was at best barely capable to reoplace its population with a two decades trend on deminishing growth and entering the negative growth back then, croatia and slovenia already had negative growth, bosnia and nothern serbia were between negative and positive, m.n. so so, and only macedonia and kosovo had the positive growth still, so yu as a whole maintained ots 22 million for a time but it never got to 23 million, i remember when i was on school in that time, most families had at most two children, rare were with three, probably more with a single child than with three children, it just a normal consequences of the society that shifts from the agrarian to industrialised one. Also nombers vary a lot and not all are the same or calculated the same, for an instance it looks like more people are leaving croatia than serbia, which is not exactly true if you look at the number of empty households in slavonia and vojvodina, with an asterisk that slavonia is the poorest part of croatia and vojvodina is the richest part of serbia, then the difference is even bigger. The thing is that in the 90s due to wars croatia lost a lot of population as refugees, both croats and serbs, while serbia gained a lot that came in from croatia, bosnia and kosovo, their numbers were never clear or accurate, but probably between 1 and 2 million all in all, ofc they also lost some of their domestic population too, but politics there played a big role in everything and certainly in producing of numbers of any measurement, so it is difficult to comment and compare, same for other ex republics, every one has its own specific reasons and conditions. Ultimatively, this recent wave of emigration also differs on how it's done, temporarely or permanently, eu countries have that privilege to have it more temporarely becausecpeople can just m9ve and work without changing their documents and moving their entire life elsewhere, on their countries is to make them wanna go home, if not suits them well, if need be we can always import cheap workforce from elsewhere, if you don't want too many foreigners make more children, i lived until my twenties in yugoslavia, nobody can tell me it was better then because it wasn't, some things maybe, but overall no it was certainly not, the difference is you can't be a weight on society as easy as back then, but a working man can afford more than he could back then, but can't have some things free that he once could too, but i know how many pairs of shoes average middle class child had in my school, in gymnasium not some trade school and how many they have now, or what types of cars their fathers drove back then, and how many cars a family had, you won't easily find a family with only one car nowadays, people are not realistic, yes depopulation is a problem in entire developed world, western countries have no problem with imported labour force, neither should we, and we in fact do it too, on a smaller level as our industrial output is smaller too.
It's not just population. First, East-European countries gave up most of their industrial base - all those hardware factories and plants that were built in Soviet time. Now they don't have much by way of jobs outside the services sector, and people are fleeing for better life opportunities.
Glad to see you also talking about this very very important issue. Thank you for spreading awareness and explaining the actual fundamental causes of this tragic phenomenon. Top tier content comrade.
I am very happy to see that people have begun to notice the tragedy that is Eastern Europe. Even here in Greece, which was not in the "Eastern Bloc", the degradation you describe has been happening for a while. They privatized trains, they decayed, two of them crashed killing some 60 youths a month ago. During the pandemic our hospitals were severely underequipped and understaffed, resulting in thousands of deaths. About two weeks ago some tourist resort owners from Mykonos hired thugs to beat up an archaeologist who pointed out that their businesses were violating regulations regarding the ancient site there. On the streets you see delivery drivers that should be in retirement, driving in the rain. Our power company daily cuts power to hundreds of households to bully people in advance before the due date of their bill. Liberalization, privatization, EU "integration" has destroyed us. Our elderly see our brightest working in places like NASA, and are proud instead of asking why they are not working here. Our young glamorize pointless violence over sports and worship cars, shoes, and the "grind", thinking that they are somehow "rebelling" against the system. And then we wonder why nobody wants to have children here. We have been here since time immemorial, only to be wiped out by the unelected European central bank, and if we dare protest every liberal publication will say "um sorry sweetie, Greece can't afford its lifestyle". We need to stop thinking that we will somehow make it into the club of big Western powers, and realize that we and our Eastern neighbors need to stand together and overcome the tide of destruction.
The recent train crash was absolutely tragic. Unfortunately people don't want to acknowledge the death toll of neo-liberalism and its consequences. I hope for the best for you and everyone in Greece.
@@cordfortina9073 Turkish cyprus has a foreign «patron» of sorts, investing in economy and stimulating immigration at least. Greek cyprus became a very infamous tax haven, which is very useful and Works if the nation is small and manages to build an economy around or with it. It is by definition a solution that will not Work for the majority of places and people, and even many tax havens are not so lucky, there is Poverty in some Caribbean islands.
Yes, good that you mention Greece, because the depopulation phenomenon has to do with Orthodox and Muslim religions. Catholic and protestant countries are not depopulated. In short, go ahead and stop blaming capitalism when the fault DEFINITELY lies in your culture.
As a Hungarian from Budapest - but with strong ties to the countryside - I can state that the real problem is that the differences between cities and rural areas increased in an unbelievable rate. Of course, this trend started in the '80s but rapidly accelerated in the last 10 years or so.
Here in US just opposite, cities are unlivable , homeless, piss , poops on sidewalk , hijacking cars at gun point, drug addiction epidemic . US is ahead of EU it comes soon. Liberalism is mental illness. Vote for Soros / WEF ideology will speed up.
As someone from Eastern Europe ( specifically Romania) , this video really got to me, and made me reflect on a phenomenon that is so hard to ignore but nonetheless myself & many others try to not think about it as it brings so much sadness to us. I remember in my early childhood, many villages were still mostly populated, and even though this was during the late 90's & early 2000's, I still felt that there still was something left of a community in them. As I got older, I noticed a trend that was becoming impossible to just ignore, literally year after year w/o exception the amount of people living in those villages became significantly smaller. After a while, whenever I'd go to a village to visit relatives or friends, instead of feeling a sense of happiness that I am finally away from the hustle and bustle of the cities, I was greeted with a sense of melancholy, most certainly due to the fact that most of these once thriving villages are now nothing but a shell of their former selves. I can say without a shred of doubt that these same villages I'd often visit now have at most 15% of the population that they once had from the time of my childhood. These villages are situated in some of the most picturesque landscapes I have had the privilege of laying my eyes on, with rustic homes in traditional styles, but now they lie often in disrepair, invoking a sense of emptiness in people like myself. The situation has gotten so bad that I no longer find any pleasure in even visiting those villages, as it simply brings way too much sadness whenever I do. Thank you so much for shedding light on this often overlooked issue Hakim, it really means a lot for those of us from here. 11/10 amazing video as always Habibi
@@marcusj9947 why do you speak so authoritatively on an issue you know absolute nothing about? Have you spoken to any of those villagers? If not then please shut your mouth! The vast vast majority of people I know who left the villages for the city would go back in a second if there were jobs to sustain their communities. Anecdotal I know but literally just about everyone I know from the countryside say that life was better during socialism. They'd stay if they could, but because of the troubles brought upon by the free market, small farmers simply can't compete with massive agrobusiness, so people are forced to find work in cities (or as is the case in Romania, migrate to the west to find employment). So please, don't speak on a topic you know jack shit about, it will just make you look even more stupid than you already are.
@@marcusj9947 i mean, that’s true to an extent. 1. A lot of people would have stayed even if the Iron Curtain fell, if there is no economic crisis. 2. Not a single person would want to emigrate to the west if the west wouldn’t exploit the whole world.
Me again. did you know that Lenin didn't like shooting stars? he liked shooting tzars. Edit: thank you everyone for the likes, if you want more of my...no OUR memes wait for another comrade Hakim video.
Honestly, although the way socialism was implemented in Romania was fucked up, there was a significant effort made to develop the entire country, urban and rural areas, not just the big urban centers. That's the most significant thing. We had libraries, cinemas, industry (so jobs), medical facilities and schools that are now gone. Not only villages are dying but small towns have also been decimated by capitalism. It's honestly infuriating to see so many "compatriots " even in this comment section still drinking the koolaid and being good little slaves for western capital like it's going to benefit them. We've been so thoroughly brainwashed. Oh my god, we barely even have public kindergartens today and that's in the big cities.
Dude from Latvia here. Our periphery is basically an empty space. There's a lot of life in the capital and some life in a handful of medium towns. Anywhere between those places, however, the population numbers are laughable. Of course, official state propaganda is still blaming "Soviet Occupation" for everything, including obvious demographic problems. The parts about "brain drain" and labor power extraction are spot on as well - we've been heavily de-industrialized since the LSSR, however our educational system still can produce laborers who are not that much less qualified than our western colleagues, but will work for significantly less money. I see ads online about "welders wanted for oil rig in Sweden" regularly, not to mention that our entire IT sector is outsourced by foreign companies because we're relatively cheap and relatively qualified. Thank God we don't have oil, otherwise we'd probably get democratized to bits. We do, however, have a huge hydropower plant left from the inhumane commies, and the funny thing about it is that while it generates enough electricity to power ~70% of the country (I might be mistaken about the number, please feel free to correct me), our electrical bills are insane, cuz all of the generated power gets sold to an electricity stock exchange, and then we buy it back from them at a much higher price. I love the smell of free market in the morning. The worst part is, though, that people around here don't see that the root cause of all this insanity is capitalism, at least not yet. They'll blame whatever from their neighbors to supernatural forces, but never capitalism as a system.
It the fault of communism! All problems that surfaced when the USSR was split up and after 30 years of capitalism and not getting any better is the fault of the damn commies!
@@frenzalrhomb6919 AFAIK, since most of the Germans who lived here in the first half of the XX century were bourgeois (either landlords or capitalists), they were repressed or forced to emigrate eventually, and that was even before Soviet Latvia. At least, currently the populations of the Baltics mostly consist of people of the titular nation plus a large chunk of Russians left from the Soviet times. This situation, by the way, is incredibly convenient for the ruling class, because it allows to manipulate people effortlessly, through nationalism - titular nations are brainwashed to hate Russians because "they're occupants", and Russians are, in turn, brainwashed into hating back on equally asinine ideas of Russian chauvinism and imperial revanchism. Basically, the ruling class is deliberately keeping us all hating each other for no good reason to prevent any solidarity among the working class. Works like a charm too, never failed to deliver over the last 33 years - imagine any inhumane law or policy, and our "elites" could probably pull it off without fear of any real protest from the people. In this regard, the French never cease to inspire me - whenever their government tries to screw them over, they roll out the guillotine. We should learn to do that too.
@@kalvisjatnieks7740 Sveiks, Kalvi! Ļoti patīkami redzēt latviešu biedru. Ceru, ka internacionālisms un strādnieku solidaritāte kādreiz uzvarēs cīņā par mūsu tautiešu prātiem :)
As a Lithuanian who lives in the capital city, which is actually growing; seeing towns and villages outside dying and seeing more old people than young people feels depressing, especially knowing that these places used to thrive during Soviet times. The whole privatization and the transition to capitalism lead to a closure or selling of the factories, leading to unemployement and less opportunities. I doubt that the future will be better, as it keeps declining.
I feel your pain bro, I am lithuanian too, I live in Ireland tho. however my old home is going to be destroyed because of railway construction. And everyone is going to relocated to an apartment probably. The future is not looking too great
@Working Prole inc. Lithuania is fucked. The Lithuanian SSR was making so many electronics and was one of richest republics. Now they make sprats and commit Alt F4...
Nice to see a few fellow Lithuanians here in the comments. I'm from Kaunas originally, and what you describe is so visible there. I feel like most people in Eastern Europe can see that something wrong is happening, I am hopeful though that we and others can spread an understanding of the real reasons behind this hollowing-out of our countries. Maybe then change will be possible, eventually...
I have a personal experience on this. Being an italian my country """accepted""" at least 1 million albanians and romanians that were both praised (from escaping EVIL COMMUNIST REGIMES when they came after their socialist governments fell) and discriminated (you know we are westerners and they are not.... so they are inferior, dirty, thieves etc). My ex-gf was romanian and her parents lived under socialism, but when it fell they needed to find jobs once again. Her mother came here and stayed for a long time and sent money back, while her father worked in the military. Despite being that they still almost froze every winter and all other shit. When i went with them in Romania for a vacation i found a monument in Bucharest for the "victims of communism". Kinda ironic... I could add other stories, for example the sheer amount of abandoned industries around the roads is just mind blowing. Also railways left to rot. When i asked a local if the trains passed a lot of times in the station (because my hotel was near the train station) he said "before 1991 yes, now not so much" and it was a city of 100thousand people (Piatra Neamț). Also public transport being defunded so lines of trolley bus left alone replaced with enviromentally friendly diesel buses (bought with EU funds). Food prices at supermarkets were the same as in Italy but their salaries are 1/4 of what you get here. Usual capitalust masterpiece
@@sm3675 in one of 1991 20thousands albanians landed in Italy with the ship Vlöra (Valona in italian) in the city of Bari. The distance between Albania and Italy is quite small so they made it alive but it was one of the first humanitarian crisis, and a sign of something coming. Albanians chose Italy because it was their only choice (up there were yugoslav civil war) and for whatever reason RAI (italian state own television and radio) broadcasted in socialist albania and so albanians learnt italian
@@andreamarino6010 "For whatever reason" lol the reason was they intended to cause the crisis and would rather make money broadcasting Italian into the target nation before you have to leave than spend money teaching you Italian when you arrive.
@@briankrebs7534 RAI started to broadcast in the 60s i believe, far far before the collapse in the 90s. But knowing imperialist historical italian ambitions it was probably a way to influence Albania
My boy why do you think the states were in such catastrophic states in the 90s? There is a reason nobody like Commies in these countries. The way you Tankies praise USSR and its colonies makes me wonder, why you dont justify American slavery, because the slaves were indeed unfree, but they at least were provided with food and a shelter. The transition was a catastrophe, but this neither makes the regimes suddenly "good" or gives an answer to why the countries are in such a poor state nowadays. If you look at all those oligarchs and former ones from the eastern block, you can see that most of them had strong connections to the communist regime or were part of it. Yeltsin and his clique were just former communist party members, a well known example. And there is the issue. Leninism requires widespread corruption to function properly, for democracies on the other hand corruption is a death sentence. Dont try to argue with me, because my family has many former communist officials from this system and many more who resisted against it. Thievery is that what drives this systems, because if they functioned as planned everything would fall apart, what actually happened after the iron courtain fell.
@@derunfassbarebielecki in one comment you succesfully defended slavery and showed that you don't understand socialism. I won't try to argue, you are too far gone, none will save you. Enjoy lick the boots of your oppressors
I live in Romania, and it makes me despair when I see people worship the system that has taken so much from us and brought so much hate. I can not hope that things get better, only that they get worse slower, I can see no way out, and it pains me. I see people hunger, live in the cold, and the ones that don't envy and want to take, the same way they were taken from.
I live in Austria because of the conditions in Romania. Moved to Austria at age 6 for a better life. Never got to experience what it is to be a Romanian at all. Miss the place but u can't do shit there.
@R yes you can, you going to Austria at 6 made sense, romania was quite fucked in the 90s, but romania today is on ANOTHER LEVEL compared to its neighbors. Bucharest alone is richer than all of Bulgaria
I went to romania with my at the time gf (who was romanian). And holy shit dude it was really depressing seeing so many things abandoned and how people talked about pre 1991
Yes but then again. You can't blame only the system. There are people so brainwashed by the system, by their old and poor ways that they can't even grasp anything else...
As a Lithuanian I still remember the stories of my parents living in the USSR. It wasnt perfect but we had so much more back then. We were a functional and connected society which was able to stand on its own, and that being something I have never had the privelege of experiencing, it makes me sad. What makes me even more sad is what we could of had as my grandparents lived under stalin prior to soviet revisionism and before they died would often talk about how the future awaited them but it was robbed. Good video!
Hi there from Russia! Its patetic how agressive we are all nowadays 😢 Why cant we just be friends? Europe is such a smart place. Why we fight knowing that America is happy? Peace 🙏❤
@Toivo58479 source: my grandparents who was alive prior to 1940 and lived under the Smetona dictatorship. But no of course, it doesn't have the boot print of the EU on it for you to lick which is something our lovely Eesti neighbors are known for.
@Toivo58479 I'm telling you right now that its bullshit. This may have been the case for urban Lithuanians however this was no where near the case for rural Lithuanians. But yeah keep licking the boot of the westies and keep asskissing Finland, I'm sure things will get better. Sometime, eventually, maybe.
I drove through South Eastern Serbia ... and the whole place just seemed void of human life. Yet Serbia claims they have a population of 6.8 Million which is just impossible. Slavonia in Croatia is undergoing same fate.
From perspective of Pole. 1. "Funnily enough their recommendations for suitable solutions to the problems of rising mortality and declining fertility rates in Eastern Europe are stronger support measures in health and more effective family transfers but also much more aggressive policies to enhance tax collection to support employment, minimum wages and social safety nets and to control inflation. Basically things that were non-issues prior to market transition - last verse was a clear referral to communist/ socialist system we had before transition" Unfortunately - that is a lie. People were living in absolute poverty. Sure, they had money and housing. However no-one could get any basics. Starting from food ending with home appliances such as washing machines etc. Govt controlled the prices. Therefore everything was cheap. But also widely unavaible since producing products wasn't actually worth it for such a low price. People all across Warsaw Pact countries started rising up. I don't know what was the reason in every country. But in Poland it was mainly because of INSANE decline of living standards. Sure, we are told that Soliadarity(main anti-communist movement at the time) rised up to fight for the freedom, etc. But that's not exactly true. The first rise of Solidarity was because workers started to lose their jobs, they had their pay reduced. While there was shortage of literally everything. These issues existed in almost entire 70s and whole 80s - before the market transition. 2. Loss of jobs after transition. Poland in late 80s was literally on the brink of collapse. We had debts we couldn't pay off. Most of our agriculture and manufacturing sector was not profitable. Why? Because the west was vastly superior in that matter. They could produce more, cheaper, better. We were not competitive. That's why when the transition happened plenty of unprofitable sectors had to be cut down - so the profitable ones will recover, so we get investments from the west and get more jobs. The truth is if we countinued the way we did in the 80s - the outcome would have been much worse. Author also mentions unemployment levels - 20% in the 90s and 7% in 20s. Yes, 90s were terrible. People were suffering. That's the part I'm not happy about. Govt was able to at least provide the basics to the poorest so they get to live with minimum of dignity while we transition. That was partially because of IMF which didn't allow us to implement many social benefits etc and partially it was on all of us. We all stupidly believed that by quickly changing from socialist to market economy we will all be far better off. Which is true when you compare it long term. However we disregarder many dangers such as insane housing costs, social care and mentioned before lack of help for the poorest during transition. However there is also some manipulatio from the author here. 7% unemployment was during covid. Before and after it's changed over a decade but sat between 2-5%. In comparison unemployment before transition was around 10%. And that's despite the fact that the country provided jobs for everyone - no matter how useless said job was. So nowadays we have plenty of jobs that in theory produce some kind of value, while before we had plenty of useless jobs that didn't bring much value just for the sake of providing jobs. 3. Migration - true. We are migrating like crazy. While living standards got better, we also have the freedom to get the heck out of here and live better life elsewhere. Author also mentioned raising retirement age. Well. It had to be done. Sorry, but expecting women to work until they are 50 and men until they are 55 was simply unsustainable. On top of that plenty of people instead of retiring were choosing various insane govt social retirement programs - for example you could be alcoholic at age of 40 and go on said social retirement while getting 80% of normal retirement money. 3 out of 4 of my grandparents retired between age 45 and 50. All on those said weird govt programs - starting from fake diseases/ disabilities ending on the alcoholic example I mentioned. Thanks god you don't get that option now. Sure, disabled people get help from the govt. In some cases it's much more significant than it was before. But you can't fake it nowadays. Nor you can't go on alcoholic retirement. Currently the retirement age is 60 for women (which is honestly amazing) and 65 for men. In this day and age I think around 63-64 sounds fair for both genders. Retirement age of 50 was introduced when you got to live 60 years on average. However times have quickly changed and suddenly people who reitred in their 50s get to live into their 70s on average. In conclusion. Transition period was terrible. It makes me mad how shitty of a choice we had. All thanks to IMF which didn't allow us to do many social policies. If we did, we wouldn't be allowed to borrow any money to develop etc (and I do believe that while we could meet their demands to cut down unsustainable business we could also add some social policies which wouldn't lead to collapse of the country) Anyway, the choice was to either stay in unsustainable system or go through rapid transitioning - which forced A LOT of people into poverty, while many others got to buy provious state properties at a bargain. I'm just glad we didn't end like Russia, Ukraine etc. On one hand we kind of did amazing. We had one of the worst forecasts. Poland was supposed to fail but instead we became one of the most thriving countries out of ex Soviet/ Warsaw Pact states. But also many social policies went down the gutter. We had to go through awful period of liberals that didn't help the people at all - all that mattered was GDP. Housing prices shot up (relatively compared to our socialist times nowadays it's 30% harder to buy a house than it was before). Childcare vastly reduced, etc. And on top of that we also had no leftist party that we could trust. The only leftists back then were ex-commie members. We voted them in to rules us again. They turned out to be one of the most corrupted govt in the modern Poland history. Possibly only current ruling party is more corrupt than they were. TLDR: Author romanticises previous system and blames all the issues on the new one. Which is outright lies in many matters. Truth is much more complex. I wish I had more time and skills to properly explain it all :D
@@tatra2165 obecna partia jest bardziej skorumpowana? - ciekawe spostrzeżenia. Politycy PO nawet jak nie rządzą to wybuchają afery. Przypomnę ostatnio - sekretarz miasta Warszawy - 5 mln przyjęcia łapówki. Nie mówiąc już o Nowaku, którego na korupcji nawet w Ukrainie złapali. Nie będę już wracał do (nie)rządów tej partii i afer. Nie twierdzę, że PiS jest święte, ale nie ma tutaj co porównywać.
Very true! Z tą róznicą, że polityka prywatyzacji nie była fair, i jak zwykle w czasach chaosu najwięcej stracili uczciwi. Natomiast tzw. kapitalizm potrzebuje dwóch rzeczy: delegalizacji lobbingu (powinien być traktowany jak korupcja) i zakazu spekulacji pieniądzem , w szczególności lichwy.
I live in Czechia and it’s very similar to what you say about Poland. Also his unemployment rate are off for Czechia as well which is one of the lowest among the EU countries.
A channel called Balkan Odyssey made excellent videos covering this topic too: "The Balkans are disappearing, quickly" "The depressing journey from Germany to Bosnia Herzegovina" The modern state of Eastern Europe and Russia was actually well described by the main villain of CoD 4: "Our so-called leaders prostituted us to the west. Destroyed our culture. Our economies. Our honor. Our blood spilled on our soil." When I first played it, I didn't think much of that speech back then. But now I realize that Zakhayev had a point, so this speech hits different now.
@@Yk9o Or maybe your stance against LGBTQ is morally corrupt? I'm guessing you might be Russian to think that way, since many people in modern Russia seem to think that homosexuality is an "artificial Western construct". Besides, whether you support LGBTQ or are against it has nothing to do with socialism, but since socialism is a progressive ideology, most socialists also support LGBTQ rights.
@@GTAVictor9128 Well the socialists before 1991 all despised the LGBT look at Stalin, Castro and all the dictators and leaders in eastern Europe and even though as a religious person i hate communism and socialism i also dont like the LGBT so seeing them act against them is to me the only good thing they ever did.
@@Yk9o socialists really should strongly support lgbtq rights, they’re a minority exploited by capitalists and discriminated to divide working class. You can say western may use their rights as a pretext to attack enemies, which is true, but the west do this also with women’s rights, this doesn’t mean socialists stops to support them
It is happening everywhere (Europe, America, China, Japan). I went around some small towns in Italy and I could not get any WiFi signal. There was nobody living there.
Less so in the UK, Ireland, Western Germany, the Scandinavian countries,France, the NL, Belgium,Switzerland Austria , Northern Italy, because of massive, unsustainable immigration.
Hakim i want to thank you for everything you do, there have been few changes in my life as important to me as those caused by particularly your reading list videos. You and Parenti have taught me so much about how to differently view the world. your videos have reached this privileged, wealthy american who frequently has the ears of people more powerful than would be believed in youtube comments. Thank you from across the world for being a huge part of my education and radicalization. Never stop the fight, your message reaches people of positions you may never expect.
Congratulations on getting on the path of unlearning decades of red scare propaganda, my American comrade ^^ Warm greetings from the (still) Socialist Republic of Vietnam 🇻🇳
As a Yugoslav, this tragic fact has been a great source of intergenerational depression for me ever since I gained class consciousness. All this horrific loss, just for corporations to be more profitable...
Never be pessimistic, there's a world to win. Agitate, educate, organize. The first Socialist Yugoslavia was formed in far harsher conditions, don't lose hope!
I used to be from Estonia, but left not because of the economic reasons, but because of the people and society in general. People were just so unfriendly and cruel to each other in my opinion, so I did not want to be there. Also, I never really felt home there as there were a lot of Russians who were unwilling to learn Estonian and have basic respect for the country.
Yeah no that just means that Estonia is not really a country but a mix. If Russia dominate there then it's just Russia. There were enough racist remarks from Estonian government so ofcourse nobody will start learn language and respect a racist country.
@@sleepyjoe7843 so true, its just horrible, it is like mini Russia and when u say Estonia all are like ahh Russia. As Estonian its disgrace and something to be ashamed off. Im sorry for your bad experience tho
@@Gunit935 yea but as we Estonians talk with each other, our goverment never dealt with issues and now kind of late. There are so many people in Estonia who cant even speak i word in Estonian, everybody just speak Russian. Sad that one country isnt what it should be and that also causes tensions in normal people which shouldnt be the case. Its simply brutal truth and its sad to hear so many people have negative feelings towards Estonia🥲
@@Gunit935 nobody can ever learn it if every company and service is offered in Russian. Example: if you go Finland you are forced to learn language, not even on shops people talk with u in English which us right in my eyes. In estonia even if u call phone service company u get reply press 2 for russian.
even 2010s ,2020s eastern Europe immigrated population after arriving in the imperial core nations(some of them get "successful" and deal from survivorship bias,praise "free market, capitalism,"free world")still blames "communism" for their nations' slowdown,lawlessness in 2020s.
Yeah, it's also funny how eastern europeans just assume that without communism everything would magically have been better. That the Americans would treat us on par with western europe and help us rebuild after WWII, or that the invisible hand of the free market would just pull the capital and resources out of the invisible ass of the free market, letting everyone to live prosperously and ensuring peace in the region (lmao).
As if before communism most of our states were booming and heading for their golden century. They can't blame communism. We became vassals to the far more exausted super power. The already way more advanced states in West became vassals to the largest industrial nation on earth which had less casualties in ww2 than Yugoslavia or way smaller Greece. It's a big difference when a whole bunch of states got more people dead than the largest industrial power on earth. My country Bulgaria lost 3 wars in a row. We got to be thankful to Stalin for making us vassals. Serbs in Yugoslavia and Greeks be thirsty for revenge after our free real estate grab during the German conquest of them. Romania wouldn't be a true friend anyways and Turkey is obvious one. So wtf were we gonna do besides becoming Soviet satellite? Feeling pity for Poland ofcourse. Their struggles could never fkin end. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria rightfully deserved to become Soviet vassals. We were on losing side of war. Got to get back to reality instead of being emotional about communism.
There was a popular saying in USSR: Stalin took a country with a plow, and left it with nuclear reactor. In 30 years of Soviet rule country went from a fuedal state with 90% peasant population and 15% literacy to a second world economy that was able to be first at launching a man into space, all the while surviving two brutal world wars, revolution, sanctions, and constant meddling from the rest of the world. In the 30 years since collapse of USSR, only thing that most post-soviet respublics succeeded at was finding more excuses to blame USSR for their failings, while expiriencing no wars and often with direct monetary support from EU.
@@DrNiradino Well yeah but how many millions died from his terror and how many millions more died in WW2 due to the weakning of the red Army pre 1942 Stalin literally murdered and Purged most of his top tier Generals.
I'm from Norway. Population growth stopped around 1975 here but the number of inhabitants increased because of immigration...The same is all around western europe....
It's pretty crazy. I feel sorry for these people and these places though. Couldn't imagine how hard life must be. Don't blame them at all for leaving and looking for a better life elsewhere. Heck, I left the UK to Sweden myself (for love not money 😅) and feel very privileged that I can do this so easily.
@@ten_tego_teges How? Immigration is a legitimate form of population increase. Unless you want to say that it’s bad because “white people” are losing majority in western countries? You said it yourself, western europe has the same problem but *fixes it*. Not sure how you manage to not even read what you yourself said.
@@ten_tego_teges I'm sorry bro but i wouldn't say immigration "fixes" they're problems it simply dumps the problem to other people(immigrants). Bringing over immigrants who would do really shit jobs for cheap, since these immigrants have garbage pay they wont be able to interact with local population which makes their society more polarized and this also creates a lot of ghettos and shitty areas in Western Europe. Additionally the rise of far-right in Europe who are very against immigrants coming to their countries brings even more problems.
I remember spending a day in a small town in old east Germany. The main street pedestrian area was absolutely deserted. And it was a nice weekend day, beautiful weather. Normally a place like that would be bustling. So creepy, I kept wondering what happened to all the people.
An interesting statistic I found recently: In Romania in 1990 there were 12529 preschools, all of them public, with 60 pupils per preschool. In 2005 there were 3769 preschools, 3598 public and 171 private. There were 178 pupils per public preschool, and 55 pupils per private preschool. In 2013 there were 1187 preschools, 877 public and 310 private. There were 629 pupils per public preschool, and 54 pupils per private preschool. For 2020 I was able to find there were 1153 preschools, 751 public and 402 private, with 94% of pupils going to a public preschool. I wasn't able to find the exact numbers of pupils per school. You can take these numbers as you want, but to me it shows the difference between socialism and capitalism. In socialism, even the flawed implementation that we had in eastern Europe, you have resources being fairly distributed, while in capitalism the average person has to compete for a share that gets smaller and smaller while the rich live in luxury. Only in eastern Europe you will have people born in 1970 which went to preschool but their children couldn't. I was born in the 90s, and my parents couldn't send me to preschool, and it was the same for the entire village that year. We were among the first generations that didn't go anymore, back when we started school in the early 2000s it was considered weird by the teachers and parents, but now 20 years later it's something normal if you live in a rural area or if you're poorer.
To me, it points to what happens when public schooling is neglected and defunded in favor of private schools. Forced consolidation of education into a few big schools that have all the money rather than lots of smaller ones that are evenly distributed across the country and have a fairer distribution of funds. That can contribute to families needing to move out of smaller villages
all these collapsing villages reminds me of the situation that we have here on the prairies in Canada. Our small towns are also dying, though the death is slow. Its particularly sad because many of these towns are quite old. However the causes are different, here it is simply a result of changes in agriculture methods and technology. Simply stated less people are needed to work the land. What really surprises me is to see that poverty is causing a decline in birthrate in eastern europe, generally speaking its places with lots of poverty that have the highest birth rates. Africa, much of south america, the asias all seem to churn out people in large numbers despite the poverty. I wonder if there will be a population boom after the end of the russo ukrainian war as so often happens when wars end and the men return.
the largest source of foreign money in Romania is not, as you'd expect, from the oh so benevolent capitalist bussiness investors. it is from romanian workers who migrated for work. our countrymen and countrywomen go to Germany, to Italy, to Spain, to the UK, to work for them and send money back home. just the drama of the families broken by the threat of poverty is crushing. both parents, away, over the borders, to slave away on minimum wages that are still many times more than they'd make here. the north-east and south of the country, outside of the capital, are depopulated. only old people and children left, having to fend for themselves and look after one another. you know, it's not an easy life, being an elder or taking care of one. everybody here knows at least one family like this
and for a less tragic but still concerning follow-up: many educated young people do not want to stay here, because their prospects are just awful. i will present anecdotal evidence: of three students of a top engineering college who took a job at the same company, two want to leave the country in the nearing future. only i will stay, God bless me with strength. when i want to feel desperation quickly, i think of how we were three and will soon be just one. tens of thousands of trained professionals leave before at least giving back what the state invests in them. oh, yea. its the state universities that still give quality education
many more can say it is so in their country. we have been lied to, indoctrinated to worship the west. we are destitute, stripped of our riches and our will. the east is becoming a place full of old people, stupid people, hungry people or any combination of the above
It’s so sad to see what my home country of Albania has become. Everytime I go back I can’t help but feel depressed to see what it lost economically and socially
@@oosthuizen2012 It's not the lowest fertility rate in the Balkans. Stats don't take into account the migration since 2011 when calculating fertility rate and still use the numbers from that census of 2.8 million. It's 1.4. Bosnia and Greece have lower fertility rates.
@@roolentodd395 lmao isnt that such a stereotypical balkan thing to pick in the details to better your fertility score by 0.1 in order to say Bosnia and Greece have it worse
I wish that you also have commented the economic implications of Russia's war in Ukraine. Because of this war and the sanctions to Russia, eastern Europe has the highest inflation rates, because it was the region most closely connected to Russia. Now we are losing cheap goods and cheap energy. It is kinda ironic that these governments are more pro sanctions than most of western Europe, this just shows that the governments of eastern Europe don't really care for their own citizens.
russia can withdraw its troops from Ukraine, pay reparations for its crimes, and then sanctions will be lifted from russia. then you will get cheap goods but I`am not sure that russia want to stop the war
Буржуи тратят миллиарды спизженных денег у населения земли на пропаганду рая из капитализма. Многие ведутся и верят. Только когда очухиваются, уже поздно.
Мир захвачен буржуями, у людей повсюду в голове квасной винегрет. Очень печально, но закономерно. Ну, может, получив на орехи от господ, рабочий класс начнёт потихоньку просыпаться.
Если Россия выиграет, украинский народ проиграет. Если Украина выиграет, украинский народ проиграет. Я был в Одессе в прошлом году, и бедность удручала.
Feels very broadly similar to many rural areas in the US after the implementation of NAFTA and the end of the Cold War/the rise of neoliberal globalization. Working class areas lose jobs, young people move away to pursue opportunity elsewhere, older people remain out of sentimentality for home or just because they can't afford to leave. Services decline or cease, buildings become abandoned, and the yearly festivals get a little bit smaller each year as a couple more people in the community pass away of old age and nobody moves in to replace them. I've seen it happen in my home state of Maine since I was a kid.
As a Bulgarian (who was not yet born during the 90s) I can say that this video is really on point. Although Bulgaria was as a whole spared the destruction that the fall of socialism caused in places like the USSR, Yugoslavia and Albania, the terrible and irresponsible way that the 'Transition' between socialism and capitalism was handled scarred the country for decades to come. Basically, in the 90s Bulgaria stopped being a proper social country and became a anarcho-capitalist state where the corrupt undemocratic government privatized everything and gave it to 'special people', inflation skyrocketed, everyone lost their jobs, thousands of people immigrated and all social policies where dropped like hot potato, organised crime flourished and live became increasingly insecure and unstable. The country and economy was in such a state of crisis that in 1997 the Bulgarian lev was fixed to the euro that is still standing. Although currently Bulgaria is 'developing' (as per capitalist vision) economically and people's income has risen significantly compared to the 90s, the feeling of economic and social insecurity still lingers, coupled with conservative social views and lack of governmental vision for the future, are one of the reasons that drive many young people to immigrate to Northwestern European countries, where they at least feel secure.
"Anarcho-capitalist state where the corrupt undemocratic government privatized everything and gave it to 'special people', inflation skyrocketed, everyone lost their jobs, thousands of people emigrated and all social policies were dropped like a hot potato", literally the exact same thing is happening in Serbia right now since 2012, and I'm planning to leave the moment I graduate from college since I don't think anything will change any time soon. The best/worst part? The gov't keeps blaming Kosovo, war in Ukraine and whatever they happen to think about instead of the billions of euros they embezzled and wasted or the dogshit management of gov't firms and terrible fiscal policies.
> proper social country Стагнацията под Бай Тошо е нищо за завиждане.. искаш да се развиеш, да създадеш нещо.. искал си да си купиш една кола.. и познай.. не можеш; то че и сега имаме корупция не се отрича, ама моля ти се, по добре сега отколкото тогава > the feeling of economic and social insecurity still lingers еми като ми плащат по-добре в Германия за същата работа която мога да върша в Бг за двойно по-малко..
The USSR was designed that way, it couldn't be dismantled without forcing Eastern Europe into capitalist since the system was centralized around Russia. The Russian elite/Soviet elite (oligarch) are also responsible for much of the damage done to eastern Europe, they are to this day still extracting the most wealth and power possible to feed their master Putin. Learn about the Russian mafia in eastern europe
That's what the aim was . The West wanted to dismantle the Eastern Bloc and they did ...now as Bulgarian myself I can say Bulgarians are very stupid and deserved it all
I'm watching this on my phone from work in "Burgeristan" (USA) and it is very chilling and sad what happened to these small villages thst were once lively and prosperous, now are gutted and abandoned because of capitalism. You did a excellent job on this video, Hakim. And I hope you have a wonderful Ramadhan al-Karim.
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45 From my own experience I can say this is true. The young people go off to college and never come back to rural and farming communities. Even in a mid sized Midwestern town with a local industrial plant, the population was visibly aging and the size of school classes shrinking over the decade I lived there because the plant wasn't hiring anyone without five years of experience, housing was not affordable as there were very few apartments, and people were moving out for the cities or other states. The local area had a median age of 40, compared to a median of 30 in the cities, and the population shrank by about 5% over that decade.
Go slowly with those conclusions. The video conveniently skips the fact that the largest Eastern state of EU, Poland, is doing very well - no unemployment, no emigration. Czechia and Slovenia are doing even better, they have already surpassed Portugal. It's the orthodox and Muslim states that are poor. Those are cultures of mental slavery. In short, this video is full of BS
Growing kids is very expensive. In the past the birth rate was much higher because parents didn't have to pay as much for education and healthcare. We need to start addressing this problem and looking for ways to solve it.
Only issue there is that there was also a higher infant mortality rate to go along with the high birthrate. The Past infant mortality rate kind of evens out the high birthrates point you made. Still a good point though.
As old russian liberal saying goes: "Они просто не вписались в рынок" - "They just didn't fit into the market". Now they have freedom, democracy, and they can become rich!
@@dreamsdeep1076 China's population has started declining, India's population has reached replacement level in fertility rates and drop lower in a decade or two. Most of Europe has declining population, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan etc. Southeast Asia will also experience the same in a decade. It's only Africa that's exploding in population
I have checked the demographics of all the former Eastern Bloc countries. The percentage population losses are even larger than what you reported here. For example, there is no way Ukraine only lost 15-18% since 1991. Ukraine peaked at 52 million at the point of Soviet dissolution. Even before the "Special Military Operation", Ukraine's population had fallen to 41 million. Even this figure does not account for 8 million Ukrainian migrant workers who had gone to the EU, only returning for major holidays, but are still in the book as Ukraine's permanent population. Georgia and Armenia are another two former Soviet republics with 20-30% population losses. Capitalism concentrating not just wealth into a few hands, but people/capital in a few geographic areas is actually a worldwide phenomenon. Even in a still-growing country like the US, if you looked at the growth rate county by country level, most of the US is actually losing population, because all the growth is concentrated in a few metropolitan areas. Japan has a very similar problem as Eastern Europe of villages populated only by elderly people which are turning into ghost towns. Meanwhile, the Tokyo metro area is actually still growing.
3:37 - That's exactly what's happening in Lisbon right now. A small home with 1 room and a living room costs about 400,000€, the average annual wage in Portugal after taxes is about 15,000€. That's 3.75% of the house price.
A lot of things in this video reminded me of Portugal. And funnily enough our liberals constantly point to Eastern Europe as an example to follow. Hell, our libs want to copy Eastern European liberalism so hard that they also blame all of our current economic problems on "socialism", despite Portugal not being or having ever been a socialist country.
The people in Eastern Europe fail to see that instead of gaining independence, we lost any resemblance of independence we had. We can now only get as prosperous as our imperial overlords will let us and it was never the plan to let us flourish. Countries like Poland are relatively better off as they are a natural extension of German border and a buffer zone. Thanks for covering this topic, love from a polish emigrant
so the only alternatives are not being prosperous at all (as before 1989 - very slow economic growth and social progress, falling behind other nations more and more) or being prosperous by delivering goods and services to "imperial" countries?
@@Yk9o The dollar is shitting on every other worthless currency. It's just credit. Better to have a common currency like in Europe. A commodity-backed world reserve currency will not work.
People that remain in the villages...how do they sustain themselves? If they're elderly, do they get a state pension? Are there viable farms? Tourist enterprises? How do they get money for basic necessities?
As a Romanian, thank you so much for covering this topic, it's hardly ever talked about even inside the country, and it's pretty much going to lead to this country basically dying out, and i don't mean in the failed state way.
@FredTheTed Well, it's kinda neutral, i mean he's leagues above any of the clown school rejects we have nowadays. In the late 60s and 70s he wasn't that bad, stuff started going downhill in 79 mostly because stuff in the USSR was going downhill. But like 80% of this country was basically built under Ceausescu, 15% or so under the monarchy and like 5% in the last 30 years if i had to make some statistics. The blocks most people live in Ceausescu, the Bucharest metro - Ceausescu, we had some of the best railways in Europe in the 70s, also Ceausescu, btw said railway system ever since the transition to capitalism is now by far the worst. Thing is Ceausescu also ruled in a troubled period full of uncertainty. In a way, i think people remember the bad stuff too much like the austerity or his personality cult, but his first decade or so was a time of great progress. He essentially managed to somewhat put Romania on the map. And probably, the best thing he did in my opinion, and the reason why i think he does deserve some sort of respect is the fact that at least he had some backbone. When the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, Romania was the only Warsaw Pact country that did not partake in the invasion, and Ceausescu is the man to thank for that. What do you think happened in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq. Cowards like Iliescu and Basescu quickly hopped on board, and helped the US pillage another country and murder millions. Btw, Iliescu is a man responsible for a lot of bloodshed in this country, the fucker is 93 years old and still lives comfortably. Back during communism, he was Ceausescu's main rival within the party.
Wow you can really see improvement in hakims editing. Even the way he cites sources is far superior than what he previously had done. Even though I don’t see eye to eye sometimes, Props
These stalinist/leninist nazbol scumbag youtubers all of sudden popping up everywhere that are presenting their solution to the crisis of Europe is all part of this whole evil plan. It's why so many people are getting fooled to become marxist but they fail to realize both marxism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin created by these psycho globalist scoundrels who want to control the world.
Something very similar happened in South Africa post-1994. The apartheid government used to subsidise certain industries but the end of apartheid came with an IMF loan and trade liberalisation that killed these subsidised industries virtually overnight. The textile industry in Cape Town shed a few hundred thousand jobs in a few short years and skilled workers were left with nowhere to go. Now we get all our clothes from China.
Seeing all these comments is more than enough to absolutely destroy the "Just ask someone who lived under Communism" meme that capitalists like to push.
@Tohrµ go move to Cuba and tell me it’s the best thing since sliced bread. But since you’re a communist, you probably don’t even know what bread is in the first place
This only shows devastating impact of communism on these countries. When communist dictatorship finally fall, 20% of people were working in agriculture. Now it is bellow 4%. Modern agriculture is far more effective and unskilled people had to find new jobs - and it was hard. Production of steel dropped by 75%, USSR stopped producing weapons and could not pay for steel anymore. Thousands of miners got unemployed. Something similar happened in Britain when they lost their empire. The whole transformation was painful, unregulated, and former communist abused all opportunities and stole everything could be stolen.
I'm from Southeastern Serbia and my town alone lost over 20,000 people since the last census. In the city centre there are abandoned houses and buildings. The surrounding villages are depressing and full of misery, some pensioners receive only 100$ and less pensions, there are no jobs in the area and all young people who want to study have to go somewhere else where there is higher quality education, they usually never come back. The only place in Serbia gaining population is Belgrade due to migration from Southern Serbia, and even there, unemployment is rising, you must join the party and have your intelligence insulted to get a job in the public sector, inflation is going up as well and housing prices are through the roof even for shitty apartments on the outskirts of Belgrade that are more expensive than some decent places in the USA. Honestly I have no hope for this country and want to get out as soon as possible.
In Serbia Novi Pazar, Tutin, Presheva and Bujanoci also saw population increase vs last census. This is because they are overwhelmingly Albanian or Bosniak municipalities where population is younger and has more kids then ageing Serbian population.
imma keep it real with you hakim the reason marrige fell so far down in Georgia was mostly because half of our male population just got slaughtered in the 3 wars we had between 1989 and 1993
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45 nope 1989 ethnic conflicts all over the country (including ethnic clensing on both ossetian and Georgian sides) The 1991 civil war And the 1991 Russian invasion/intervension All in all Georgia in the past 30 years has had 7 wars
@@YaBoiHakim oh no i agree just shedding some extra light on the situation so its more obvious the whole ethnic conflicts happened because of our fascist post soviet government (literally fascist too considering Gamsakhurdia started advocating for a "Georgia for Georgians" and stealing property from ethnic minorities)
Western developed nations', being dominated by private enterprises, are only interested in taking advantage of cheap labor from the east. These companies are only for profits (and short term profits at that). They are not interested in long term investments, least of all in infrastructural investments. Sadly, the depopulation trend will continue as it maybe too late to do anything about it, especially under current environment.
If it wasn't for former colonies and immigration from said colonies, Spain and Portugal likely would also be suffering a similar fate due to economic disparities between wealthier countries to the north which speak Germanic languages for the most part. More particularly, Andalusia's economic income per capita is more comparable to Croatia and other depopulated areas than to Basque Country within Spain itself. In between all the urban centers of economic activity like Madrid, Barcelona, and Basque Country? You end up with Teruel Exists and heavy depopulation similar to Moldova, Serbia, etc with migration first inside of Spain and Portugal and if they can't find a job good enough but still have funds, they'll flee to the Netherlands, Germany, etc. Edit: As in there's more people of Cape Verdian descent in Portugal now than in Cape Verde for a scope for how significant the immigration from colonies whether formerly of the country in question's possession or a French/English colony like how Inaki Williams has both a Spanish cap and 6 Ghanian caps.
Yeah, Spanish country side and villages like my grandparents in Galicia are either empty or filled with old people that will be dead in 20-30 years at most
@@Markel_GR And the population growth is mostly as I described it, centered around cities with extreme depopulation elsewhere. Teruel is perhaps the most extreme example of a declining province with the population having peaked some 130 years ago and is the size of the American state of New Jersey yet has 1% of the population where about 60% of it is in just two dying towns. Edit: Teruel's so sparsely populated these days that there's no place in the EU as sparsely populated. The closest places would either be in Greenland, Western Kansas, or Siberia.
Even with that immigration Portugal managed to stagnate economically and get overtaken by Slovenia & Czechia. The heck they doing over there in Portugal?
@@arminivanics1916 It's a problem which explains why the McDonalds orders in the US never seem to get much faster than 2 minutes 45 seconds, extreme turnover of the workforce from emigration and immigration at the same time. Edit: Just do the issue of what's going on at a McDonalds over a whole country and reduce the rate a fair bit for both entering and departing. It's not good for improving productivity which requires a more stable workforce. A lot of the best automation is also a bit too expensive for a Portuguese corporation which also leaves them at a disadvantage to Germans, Dutch, Americans, etc who can afford it.
1:35, i'm honestly more surprised that it's just doubled. There's a story I like to repeat, about creation of the first fallout game. If you know the lore, nuclear war in it started between America and China, which is a little bit strange, considering that it's mimicking 60-70th America, and USSR would've been a natural choice. Well, the story goes, that one of the higher ups during development (~1995-1996) was talking to his Russian friend on the phone, when he heard a loud bangs coming from his side. He asked "What was that?" to which Russian friend nonchalantly answered "Oh, that's just bandits shooting each other". It happened in the middle of the day. In St. Petersburg - second Russian capital. So basically seeing Russian in such a poor state, it simply wasn't a fit for "Nuclear superpower" in their game anymore.
These also apply to Turkey. We maybe are some years behind what you are suffering from but our main population growth is from Kurdish people. Lack of taxing (violent reactions) gives them a better economic growth and their feudal mindset also plays a huge role.
Thank's for the topic and especially thanks for including the former GDR. As we are now a part of unified Germany this history is often overlooked in western countries. Our history of change is really special as we share the past with Eastern Europe but had a totally different road to change with loosing our state on one side but getting a lot of help also on the other side.
And it hurts to think that all these years people have being responding to Marxists with the phrase: "Ask someone from Eastern Europe about what they think of Socialism!" I think they should give Socialism a second run to be honest.
Socialism in Eastern Europe was brought by the Red Army at the end of WWII and was established first by political repressions, then by collectivisation (the state seized all "means of production"; if you refused you were beaten and ostracized). There were also labour camps (some for political prisoners, but also for priests, "amoral people" (gays, lesbians, prostitutes), people who didn't subscribe to the "communist morals"; most of those who went there never came back). A softer measure was to deport you to other side of the country. To this day there are only approximations of the casualties related to ascension of the Communist party. Not having a job, earning money on the side, immigrating were illegal; travelling abroad could be done only with special papers, but it was next to impossible to go to a capitalist country. It was written in the Constitution that the Communist Party had a leading role in the state affairs. A lot of the infrastructure, buildings and even whole towns were built by conscripts. The salaries were almost the same for everyone, but even if you had money there wasn't much to buy - in order to buy a car you had to be put in a waiting list, electronics were exclusively from the Eastern Bloc countries, you can get Western European/Japanese only in special places with US dollars or on the black market; there were also regular blackouts and shortages of some foods in the end of the regime because they were exported in order to repay the rising government debts. Of course, a lot of those problems didn't exist for party officials; connections and bribes helped a bunch when it came to applying for jobs, promotions and getting into schools and universities. Also towards the end of the Communist regime the Party grew paranoid and caused what was later called "The Big Vacation" when thousands of people from the Turkish minority were made to leave the country because of repressions on ethnical basis (like forced name changes). Granted, things were easier for people had the right connections, but I still have a lot of relatives in Turkey. I am Bulgarian from the aforementioned minority, who had grandparents with some Communist Party connections. If you want to see real socialism, visit Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea or Belarus.
It would take so much longer to reason with people on socialism than it will take capitalism to destroy the planet. Our literal air and water are being taken away, but we sit around acting happy that there’s new shopping malls opening everywhere
@Adrians Cehins If there is only one entity which rules over the economy, the politics and all the institutions this is a dictatorship in the making. There are always people who want more or just something else and Socialism has to suppress them or let them go (most regimes opt for suppression). The closest thing to Socialism without being an authoritarian regime is Scandinavia - political and economic freedom, excellent social net and very high taxes.
Eastern Europeans who lived through the Cold War and have questions like that asked to them must really be fighting the urge to cave the heads in of every so called “western communist”.
It is still way better than what is happening in Asia (China specifically). In 2022 in UE 4.5 millions were born while the UE is about 450 million people. In China which is 1.5 billion people country it was only 10.5 million newborns
As a Macedonian, I appreciate this video. Thank You, Hakim. Edit: Just to put into perspective how fucked we are: Foreign Debt of Yugoslavia in 1991 [in 2023 dollars] - *$41.7 billion* Foreign combined debt of ex-Yugo states - *$159 billion* GDP of Yugoslavia in 1991 [in 2023 dollars] - *$263.8 billion* GDP og Yugoslavia in 1989, it's peak [in 2023 dollars] - $312.4 billion Combined GDP of ex-Yugo states - *$252.2 billion* Population of Yugoslavia in 1991 - *23,532,279 people* Population of Yugoslavia in 1990, it's peak - 23,657,623 people Combined population of ex-Yugo states - *20,466,318 people* Edit: Converting 1991 dollars to 2023 dollars accounts for the inflation of the dollar in that time period.
@radiohead3719 "Macedonians" identify as "Greeks" (Hellenes). "North Macedonians" identify as "Albanians" (30%), "Serbians" (10%) and "Definitely-Not-Bulgarians" (60%). Although a lot of the 3rd group are slowly coming out as less sure they aren't Bulgarians as time goes on.
@Radio Head They are Bulgarians in all but name. They don't identify as such because they've been fed anti-bulgarian propaganda for a century as a result of the 2nd Balkan war
@radiohead3719as a (north) Macedonian i can answer this question. We do not identify as bulgarians in any way. Our country has been under bulgarian rule ( same with ottoman hence why we also have alot of turkish words).
JUST LOOK AT THE DATA CONCERNING POLAND, CZEKIA, SLOVAKIA OR THE BALTICS TO SEE HOW ABSURDLY UNTRUE YOUR CONCLUSIN APPEARS TO BE, AND NOTICE THAT GERMANY AND OTHER COUNTRIES OF WESTERN EUROPE HAVE GOT BIRTH RATES EVEN LOWER.
This really backs up something that Yugopnik and others have touched on: Eastern Europeans are "real" Europeans when it's convenient (e.g. when they can be used as a cudgel against Russia), but ultimately the imperial core views them no differently than they view Africans or Latin Americans, just a source of cheap resources and labor.
@@retrocomputing ok. I have never heard of civilized countries and peoples invading sovereign nations with no provocation(Ukraine), killing civilians, targeting civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools, raping women, kidnapping children and sending them off to the invading country to be brainwashed that they’re actually not Ukrainian but Russian. That’s pretty barbaric behavior. Russia calls itself democratic and civilized yet behaves the way they do when invading other countries. If Russia wasn’t comprised of barbaric mongol orcs, why do Russia’s neighbors try desperately to get in NATO to be protected from future invasions? Surely if Russia was a friendly country, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania wouldn’t be in NATO? Why do those countries feel the need to be in NATO? Because of the Russians who have historically oppressed them for centuries.
The frustrating thing is that young people still blaim socialism for this. They claim that it's because of socialism's failure that it takes us this long to recover.
Self-protection, capitalism is an inhumane system that spreads poverty, famine and war. It's a bottom of the pit and you can't have any vestiges of it left.
В России то же самое. Тут многие пишут из Румынии, Болгарии, стран Прибалтики, и т.д., что ж, напишу и я. Я родился в деревне в 90х и мог наблюдать всё это воочию - безработица, нищета, нищета даже среди работающих людей, алкоголизм, неуверенность в завтрашнем дне, и т.д. Всё это было и всё это есть и поныне. Обидно, когда некоторые пишут что это закономерный процесс урбанизации и роста производительности труда в деревне, в результате которого сельские рабочие оказываются не нужными и просто переезжают в город. К сожалению, это не так. "Мирная" урбанизация это не тот процесс, который внес основной вклад. Основная причина - это развал и деградация экономики, да и вообще всех сфер жизни. В моей родной деревне я в сознательном возрасте застал только огромные руины сельскохозяйственных строений - ангаров, токов, коровников и т.д., также как и заросшие сады и высохшие пруды. Всё это было, но в считанные годы оказалось "неэффективным". Эффективные собственники пилили всё на металлом и уезжали. А после оставались одни руины. Теперь работы там нет, возвращаться мне некуда - все родственники лежат на кладбище. Что ещё производится, так это зерно - земля то довольно богатая, а зерно даёт прибыль здесь и сейчас. Тем не менее, даже на этом производстве дорабатывают своё одни старики - и их с каждым годом всё меньше. В свете этого особо умиляет хвастовство властей о рекордных урожаях зерна и рекордных уровнях вывоза его за границу. Тут радоваться нечему, если знать как дела обстоят на самом деле. Недоедим, но вывезем, ага. Они вывезут. А что осталось - сдадут на металлолом, и тоже вывезут. А деньги выведут сначала в столицу, а потом в иностранные банки, и купят недвижимость в Европе. Теперь "невойну" устроили, говорят проклятый запад нас ненавидит. Ладно, это другая тема, тут можно ещё много всего написать. А вот сейчас я живу в городе - семьи нет, времени нет, денег не особо, но что хуже - нет уверенности в завтрашнем дне. Вернее, есть уверенность что дальше будет только хуже, когда знаешь к чему всё дело идёт. Критика по ролику - можно было бы привести больше статистки тотальной деградации - "русский демографический крест", количество школ и поликлиник в России по годам в сравнении с количеством церквей, падение доходов населения, рост количества наркоманов и ВИЧ-инфицированных, средняя продолжительность жизни и т.д. Вот где самое дно
I am living in Russia. Just from the percent of population gone, many people may have thought, that we are doing not that bad. But in reality, our natural growth is horrible: -13 million since 1991. The only reason for relatively stable demographics-migration of Russians, that after the collapse of the Union were left abroad, in newly independent republics(esspecially Ukraine), and therefore needed to leave their homes for Russia.
@@larryc1616 Muslims in Russia are not growing very fast. they have a slightly higher birth rate, and not all of them. there are different Muslims in Russia
Whoa why is this the first I'm hearing about this? You constantly hear about this in Asia but never in Europe. That's so strange. There are parts of the American South and Midwest experiencing this also. The huge income losses because of the layoffs in tech plus all the bank failures make me think it's going to intensify soon. :/
As someone from Hungary it’s always funny to hear libs (mostly the below 30 generation) about how “socialism’s fault that we are 40 years behind the west”. My reply is always “if it wasn’t for socialism, then we would have fallen a 100 years behind the west, but go ahead, live in the global south”.
Almost like everything is a tradeoff with the US as a global hegemony being a capitalist regime that places trade sanctions on anyone who won't allow billionaires to exist. Maybe a reason North Korea has nuclear weapons, too.
And why do you think it would be like that? The baltic states were on par economically pre 1940 with finland, yet we can see Finland currently being way ahead of us
As a romanian, something I always found interesting was the ignoring of the 90s in romania by the capitalists. The 90s were by FAR the worst point in romania's history, and coincidently this is also the decade "communism" fell. Or was it really a coincidence? Its almost as if switching up an entire government like that into capitalism when the people used to live in social safety nets is a bad idea....not to say romania was ever communist, nor that it didnt try, though the last few years were filled with more of a dictatorship than a communist party, though again, there are many positives from it, such as having the highest home ownership rate in the world, or one of. India is an even better example of capitalistic damage when forced, over 100 million deaths in india alone could be atributed to the British forcing of a capitalist government.
First economic revolutions are always terrible but one has to look at the longevity and total damage done. Like Aden Yemen (a Yugo-type system) was far off better than what it is now.
@@LMB222 He shouldn't be blamed alone, because it would lower the blame on all the others who contributed to the fall of Romania, from the Americans who bombed Bucharest and sent PoWs to gulags, to the Securitate apparatus, to the Western communists, to the traitors who care more about being prestigious in the EU than the citizens.
Someone i was talking to used east and west germany as an example of capitalist superiority. I was tempted to tell them that it was more a take over than a unification. How can you call yourself unified if you double the size of your country, yet take no policy or government from the ones that join you?
Literally everything from No More USSR to the disappearence of Europes massive Jewish minorities who were near majorities in places like Odessa to the depopulation of Eastern Europe to Germany as the leading European power.
Hakim habibi, I love you and your work so much you are doing an essential service. I am here to just ask if you could put your sources in the description, it really helps with introducing others to the evidence of these arguments. thank you bro, amazing video as always
To be fair, demographic trends in Eastern and Western Europe are very similar. The difference is that the West has immigration (also in substantial part from the East), while the East is still an emigration region. What worries me the most is how quickly a population ages as soon as trends go that way and how many crises come about after this process has hit a critical point - and how impossible it is to reverse such trends afterwards, because each generation gets smaller and the relative share of people beyond their "reproductive age" grows accordingly. I don't think technological progress can keep pace with the demands of societies that are so aged. The only positive trend is that people tend to be "more healthy" longer, so that, on average, what it means to be 60 years and older, has changed in the last 50 years (positively). Still, I think radical system change must happen. We don't have societies that can cope with modern demographics, but societies must adapt if trends cannot change (which they can't, many countries have tried).
I remember talking with a friend from Dutchlandia (they shall drain the North Sea) about this. He mentioned that a lot of their tradesman are from Eastern Europe. I asked him if he saw any sort of problem with that. He said no iirc. Its a bit saddening innit? "Well they could just stay where they were, they are here by choice."
It should be noted, however, that while emigration hurt Eastern Europe hard after the collapse of the USSR, it would have happened DURING the USSR times if those countries had had open borders. My parents grew up in the USSR and it wasn't paradise. Just FYI, why did people in the USSR not leave villages behind? You think, because it was a good place to leave? Nah, simply because villagers could not legally move out of a village. They were "assigned" to them just like during feudal serfdom. If people could move out of the USSR, they would. Hence, many famous cases of sportsmen, scientists, and other "brains" leaving the USSR at the earliest convenience. Stanislav Kurilov, for example. And damn, illegal USSR dissolution? Tell it to all my ancestors who died in GULAG. Our people voted out of that jail of nations, over 90% voted out.
Thank you for including east Germany into this. People tend to look at the shiny cities, like Berlin, Dresden or Leipzig, which got massive attention by investors and public funding (there are some fantastic clips of my hometown Dresden, just after the reunification, a city I still got know as a child. Compared to what it is now it is really astonishing). Both for the better and the worse. The cities are gentrifies to hell and back with great public transportation and job opportunities, while the rural towns have become desertes. This isnt a new phenomenon, but long ongoing. I remember field trips in small villages where you could see rotten huts and fences, farm equipment that belonged into a museum and empty windows. And the answer for why is as clear as can be: the Treuhand/forced privatization.
(This is going to delve into an unrelated topic to this, but the same time it's somewhat related because of the imperialism): You should sometimes also mention the always unmentioned and forgotten part of the Global North/the Developed World, Japan and South Korea. Because they are essentially doing the same thing as Western Europe, doing economic imperialism on it's southern Asian neighbors. And that Imperialism is prevailant in my country the Philippines. I recently I saw an article on Google (I think) of just a very tiny group of Filipinos protesting against several Japanese corporations apparently building their coal power plants in the countryside. And there's also a Filipino prostitution sentiment (because Japanese men have been using Filipinas, Filipino women for prostitution/their own comfort). Not to mention, most Filipinos are vying for Japanese culture (like Japanese food, manga, anime, self-discipline culture etc.) because of the economic exploitation that the Global North is imposing, creating a sense of dread for Filipino society and culture. And because of the liking and constant vying for other cultures, this phenomenon in the Philippines is always known as a "colonial mentality". It honestly makes me sad, angers me, and it's heartbreaking, knowing that your country has been both an economic and social slave to your own enemy since WW2 (because Japan occupied us the Philippines during the war). And I must admit, I do have some interest in anime, although at least I don't praise the Japanese and their culture often as someone superior than to us Filipinos. I have to mention the problem of the Filipino colonial mentality on praising Japanese culture, because it reflects on us Filipinos. Because the more we Filipinos praise our enemy too much, the more passion for Filipino culture and society fades away.
Hi, I'm from Serbia near Repušnica. TLDR: The declining population in Serbia is almost dramatic. The mentioned Repušnica is mountainous and inaccessible, its and similar villages depopulation started during the industrialisation. Economic decline after Yugoslavia dissolution is not the sole reason. It is interesting how socialist managed in 20 years after ww2 to bring the country to its peak in industrialisation and economy, and now after 20 years of Yugoslavia dissolution, we are not even returning to the previous standards. I confirm the depopulation of my region, the municipality is like halved in population. There are a lot of villages like Repišnica here, but they are not good examples for depopulation after Yugoslavia dissolution. Most of those are mountainous villages which started to be depopulated when the industrialisation started in 60's and 70's. I have visited Repušnica several times, and one of the villagers explained to me that people moved to the cities to work in factories. They would dismantle their houses, transport the bricks, roof tiles, wooden beams, and other materials to the city, and rebuild their homes there. This was happening even before the dissolution of Yugoslavia. As you can see on the image of Repušnica you provided there are only hills and forests have, little to no surfaces for agricultural fields. Repušnica has no permanent residents, and people mostly visit in the summer for hunting and logging. Some other mountainous villages near the Bulgarian border are also left with only a few residents. The roads to these villages are often in poor condition and not asphalted. To reach the farthest villages, one usually needs a terrain vehicle. Therefore, living in these remote locations is not very convenient in modern times when people need more access to the city. The narrative is that people populate this remote locations during the Ottoman rule to escape oppression. However, after the liberation and especially during the industrialization period, people moved to cities for better and more convenient lives. That was the story for the mountinous villages, but in Vojvodina, a rich agricultural region, there is also a declining village population. In my city, after the wars and destruction of the industry in the 90s, the population has almost halved in two decades. Many people are leaving for Belgrade, larger cities, or some western countrie. Many doctors and nurses are migrating to Germany, for example. Today marks the 24th anniversary of the beginning of the NATO bombing of Serbia. We have barely recovered to the level of the 1980s. After World War II, Yugoslavia was already a backward country and had been destroyed by the war. However, the socialist government managed to achieve peak development and industrialization in just 20 years by the 1970s. New capitalist regimes inherited all of the infrastructure and facilities but sold them for almost nothing. As a result, factories were left empty and deteriorating. Only in recent years have some of the factory facilities and halls started to be renewed and operational again, albeit with minimal wages for workers.
Now do west Europe's housing crisis! The free movement of peoples is only good for the employers(&service providers), and the people moving(although you're effectively knee capping yourself if you don't). It's all short term gains while Europe crumbles.
This is a good article, I've visited most countries featured and seen for myself the semi deserted towns and villages, where it is common to hear people say they wished they were still living in the communist era, because whilst life might not have been that great, at least they knew what the day would bring. In parts of Bulgaria the farming methods are straight out of the 15th century, everything is done by hand, with an occasional donkey helping out. The EU is one massive failure unless you live in one of the richer overcrowded countries. What possesses manufacturers to import labour when the obvious solution is to move the factories to the areas where they are needed? Is the EU just a few very selfish countries hoarding everything at the expense of their neighbours? Another thing I notice whilst travelling through these countries is how unspoiled and beautiful they are. Slovakia, East Germany and many of the countries of the former Yugoslavia are awesome, why would anyone want to leave? For the answer to Eastern European countries in decline look at West Germany and to a lesser extent France. Britain is also part of the East European problem, instead of training its own people and investing in automation, it raped Eastern European countries of their most able people, the very people who were most likely to bring prosperity to their own countries. Job agencies are in it for the money and they don’t care whose lives they wreck, far too many don’t even place adverts for local workers, preferring to bypass them in favour of cheap labour from elsewhere, often Eastern Europe. Multinational companies are the enemy of common sense, they have one aim and that is too make a tiny number of people disproportionality rich. Why do the rich EU countries buy so much from China instead of supporting the poorer countries in the EU. The EU baffles me, it’s unelected, unaccountable and appears to hate the very people it claims to represent. Shame on the EU at every level.
These stalinist/leninist nazbol scumbag youtubers all of sudden popping up everywhere that are presenting their solution to the crisis of Europe is all part of this whole evil plan. It's why so many people are getting fooled to become marxist but they fail to realize both marxism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin created by these psycho globalist scoundrels who want to control the world.
I can tell you that the successful people stayed in Eastern Europe. Companies rarely hire people from abroad even if they have the right skills. They prefer local candidates who already live in the country. Living in another country is grounds for auto rejection of job application.
@@Alex-df4lt I wish my home country "Britain" acted in the same way, many jobs are never advertised in Britain, especially when it comes to farm or factory work.
Hakim, can you make text versions of your videos or write some articles on these topics? You make very deep analysis of many interesting problems, so i think many people would prefer reading to listening for better understanding
Even in Slovenia, where I'm from, which is regarded as one of the better off countries of the former "Eastern Europe", we-well, some of use, anyway-can clearly see the decay, both economic as well as societal, and it's heartbreaking. Also, will never *not* laugh at the "Ch*mtrails just lines of c*ke for Jesus" patron name.
@@fuqupal Only if you're taking in consideration few decades of the 20th century, otherwise not so much. Culturally Slovenia is more on the west side than Greece for example. Iron curtain was just a short phase, and people still treat it like it was in Europe like forever and still exists. Not even mentioning the fact that Slovenia was never behind it.
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The illegal and anti-democratic dissolution of Socialism in Eastern Europe was the single greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the past century.
My editor was rushed due to a variety of factors when making this video, please ignore the few spelling mistakes in the title headers.
*Sources:*
www.reuters.com/article/us-serbia-population-idUSKCN1B315O
dorf-alwine.business.site
Depopulated and Abandoned Areas in Serbia in the 21st Century-From a Local to a National Problem
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www.euronews.com/green/2023/01/18/living-in-a-ghost-town-meet-the-moldovans-who-refuse-to-be-climate-migrants
THE DEMOGRAPHIC IMPACT OF SUDDEN IMPOVERISHMENT: EASTERN EUROPE DURING THE 1989-94 TRANSITION
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www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/future-of-aging-populations-and-economic-growth-in-eastern-europe-petrakis\
www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1994-806-30-Johnson.pdf
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05775132.2015.1012402?journalCode=mcha20
listen to the deprogram to hear Hakim talk about BALLS
oh also thank you for putting your sources most people dont do that😊
Great video Hakim but why don't you post your sources in the TH-cam description? Does this have something to do with TH-cam Censorship?
How was it undemocratic? The people ousted their dictatorships and established democracies were the people voted against communist policies.
happy beginning of ramadan, hakim
As a Romanian it is depressing to see my nation lose more and more people. Romania's population has dropped from 23million to under 19 million. If you go and travel through the countryside you will see old people or abandoned buildings. The village that my grandparents live in has nearly no young people in it, as there are no jobs from which young people to be able to make a living from. Nearly all villages through the nation are like this. Despite all of these villages having great sceanery, plenty of cheap land and decent infrastructures, there are no jobs so only retired people live there.
Don't fear what you don't understand. Yes, many towns in romania are experiencing this. This is NORMAL, and what we want. Every other nation that joined the eu earlier than us did the same exact thing. You go to other countries that pay higher wages, but your life is back home, and you return in a few years with money and a career. Around 80% of all romanians that leave the country return before 4 years. 96% of romanians that have left have said they plan on returning. This is how the eu is made to function.
In America you will see buildings and cars but no people. That's because no one ever goes outside and they're just indoors on their phone.
@@tortellinifettuccine this is a fantasy. Most who left do low skilled manual labor for which no ecquivalent well paid work can be found at home.
@@rolandperlitz8508 yes, hence why they go abroad, make money, then come back, and stimulate the economy
@@tortellinifettuccine Some of my tovarishchi in Romania don't get to see their fathers often cause they're abroad, working. Does that seem like a good system? Does having to go abroad to get enough money for your family to prosper seem like a positive thing for the populace? The "per capita" wages in Romania (which are not a good measurement anyway) have been lower than commie wages until the 2010s, and even then, they fluctuated. Also, I can't find any sources to back up your claims, mind sending the names of the publications?
As a Bulgarian, I can say that this is an obvious issue here. Not only is our population falling rapidly, what is left is getting concentrated in the cities, with much of the countryside being a handful of older people, with their kids/grandkids either in the cities, or out of the country completely. I can't lie, I'm very worried
Just make immigration easier. It's very clear to everyone that Eastern Europeans are not going to solve their population problems by giving births. 🤔
That is not an eastern issue. Or rather this is an issue you start seeing in the east first due to a lack of funding.
Almost all wealth creation today is happening in cities. Sure we need farms, but if you look at how many people one farmer can feed today, rural areas should be so thinly populated. Keeping the same standard of living in a rural area as in a city is much more expensive. Longer electric cables, larger distances for you internet connection, more roads, longer commutes and so on. Big cities are more expensive because the people already there resist the population densities and construction required to make them efficient and thus cheap, it is not an inherent feature of cities. Thriving rural areas are a luxury, not an investment. You need money to make them possible. Many people feel like you, so rich western countries spend the money. But it is only delaying the inevitable. The most remote rural areas in western Germany, just to give you an example, have started emptying out.
That's called urbanisation buddy.
@@oneukum but especially germany shows that it is possible to balance things out a bit. Especially in the two wealthy south states, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, where there are hundreds of small companies in the rural areas, manufacturing some state of the art products, paying high wages for the workers, who are living nearby and spending the main part of their money in theese rural areas.
And since working from home became big, even more people are moving to the villages again, because living there is just cheaper than in big cities and brings much more quality of life.
That's because eastern Europeans are racists and shun immigrants into their country yet love immigrating to other countries = total hypocrites
This also happens in some Western European regions. In Spain we have an area that is known as "España vaciada" (Emptied Spain), which is a mostly rural area that has lost most of their population, as they migrated both to the main cities and to other countries like France, Germany or the UK. This process began in the late 1950s with the restoration of international relations between Spain and those countries (after WW2). By the way, there is an excellent comedy film from 1971 parodying those migrations called "Vente a Alemania, Pepe" (Come to Germany, Pepe), in which a young rural man called José [Pepe is a Spanish way of calling Josés too] decides to try his luck working in Germany to earn money as the wages there are higher. He ends up being worked to the bone in three jobs (one main job and two part-time jobs).
Same in Portugal. And Italy. What is happening is thanks to the EU rules, that attributed agriculture quotas to each state, which meant many countries that had large agrarian history saw thousands of farms closed, and the population headed to the big cities. The EU nations have largely became tertiary economies, based on services. All industrial capacity was moved overseas, and we depend on foreign food products. The war in Ukraine and the souring of relations with Russia (the barn of the planet), has sent the EU into deep crisis. The EU is now in deep recession, and i suspect the worst is yet to come. All thanks to disastrous policies by Brussels, and their subservience to Washington.
German supermarkets have taken over the market in Europe, food contaminated with pesticides and above all Spanish vegetables and fruits are a nightmare -
in the countryside in poland where i live a lot of people came from england/ usa and thanks to that they built houses and opened small businesses such as sawmills, construction companies etc.
The most important thing is a positive attitude and willingness to work
in Poland we have a problem with the birth rate but several million Ukrainians came to us - mainly women and children 😂
This happens in the US as well, with the best and brightest leaving both rural and rust belt areas for affluent and modern urban areas. And quite often there's a cultural/political rift because education tends to create a liberal cosmopolitan outlook that clashes with the Trump supporting relatives left behind.
Yep, birthrates in Spain and Italy are way lower than in Eastern Europe too.
@@auggieeast Concentrating brightest minds is one of the factors that make US so successful. EU just follows suit. Poor US regions are poor because they have backward mindset. One manifestation is voting for Trump. These people exist in all countries, also in the EU. And everywhere, they are poor because of their mindset. They tend to shift the blame to others - rich capitalists, West, government, globalists but never blame themselves.
As an Eastern European I am very grateful for your covering of this depressing topic. Keep up the good work!
Eastern Europe is just ahead of Western Europe when it comes to both economics and politics.
@@raquetdude its literally not
@@Sven-ql3ch I think they mean the Liberalization of Western Europe - which is progressing into late stage capital, while Eastern Europe was accelerated in its "Liberalization" of markets. Eastern Europe was gutted and the Nobles (Corrupt business/political class) where anointed during the transition.
Will is referencing a "race to the bottom" you made the mistake of associating "ahead" as positive.
Depressing? Wait until you found out same consequences are applied for African nations yet for them, they die trying
I was about to comment exactly this, thank you
When I was in my final year of high-school a few years ago here in post Yugoslavia, we had all the different university faculties come to our schools, and every single one of them used "once you finish your degree, we will help you find a job in the EU", i.e study hard now you you can abandon your countire's economy later and work in Germany for a slightly better wage. Brain drain is a very big part of modern imperialism.
Have fun staying poor
Slažem se, druže
Najbolje inženjere,doktore,majstore itd. izvoze napolje,na kraju ovde ostane ili ko se izuzetno dobro snašao ili ko ne valja ništa
Damn, it's almost like capitalism creates a class of traitors who consciously sabotage the national project for their own interests. You know those people get kickbacks for trafficking labor to the west.
Except it is nothing new for the ex yu countries at all, people working in the west supported yugoslavian economy in every crisis since early 70s, when i was in school, early 80s in georgraphy we learnt that yugoslavia at that time was at best barely capable to reoplace its population with a two decades trend on deminishing growth and entering the negative growth back then, croatia and slovenia already had negative growth, bosnia and nothern serbia were between negative and positive, m.n. so so, and only macedonia and kosovo had the positive growth still, so yu as a whole maintained ots 22 million for a time but it never got to 23 million, i remember when i was on school in that time, most families had at most two children, rare were with three, probably more with a single child than with three children, it just a normal consequences of the society that shifts from the agrarian to industrialised one.
Also nombers vary a lot and not all are the same or calculated the same, for an instance it looks like more people are leaving croatia than serbia, which is not exactly true if you look at the number of empty households in slavonia and vojvodina, with an asterisk that slavonia is the poorest part of croatia and vojvodina is the richest part of serbia, then the difference is even bigger. The thing is that in the 90s due to wars croatia lost a lot of population as refugees, both croats and serbs, while serbia gained a lot that came in from croatia, bosnia and kosovo, their numbers were never clear or accurate, but probably between 1 and 2 million all in all, ofc they also lost some of their domestic population too, but politics there played a big role in everything and certainly in producing of numbers of any measurement, so it is difficult to comment and compare, same for other ex republics, every one has its own specific reasons and conditions.
Ultimatively, this recent wave of emigration also differs on how it's done, temporarely or permanently, eu countries have that privilege to have it more temporarely becausecpeople can just m9ve and work without changing their documents and moving their entire life elsewhere, on their countries is to make them wanna go home, if not suits them well, if need be we can always import cheap workforce from elsewhere, if you don't want too many foreigners make more children, i lived until my twenties in yugoslavia, nobody can tell me it was better then because it wasn't, some things maybe, but overall no it was certainly not, the difference is you can't be a weight on society as easy as back then, but a working man can afford more than he could back then, but can't have some things free that he once could too, but i know how many pairs of shoes average middle class child had in my school, in gymnasium not some trade school and how many they have now, or what types of cars their fathers drove back then, and how many cars a family had, you won't easily find a family with only one car nowadays, people are not realistic, yes depopulation is a problem in entire developed world, western countries have no problem with imported labour force, neither should we, and we in fact do it too, on a smaller level as our industrial output is smaller too.
It's not just population. First, East-European countries gave up most of their industrial base - all those hardware factories and plants that were built in Soviet time. Now they don't have much by way of jobs outside the services sector, and people are fleeing for better life opportunities.
Spot on
Glad to see you also talking about this very very important issue. Thank you for spreading awareness and explaining the actual fundamental causes of this tragic phenomenon. Top tier content comrade.
Deprogram Balkan Odyssey collaboration when? I’m kidding, glad to see you on here, love your content and greetings from Bulgaria!
👀👀
@@YaBoiHakim They're onto something 👀
@@Sasheto05 I'm glad to hear that mate, thank you for the support - greetings to Bulgaria!
I am very happy to see that people have begun to notice the tragedy that is Eastern Europe. Even here in Greece, which was not in the "Eastern Bloc", the degradation you describe has been happening for a while. They privatized trains, they decayed, two of them crashed killing some 60 youths a month ago. During the pandemic our hospitals were severely underequipped and understaffed, resulting in thousands of deaths. About two weeks ago some tourist resort owners from Mykonos hired thugs to beat up an archaeologist who pointed out that their businesses were violating regulations regarding the ancient site there. On the streets you see delivery drivers that should be in retirement, driving in the rain. Our power company daily cuts power to hundreds of households to bully people in advance before the due date of their bill. Liberalization, privatization, EU "integration" has destroyed us. Our elderly see our brightest working in places like NASA, and are proud instead of asking why they are not working here. Our young glamorize pointless violence over sports and worship cars, shoes, and the "grind", thinking that they are somehow "rebelling" against the system. And then we wonder why nobody wants to have children here. We have been here since time immemorial, only to be wiped out by the unelected European central bank, and if we dare protest every liberal publication will say "um sorry sweetie, Greece can't afford its lifestyle". We need to stop thinking that we will somehow make it into the club of big Western powers, and realize that we and our Eastern neighbors need to stand together and overcome the tide of destruction.
@@cordfortina9073 The Communist Party of Cyprus (AKEL, Progressive Party of Working People) was in government in Cyprus 1998-2003 and 2008-2013
The recent train crash was absolutely tragic. Unfortunately people don't want to acknowledge the death toll of neo-liberalism and its consequences. I hope for the best for you and everyone in Greece.
@@cordfortina9073 Turkish cyprus has a foreign «patron» of sorts, investing in economy and stimulating immigration at least. Greek cyprus became a very infamous tax haven, which is very useful and Works if the nation is small and manages to build an economy around or with it. It is by definition a solution that will not Work for the majority of places and people, and even many tax havens are not so lucky, there is Poverty in some Caribbean islands.
Yes, good that you mention Greece, because the depopulation phenomenon has to do with Orthodox and Muslim religions.
Catholic and protestant countries are not depopulated.
In short, go ahead and stop blaming capitalism when the fault DEFINITELY lies in your culture.
@@jokerwick Thank you, that is much appreciated. May the future be brighter. Wish you well too!
As a Hungarian from Budapest - but with strong ties to the countryside - I can state that the real problem is that the differences between cities and rural areas increased in an unbelievable rate. Of course, this trend started in the '80s but rapidly accelerated in the last 10 years or so.
Same in Bulgaria, Portugal, CHina too
This is called urbanisation and its been going on for.. well 200 years give or take Imao.
@@alexanderrose1556 Wow you're so smart! :)
I had no idea that this was going on! It's all right then! :))
@@adamkovacs4368 Go there then fascist supporter.
Here in US just opposite, cities are unlivable , homeless, piss , poops on sidewalk , hijacking cars at gun point, drug addiction epidemic . US is ahead of EU it comes soon. Liberalism is mental illness. Vote for Soros / WEF ideology will speed up.
As someone from Eastern Europe ( specifically Romania) , this video really got to me, and made me reflect on a phenomenon that is so hard to ignore but nonetheless myself & many others try to not think about it as it brings so much sadness to us. I remember in my early childhood, many villages were still mostly populated, and even though this was during the late 90's & early 2000's, I still felt that there still was something left of a community in them. As I got older, I noticed a trend that was becoming impossible to just ignore, literally year after year w/o exception the amount of people living in those villages became significantly smaller.
After a while, whenever I'd go to a village to visit relatives or friends, instead of feeling a sense of happiness that I am finally away from the hustle and bustle of the cities, I was greeted with a sense of melancholy, most certainly due to the fact that most of these once thriving villages are now nothing but a shell of their former selves. I can say without a shred of doubt that these same villages I'd often visit now have at most 15% of the population that they once had from the time of my childhood. These villages are situated in some of the most picturesque landscapes I have had the privilege of laying my eyes on, with rustic homes in traditional styles, but now they lie often in disrepair, invoking a sense of emptiness in people like myself. The situation has gotten so bad that I no longer find any pleasure in even visiting those villages, as it simply brings way too much sadness whenever I do.
Thank you so much for shedding light on this often overlooked issue Hakim, it really means a lot for those of us from here. 11/10 amazing video as always Habibi
The villages were populated because of the Iron curtain. When communism fell, everyone who could leave picked their bags and left.
@@marcusj9947 why do you speak so authoritatively on an issue you know absolute nothing about? Have you spoken to any of those villagers? If not then please shut your mouth! The vast vast majority of people I know who left the villages for the city would go back in a second if there were jobs to sustain their communities. Anecdotal I know but literally just about everyone I know from the countryside say that life was better during socialism. They'd stay if they could, but because of the troubles brought upon by the free market, small farmers simply can't compete with massive agrobusiness, so people are forced to find work in cities (or as is the case in Romania, migrate to the west to find employment). So please, don't speak on a topic you know jack shit about, it will just make you look even more stupid than you already are.
@@sundorgo6973 Why do you assume I have no family or relatives in Eastern Europe? You know nothing about me.
@@marcusj9947 Go f yourself, propagandon
@@marcusj9947 i mean, that’s true to an extent.
1. A lot of people would have stayed even if the Iron Curtain fell, if there is no economic crisis.
2. Not a single person would want to emigrate to the west if the west wouldn’t exploit the whole world.
Me again. did you know that Lenin didn't like shooting stars? he liked shooting tzars.
Edit: thank you everyone for the likes, if you want more of my...no OUR memes wait for another comrade Hakim video.
Hell yeah. Monarchs get the guillotine
Interesting fact: Lenin didn't even know that the royal family had been killed for several days.
Hi
@@alili945 Hi
@@alihashim3855 hi
Honestly, although the way socialism was implemented in Romania was fucked up, there was a significant effort made to develop the entire country, urban and rural areas, not just the big urban centers. That's the most significant thing. We had libraries, cinemas, industry (so jobs), medical facilities and schools that are now gone. Not only villages are dying but small towns have also been decimated by capitalism.
It's honestly infuriating to see so many "compatriots " even in this comment section still drinking the koolaid and being good little slaves for western capital like it's going to benefit them. We've been so thoroughly brainwashed.
Oh my god, we barely even have public kindergartens today and that's in the big cities.
Dude from Latvia here. Our periphery is basically an empty space. There's a lot of life in the capital and some life in a handful of medium towns. Anywhere between those places, however, the population numbers are laughable. Of course, official state propaganda is still blaming "Soviet Occupation" for everything, including obvious demographic problems.
The parts about "brain drain" and labor power extraction are spot on as well - we've been heavily de-industrialized since the LSSR, however our educational system still can produce laborers who are not that much less qualified than our western colleagues, but will work for significantly less money. I see ads online about "welders wanted for oil rig in Sweden" regularly, not to mention that our entire IT sector is outsourced by foreign companies because we're relatively cheap and relatively qualified. Thank God we don't have oil, otherwise we'd probably get democratized to bits. We do, however, have a huge hydropower plant left from the inhumane commies, and the funny thing about it is that while it generates enough electricity to power ~70% of the country (I might be mistaken about the number, please feel free to correct me), our electrical bills are insane, cuz all of the generated power gets sold to an electricity stock exchange, and then we buy it back from them at a much higher price. I love the smell of free market in the morning.
The worst part is, though, that people around here don't see that the root cause of all this insanity is capitalism, at least not yet. They'll blame whatever from their neighbors to supernatural forces, but never capitalism as a system.
Are there any Baltic Germans left? Or did they all get chased out or away from the Country, after the War?
sveiki! vienmēr labi sastapt tautieti šīs vietās!
It the fault of communism! All problems that surfaced when the USSR was split up and after 30 years of capitalism and not getting any better is the fault of the damn commies!
@@frenzalrhomb6919 AFAIK, since most of the Germans who lived here in the first half of the XX century were bourgeois (either landlords or capitalists), they were repressed or forced to emigrate eventually, and that was even before Soviet Latvia. At least, currently the populations of the Baltics mostly consist of people of the titular nation plus a large chunk of Russians left from the Soviet times. This situation, by the way, is incredibly convenient for the ruling class, because it allows to manipulate people effortlessly, through nationalism - titular nations are brainwashed to hate Russians because "they're occupants", and Russians are, in turn, brainwashed into hating back on equally asinine ideas of Russian chauvinism and imperial revanchism. Basically, the ruling class is deliberately keeping us all hating each other for no good reason to prevent any solidarity among the working class. Works like a charm too, never failed to deliver over the last 33 years - imagine any inhumane law or policy, and our "elites" could probably pull it off without fear of any real protest from the people. In this regard, the French never cease to inspire me - whenever their government tries to screw them over, they roll out the guillotine. We should learn to do that too.
@@kalvisjatnieks7740 Sveiks, Kalvi!
Ļoti patīkami redzēt latviešu biedru. Ceru, ka internacionālisms un strādnieku solidaritāte kādreiz uzvarēs cīņā par mūsu tautiešu prātiem :)
As a Lithuanian who lives in the capital city, which is actually growing; seeing towns and villages outside dying and seeing more old people than young people feels depressing, especially knowing that these places used to thrive during Soviet times. The whole privatization and the transition to capitalism lead to a closure or selling of the factories, leading to unemployement and less opportunities. I doubt that the future will be better, as it keeps declining.
I feel your pain bro, I am lithuanian too, I live in Ireland tho. however my old home is going to be destroyed because of railway construction. And everyone is going to relocated to an apartment probably. The future is not looking too great
@Working Prole inc. Lithuania is fucked. The Lithuanian SSR was making so many electronics and was one of richest republics. Now they make sprats and commit Alt F4...
True but as an environmentalist I like to see nature take back some of the land myself. I mean where are the animals supposed to live?
At least you don't live in Latvia which is en route to become one big ghost town
Nice to see a few fellow Lithuanians here in the comments. I'm from Kaunas originally, and what you describe is so visible there. I feel like most people in Eastern Europe can see that something wrong is happening, I am hopeful though that we and others can spread an understanding of the real reasons behind this hollowing-out of our countries. Maybe then change will be possible, eventually...
This video really struck a nerve with the reactionaries, so many comments full of cope
I have a personal experience on this. Being an italian my country """accepted""" at least 1 million albanians and romanians that were both praised (from escaping EVIL COMMUNIST REGIMES when they came after their socialist governments fell) and discriminated (you know we are westerners and they are not.... so they are inferior, dirty, thieves etc). My ex-gf was romanian and her parents lived under socialism, but when it fell they needed to find jobs once again. Her mother came here and stayed for a long time and sent money back, while her father worked in the military. Despite being that they still almost froze every winter and all other shit. When i went with them in Romania for a vacation i found a monument in Bucharest for the "victims of communism". Kinda ironic...
I could add other stories, for example the sheer amount of abandoned industries around the roads is just mind blowing. Also railways left to rot. When i asked a local if the trains passed a lot of times in the station (because my hotel was near the train station) he said "before 1991 yes, now not so much" and it was a city of 100thousand people (Piatra Neamț). Also public transport being defunded so lines of trolley bus left alone replaced with enviromentally friendly diesel buses (bought with EU funds). Food prices at supermarkets were the same as in Italy but their salaries are 1/4 of what you get here. Usual capitalust masterpiece
@@sm3675 in one of 1991 20thousands albanians landed in Italy with the ship Vlöra (Valona in italian) in the city of Bari. The distance between Albania and Italy is quite small so they made it alive but it was one of the first humanitarian crisis, and a sign of something coming. Albanians chose Italy because it was their only choice (up there were yugoslav civil war) and for whatever reason RAI (italian state own television and radio) broadcasted in socialist albania and so albanians learnt italian
@@andreamarino6010 "For whatever reason" lol the reason was they intended to cause the crisis and would rather make money broadcasting Italian into the target nation before you have to leave than spend money teaching you Italian when you arrive.
@@briankrebs7534 RAI started to broadcast in the 60s i believe, far far before the collapse in the 90s. But knowing imperialist historical italian ambitions it was probably a way to influence Albania
My boy why do you think the states were in such catastrophic states in the 90s? There is a reason nobody like Commies in these countries. The way you Tankies praise USSR and its colonies makes me wonder, why you dont justify American slavery, because the slaves were indeed unfree, but they at least were provided with food and a shelter. The transition was a catastrophe, but this neither makes the regimes suddenly "good" or gives an answer to why the countries are in such a poor state nowadays.
If you look at all those oligarchs and former ones from the eastern block, you can see that most of them had strong connections to the communist regime or were part of it. Yeltsin and his clique were just former communist party members, a well known example. And there is the issue. Leninism requires widespread corruption to function properly, for democracies on the other hand corruption is a death sentence.
Dont try to argue with me, because my family has many former communist officials from this system and many more who resisted against it. Thievery is that what drives this systems, because if they functioned as planned everything would fall apart, what actually happened after the iron courtain fell.
@@derunfassbarebielecki in one comment you succesfully defended slavery and showed that you don't understand socialism. I won't try to argue, you are too far gone, none will save you. Enjoy lick the boots of your oppressors
I live in Romania, and it makes me despair when I see people worship the system that has taken so much from us and brought so much hate. I can not hope that things get better, only that they get worse slower, I can see no way out, and it pains me. I see people hunger, live in the cold, and the ones that don't envy and want to take, the same way they were taken from.
Capitalist Realism
I live in Austria because of the conditions in Romania.
Moved to Austria at age 6 for a better life.
Never got to experience what it is to be a Romanian at all. Miss the place but u can't do shit there.
@R yes you can, you going to Austria at 6 made sense, romania was quite fucked in the 90s, but romania today is on ANOTHER LEVEL compared to its neighbors. Bucharest alone is richer than all of Bulgaria
I went to romania with my at the time gf (who was romanian). And holy shit dude it was really depressing seeing so many things abandoned and how people talked about pre 1991
Yes but then again. You can't blame only the system. There are people so brainwashed by the system, by their old and poor ways that they can't even grasp anything else...
As a Lithuanian I still remember the stories of my parents living in the USSR. It wasnt perfect but we had so much more back then. We were a functional and connected society which was able to stand on its own, and that being something I have never had the privelege of experiencing, it makes me sad. What makes me even more sad is what we could of had as my grandparents lived under stalin prior to soviet revisionism and before they died would often talk about how the future awaited them but it was robbed. Good video!
Hi there from Russia!
Its patetic how agressive we are all nowadays 😢
Why cant we just be friends? Europe is such a smart place.
Why we fight knowing that America is happy?
Peace 🙏❤
@@RUSTA5 ❤️❤️ our enemies aren't each other but our bourgeoisie and the imperialists which make us fight.
@Toivo58479 thousands of times better
>half of the population was functionally illiterate
@Toivo58479 source: my grandparents who was alive prior to 1940 and lived under the Smetona dictatorship. But no of course, it doesn't have the boot print of the EU on it for you to lick which is something our lovely Eesti neighbors are known for.
@Toivo58479 I'm telling you right now that its bullshit. This may have been the case for urban Lithuanians however this was no where near the case for rural Lithuanians. But yeah keep licking the boot of the westies and keep asskissing Finland, I'm sure things will get better. Sometime, eventually, maybe.
Such a diverse community you have cultivated here Hakim. Much love to all comrades from within the belly of the beast!
A guy I used to work was from a village in Serbia, near the border of Croatia. His village's children have pretty much all left, like himself.
I drove through South Eastern Serbia ... and the whole place just seemed void of human life. Yet Serbia claims they have a population of 6.8 Million which is just impossible. Slavonia in Croatia is undergoing same fate.
From perspective of Pole.
1. "Funnily enough their recommendations for suitable solutions to the problems of rising mortality and declining fertility rates in Eastern Europe are stronger support measures in health and more effective family transfers but also much more aggressive policies to enhance tax collection to support employment, minimum wages and social safety nets and to control inflation. Basically things that were non-issues prior to market transition - last verse was a clear referral to communist/ socialist system we had before transition"
Unfortunately - that is a lie. People were living in absolute poverty. Sure, they had money and housing. However no-one could get any basics. Starting from food ending with home appliances such as washing machines etc. Govt controlled the prices. Therefore everything was cheap. But also widely unavaible since producing products wasn't actually worth it for such a low price.
People all across Warsaw Pact countries started rising up. I don't know what was the reason in every country. But in Poland it was mainly because of INSANE decline of living standards. Sure, we are told that Soliadarity(main anti-communist movement at the time) rised up to fight for the freedom, etc. But that's not exactly true. The first rise of Solidarity was because workers started to lose their jobs, they had their pay reduced. While there was shortage of literally everything. These issues existed in almost entire 70s and whole 80s - before the market transition.
2. Loss of jobs after transition. Poland in late 80s was literally on the brink of collapse. We had debts we couldn't pay off. Most of our agriculture and manufacturing sector was not profitable. Why? Because the west was vastly superior in that matter. They could produce more, cheaper, better. We were not competitive. That's why when the transition happened plenty of unprofitable sectors had to be cut down - so the profitable ones will recover, so we get investments from the west and get more jobs. The truth is if we countinued the way we did in the 80s - the outcome would have been much worse. Author also mentions unemployment levels - 20% in the 90s and 7% in 20s. Yes, 90s were terrible. People were suffering. That's the part I'm not happy about. Govt was able to at least provide the basics to the poorest so they get to live with minimum of dignity while we transition. That was partially because of IMF which didn't allow us to implement many social benefits etc and partially it was on all of us. We all stupidly believed that by quickly changing from socialist to market economy we will all be far better off. Which is true when you compare it long term. However we disregarder many dangers such as insane housing costs, social care and mentioned before lack of help for the poorest during transition. However there is also some manipulatio from the author here. 7% unemployment was during covid. Before and after it's changed over a decade but sat between 2-5%. In comparison unemployment before transition was around 10%. And that's despite the fact that the country provided jobs for everyone - no matter how useless said job was. So nowadays we have plenty of jobs that in theory produce some kind of value, while before we had plenty of useless jobs that didn't bring much value just for the sake of providing jobs.
3. Migration - true. We are migrating like crazy. While living standards got better, we also have the freedom to get the heck out of here and live better life elsewhere. Author also mentioned raising retirement age. Well. It had to be done. Sorry, but expecting women to work until they are 50 and men until they are 55 was simply unsustainable. On top of that plenty of people instead of retiring were choosing various insane govt social retirement programs - for example you could be alcoholic at age of 40 and go on said social retirement while getting 80% of normal retirement money. 3 out of 4 of my grandparents retired between age 45 and 50. All on those said weird govt programs - starting from fake diseases/ disabilities ending on the alcoholic example I mentioned. Thanks god you don't get that option now. Sure, disabled people get help from the govt. In some cases it's much more significant than it was before. But you can't fake it nowadays. Nor you can't go on alcoholic retirement. Currently the retirement age is 60 for women (which is honestly amazing) and 65 for men. In this day and age I think around 63-64 sounds fair for both genders. Retirement age of 50 was introduced when you got to live 60 years on average. However times have quickly changed and suddenly people who reitred in their 50s get to live into their 70s on average.
In conclusion. Transition period was terrible. It makes me mad how shitty of a choice we had. All thanks to IMF which didn't allow us to do many social policies. If we did, we wouldn't be allowed to borrow any money to develop etc (and I do believe that while we could meet their demands to cut down unsustainable business we could also add some social policies which wouldn't lead to collapse of the country) Anyway, the choice was to either stay in unsustainable system or go through rapid transitioning - which forced A LOT of people into poverty, while many others got to buy provious state properties at a bargain. I'm just glad we didn't end like Russia, Ukraine etc. On one hand we kind of did amazing. We had one of the worst forecasts. Poland was supposed to fail but instead we became one of the most thriving countries out of ex Soviet/ Warsaw Pact states. But also many social policies went down the gutter. We had to go through awful period of liberals that didn't help the people at all - all that mattered was GDP. Housing prices shot up (relatively compared to our socialist times nowadays it's 30% harder to buy a house than it was before). Childcare vastly reduced, etc. And on top of that we also had no leftist party that we could trust. The only leftists back then were ex-commie members. We voted them in to rules us again. They turned out to be one of the most corrupted govt in the modern Poland history. Possibly only current ruling party is more corrupt than they were.
TLDR: Author romanticises previous system and blames all the issues on the new one. Which is outright lies in many matters. Truth is much more complex. I wish I had more time and skills to properly explain it all :D
doskonale powiedziane. Pozdrowienia z Czech
@@tatra2165 obecna partia jest bardziej skorumpowana? - ciekawe spostrzeżenia. Politycy PO nawet jak nie rządzą to wybuchają afery. Przypomnę ostatnio - sekretarz miasta Warszawy - 5 mln przyjęcia łapówki. Nie mówiąc już o Nowaku, którego na korupcji nawet w Ukrainie złapali. Nie będę już wracał do (nie)rządów tej partii i afer. Nie twierdzę, że PiS jest święte, ale nie ma tutaj co porównywać.
Well captures the Polish reality
Very true! Z tą róznicą, że polityka prywatyzacji nie była fair, i jak zwykle w czasach chaosu najwięcej stracili uczciwi. Natomiast tzw. kapitalizm potrzebuje dwóch rzeczy: delegalizacji lobbingu (powinien być traktowany jak korupcja) i zakazu spekulacji pieniądzem , w szczególności lichwy.
I live in Czechia and it’s very similar to what you say about Poland. Also his unemployment rate are off for Czechia as well which is one of the lowest among the EU countries.
In bulgaria there are more ghost villages than normal ones.
Ужасно е.
@@Sasheto05 тва си е заслужил народа
If there is farm land around it i can make a living there. Not luxurious but good anyway.
@@johan8724 With inflation and wholesale prices of food, that's becoming increasingly difficult, for small to medium producers
@@simdimdim i mean selfreliance not growing to sell it.
A channel called Balkan Odyssey made excellent videos covering this topic too:
"The Balkans are disappearing, quickly"
"The depressing journey from Germany to Bosnia Herzegovina"
The modern state of Eastern Europe and Russia was actually well described by the main villain of CoD 4:
"Our so-called leaders prostituted us to the west. Destroyed our culture. Our economies. Our honor. Our blood spilled on our soil."
When I first played it, I didn't think much of that speech back then. But now I realize that Zakhayev had a point, so this speech hits different now.
@@Yk9o
Or maybe your stance against LGBTQ is morally corrupt? I'm guessing you might be Russian to think that way, since many people in modern Russia seem to think that homosexuality is an "artificial Western construct". Besides, whether you support LGBTQ or are against it has nothing to do with socialism, but since socialism is a progressive ideology, most socialists also support LGBTQ rights.
@@GTAVictor9128 Well the socialists before 1991 all despised the LGBT look at Stalin, Castro and all the dictators and leaders in eastern Europe and even though as a religious person i hate communism and socialism i also dont like the LGBT so seeing them act against them is to me the only good thing they ever did.
@@Yk9o socialists really should strongly support lgbtq rights, they’re a minority exploited by capitalists and discriminated to divide working class.
You can say western may use their rights as a pretext to attack enemies, which is true, but the west do this also with women’s rights, this doesn’t mean socialists stops to support them
@@Yk9o and what does being gay even have to do with economic development?
social issues ≠ economic systems
u really look for meaning in u.s. state dept propaganda lol (balkan odyssey and cod)
It is happening everywhere (Europe, America, China, Japan). I went around some small towns in Italy and I could not get any WiFi signal. There was nobody living there.
Less so in the UK, Ireland, Western Germany, the Scandinavian countries,France, the NL, Belgium,Switzerland Austria , Northern Italy, because of massive, unsustainable immigration.
@@lioneldemun6033 Northern Italy is being exploited by northern Europe too.
@@lioneldemun6033no migrants go to villages they go to the big cities
Hakim i want to thank you for everything you do, there have been few changes in my life as important to me as those caused by particularly your reading list videos. You and Parenti have taught me so much about how to differently view the world. your videos have reached this privileged, wealthy american who frequently has the ears of people more powerful than would be believed in youtube comments. Thank you from across the world for being a huge part of my education and radicalization. Never stop the fight, your message reaches people of positions you may never expect.
Congratulations on getting on the path of unlearning decades of red scare propaganda, my American comrade ^^ Warm greetings from the (still) Socialist Republic of Vietnam 🇻🇳
@@koimackan1287 ❤️. I hope to be visiting your wonderful country in the coming fall
As a Yugoslav, this tragic fact has been a great source of intergenerational depression for me ever since I gained class consciousness.
All this horrific loss, just for corporations to be more profitable...
Pozz
Never be pessimistic, there's a world to win. Agitate, educate, organize.
The first Socialist Yugoslavia was formed in far harsher conditions, don't lose hope!
Kako je rekao Hakim-organizacija,agitacija,edukacija. Nema predaje druže
Class consciousness? What are you, 5 years old? 😂
@@yuriy5376 And what other consciousness? Religious? National? Some western consumerist bs?
I used to be from Estonia, but left not because of the economic reasons, but because of the people and society in general. People were just so unfriendly and cruel to each other in my opinion, so I did not want to be there. Also, I never really felt home there as there were a lot of Russians who were unwilling to learn Estonian and have basic respect for the country.
On point with that as being Estonian, what u said is true
Yeah no that just means that Estonia is not really a country but a mix. If Russia dominate there then it's just Russia. There were enough racist remarks from Estonian government so ofcourse nobody will start learn language and respect a racist country.
@@sleepyjoe7843 so true, its just horrible, it is like mini Russia and when u say Estonia all are like ahh Russia. As Estonian its disgrace and something to be ashamed off. Im sorry for your bad experience tho
@@Gunit935 yea but as we Estonians talk with each other, our goverment never dealt with issues and now kind of late. There are so many people in Estonia who cant even speak i word in Estonian, everybody just speak Russian. Sad that one country isnt what it should be and that also causes tensions in normal people which shouldnt be the case. Its simply brutal truth and its sad to hear so many people have negative feelings towards Estonia🥲
@@Gunit935 nobody can ever learn it if every company and service is offered in Russian. Example: if you go Finland you are forced to learn language, not even on shops people talk with u in English which us right in my eyes. In estonia even if u call phone service company u get reply press 2 for russian.
even 2010s ,2020s eastern Europe immigrated population after arriving in the imperial core nations(some of them get "successful" and deal from survivorship bias,praise "free market, capitalism,"free world")still blames "communism" for their nations' slowdown,lawlessness in 2020s.
They will blame socialism for everything even in 2090 when eastern europe has completely died out.
Yeah, it's also funny how eastern europeans just assume that without communism everything would magically have been better. That the Americans would treat us on par with western europe and help us rebuild after WWII, or that the invisible hand of the free market would just pull the capital and resources out of the invisible ass of the free market, letting everyone to live prosperously and ensuring peace in the region (lmao).
As if before communism most of our states were booming and heading for their golden century. They can't blame communism. We became vassals to the far more exausted super power. The already way more advanced states in West became vassals to the largest industrial nation on earth which had less casualties in ww2 than Yugoslavia or way smaller Greece. It's a big difference when a whole bunch of states got more people dead than the largest industrial power on earth. My country Bulgaria lost 3 wars in a row. We got to be thankful to Stalin for making us vassals. Serbs in Yugoslavia and Greeks be thirsty for revenge after our free real estate grab during the German conquest of them. Romania wouldn't be a true friend anyways and Turkey is obvious one. So wtf were we gonna do besides becoming Soviet satellite? Feeling pity for Poland ofcourse. Their struggles could never fkin end. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria rightfully deserved to become Soviet vassals. We were on losing side of war. Got to get back to reality instead of being emotional about communism.
There was a popular saying in USSR: Stalin took a country with a plow, and left it with nuclear reactor.
In 30 years of Soviet rule country went from a fuedal state with 90% peasant population and 15% literacy to a second world economy that was able to be first at launching a man into space, all the while surviving two brutal world wars, revolution, sanctions, and constant meddling from the rest of the world.
In the 30 years since collapse of USSR, only thing that most post-soviet respublics succeeded at was finding more excuses to blame USSR for their failings, while expiriencing no wars and often with direct monetary support from EU.
@@DrNiradino Well yeah but how many millions died from his terror and how many millions more died in WW2 due to the weakning of the red Army pre 1942 Stalin literally murdered and Purged most of his top tier Generals.
As a bulgarian I'm so happy you made a video on eastern Europe and the topic was very well picked out as well
I'm from Norway. Population growth stopped around 1975 here but the number of inhabitants increased because of immigration...The same is all around western europe....
It's pretty crazy. I feel sorry for these people and these places though. Couldn't imagine how hard life must be. Don't blame them at all for leaving and looking for a better life elsewhere. Heck, I left the UK to Sweden myself (for love not money 😅) and feel very privileged that I can do this so easily.
there are differences
Exactly, his entire argument ignores that Western Europe has the exact same problem and fixes it with immigration. But that doesn't fit his narrative.
@@ten_tego_teges How? Immigration is a legitimate form of population increase. Unless you want to say that it’s bad because “white people” are losing majority in western countries? You said it yourself, western europe has the same problem but *fixes it*. Not sure how you manage to not even read what you yourself said.
@@ten_tego_teges I'm sorry bro but i wouldn't say immigration "fixes" they're problems it simply dumps the problem to other people(immigrants).
Bringing over immigrants who would do really shit jobs for cheap, since these immigrants have garbage pay they wont be able to interact with local population which makes their society more polarized and this also creates a lot of ghettos and shitty areas in Western Europe.
Additionally the rise of far-right in Europe who are very against immigrants coming to their countries brings even more problems.
I remember spending a day in a small town in old east Germany. The main street pedestrian area was absolutely deserted. And it was a nice weekend day, beautiful weather. Normally a place like that would be bustling. So creepy, I kept wondering what happened to all the people.
Same experience in a lot of towns as well as cities in Germany.
Capitalism happened
capitalism killed.
That's how it is in America too, but not because there's no people but because everybody is inside looking on their phone
@@john.premose or driving a car, alone by themselves.
An interesting statistic I found recently:
In Romania in 1990 there were 12529 preschools, all of them public, with 60 pupils per preschool.
In 2005 there were 3769 preschools, 3598 public and 171 private. There were 178 pupils per public preschool, and 55 pupils per private preschool.
In 2013 there were 1187 preschools, 877 public and 310 private. There were 629 pupils per public preschool, and 54 pupils per private preschool.
For 2020 I was able to find there were 1153 preschools, 751 public and 402 private, with 94% of pupils going to a public preschool. I wasn't able to find the exact numbers of pupils per school.
You can take these numbers as you want, but to me it shows the difference between socialism and capitalism. In socialism, even the flawed implementation that we had in eastern Europe, you have resources being fairly distributed, while in capitalism the average person has to compete for a share that gets smaller and smaller while the rich live in luxury.
Only in eastern Europe you will have people born in 1970 which went to preschool but their children couldn't. I was born in the 90s, and my parents couldn't send me to preschool, and it was the same for the entire village that year. We were among the first generations that didn't go anymore, back when we started school in the early 2000s it was considered weird by the teachers and parents, but now 20 years later it's something normal if you live in a rural area or if you're poorer.
that's an insane(ly depressing) progression
I don't care.
Reduce your workweek.
At least you don't have to line up for cooking oil!
@@phoneticalballsack What? Please explain.
To me, it points to what happens when public schooling is neglected and defunded in favor of private schools. Forced consolidation of education into a few big schools that have all the money rather than lots of smaller ones that are evenly distributed across the country and have a fairer distribution of funds. That can contribute to families needing to move out of smaller villages
all these collapsing villages reminds me of the situation that we have here on the prairies in Canada. Our small towns are also dying, though the death is slow. Its particularly sad because many of these towns are quite old. However the causes are different, here it is simply a result of changes in agriculture methods and technology. Simply stated less people are needed to work the land.
What really surprises me is to see that poverty is causing a decline in birthrate in eastern europe, generally speaking its places with lots of poverty that have the highest birth rates. Africa, much of south america, the asias all seem to churn out people in large numbers despite the poverty.
I wonder if there will be a population boom after the end of the russo ukrainian war as so often happens when wars end and the men return.
the largest source of foreign money in Romania is not, as you'd expect, from the oh so benevolent capitalist bussiness investors. it is from romanian workers who migrated for work. our countrymen and countrywomen go to Germany, to Italy, to Spain, to the UK, to work for them and send money back home. just the drama of the families broken by the threat of poverty is crushing. both parents, away, over the borders, to slave away on minimum wages that are still many times more than they'd make here. the north-east and south of the country, outside of the capital, are depopulated. only old people and children left, having to fend for themselves and look after one another. you know, it's not an easy life, being an elder or taking care of one. everybody here knows at least one family like this
and for a less tragic but still concerning follow-up: many educated young people do not want to stay here, because their prospects are just awful. i will present anecdotal evidence: of three students of a top engineering college who took a job at the same company, two want to leave the country in the nearing future. only i will stay, God bless me with strength. when i want to feel desperation quickly, i think of how we were three and will soon be just one. tens of thousands of trained professionals leave before at least giving back what the state invests in them. oh, yea. its the state universities that still give quality education
many more can say it is so in their country. we have been lied to, indoctrinated to worship the west. we are destitute, stripped of our riches and our will. the east is becoming a place full of old people, stupid people, hungry people or any combination of the above
It’s so sad to see what my home country of Albania has become. Everytime I go back I can’t help but feel depressed to see what it lost economically and socially
Reduce ur fkng workweek then
Albania has had the worst fertility decline too, from 2.25 in 2000 to less than 1.30 today, easily the lowest in the Balkans
@@oosthuizen2012 It's not the lowest fertility rate in the Balkans. Stats don't take into account the migration since 2011 when calculating fertility rate and still use the numbers from that census of 2.8 million. It's 1.4. Bosnia and Greece have lower fertility rates.
@@roolentodd395 lmao isnt that such a stereotypical balkan thing to pick in the details to better your fertility score by 0.1 in order to say Bosnia and Greece have it worse
Love your nick, i would say you have a plethora of humour :)
I wish that you also have commented the economic implications of Russia's war in Ukraine. Because of this war and the sanctions to Russia, eastern Europe has the highest inflation rates, because it was the region most closely connected to Russia. Now we are losing cheap goods and cheap energy. It is kinda ironic that these governments are more pro sanctions than most of western Europe, this just shows that the governments of eastern Europe don't really care for their own citizens.
they're just playing on either russophobia or on hatred towards the soviets
@@benismann hatred towards Moscow/Kremlin and turds like putin
russia can withdraw its troops from Ukraine, pay reparations for its crimes, and then sanctions will be lifted from russia. then you will get cheap goods but I`am not sure that russia want to stop the war
Я из Украины, и я не понимаю на что надеются люди, которые идут на войну за интересы капиталистов. Очевидно, что мы превратимся в страну "призрак".
Буржуи тратят миллиарды спизженных денег у населения земли на пропаганду рая из капитализма. Многие ведутся и верят. Только когда очухиваются, уже поздно.
Не хватает классового сознания, товарищ, ещё и промывка пропагандой. Эта проблема народов по обе стороны фронта.
Мир захвачен буржуями, у людей повсюду в голове квасной винегрет. Очень печально, но закономерно. Ну, может, получив на орехи от господ, рабочий класс начнёт потихоньку просыпаться.
Если Россия выиграет, украинский народ проиграет. Если Украина выиграет, украинский народ проиграет. Я был в Одессе в прошлом году, и бедность удручала.
Пламенный привет! Добавить нечего.
Feels very broadly similar to many rural areas in the US after the implementation of NAFTA and the end of the Cold War/the rise of neoliberal globalization. Working class areas lose jobs, young people move away to pursue opportunity elsewhere, older people remain out of sentimentality for home or just because they can't afford to leave. Services decline or cease, buildings become abandoned, and the yearly festivals get a little bit smaller each year as a couple more people in the community pass away of old age and nobody moves in to replace them. I've seen it happen in my home state of Maine since I was a kid.
I can count on my hands the amount of people in my neighborhood that are under 30.
Same in rural Ohio, the rust belt was hit hard.
Free trade is good actually.
Bringen sie den Mauer zuruck, BITTE
I live in Novi Sad, Serbia. Love this place, not changing this place for anything 🫶
I think you should leave. Serbia will be burned soon. Run Sonya run.
As a Bulgarian (who was not yet born during the 90s) I can say that this video is really on point. Although Bulgaria was as a whole spared the destruction that the fall of socialism caused in places like the USSR, Yugoslavia and Albania, the terrible and irresponsible way that the 'Transition' between socialism and capitalism was handled scarred the country for decades to come. Basically, in the 90s Bulgaria stopped being a proper social country and became a anarcho-capitalist state where the corrupt undemocratic government privatized everything and gave it to 'special people', inflation skyrocketed, everyone lost their jobs, thousands of people immigrated and all social policies where dropped like hot potato, organised crime flourished and live became increasingly insecure and unstable. The country and economy was in such a state of crisis that in 1997 the Bulgarian lev was fixed to the euro that is still standing. Although currently Bulgaria is 'developing' (as per capitalist vision) economically and people's income has risen significantly compared to the 90s, the feeling of economic and social insecurity still lingers, coupled with conservative social views and lack of governmental vision for the future, are one of the reasons that drive many young people to immigrate to Northwestern European countries, where they at least feel secure.
"Anarcho-capitalist state where the corrupt undemocratic government privatized everything and gave it to 'special people', inflation skyrocketed, everyone lost their jobs, thousands of people emigrated and all social policies were dropped like a hot potato", literally the exact same thing is happening in Serbia right now since 2012, and I'm planning to leave the moment I graduate from college since I don't think anything will change any time soon.
The best/worst part? The gov't keeps blaming Kosovo, war in Ukraine and whatever they happen to think about instead of the billions of euros they embezzled and wasted or the dogshit management of gov't firms and terrible fiscal policies.
> proper social country
Стагнацията под Бай Тошо е нищо за завиждане.. искаш да се развиеш, да създадеш нещо.. искал си да си купиш една кола.. и познай.. не можеш; то че и сега имаме корупция не се отрича, ама моля ти се, по добре сега отколкото тогава
> the feeling of economic and social insecurity still lingers
еми като ми плащат по-добре в Германия за същата работа която мога да върша в Бг за двойно по-малко..
The USSR was designed that way, it couldn't be dismantled without forcing Eastern Europe into capitalist since the system was centralized around Russia.
The Russian elite/Soviet elite (oligarch) are also responsible for much of the damage done to eastern Europe, they are to this day still extracting the most wealth and power possible to feed their master Putin.
Learn about the Russian mafia in eastern europe
That's what the aim was . The West wanted to dismantle the Eastern Bloc and they did ...now as Bulgarian myself I can say Bulgarians are very stupid and deserved it all
For a governmental vision we first need a government, that won't just lose majority the next day unfortunately :/
I'm watching this on my phone from work in "Burgeristan" (USA) and it is very chilling and sad what happened to these small villages thst were once lively and prosperous, now are gutted and abandoned because of capitalism.
You did a excellent job on this video, Hakim. And I hope you have a wonderful Ramadhan al-Karim.
Some other commenter on this video mentioned that there's something similar happening in the South and Midwest.
You’re correct the rust belt and Appalachia are depopulating from migration due to deindustrialization and opioid deaths/suicides.
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45 From my own experience I can say this is true. The young people go off to college and never come back to rural and farming communities. Even in a mid sized Midwestern town with a local industrial plant, the population was visibly aging and the size of school classes shrinking over the decade I lived there because the plant wasn't hiring anyone without five years of experience, housing was not affordable as there were very few apartments, and people were moving out for the cities or other states. The local area had a median age of 40, compared to a median of 30 in the cities, and the population shrank by about 5% over that decade.
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45 I want to do something to help my State and fellow Midwestern States.
Go slowly with those conclusions.
The video conveniently skips the fact that the largest Eastern state of EU, Poland, is doing very well - no unemployment, no emigration.
Czechia and Slovenia are doing even better, they have already surpassed Portugal.
It's the orthodox and Muslim states that are poor. Those are cultures of mental slavery.
In short, this video is full of BS
Growing kids is very expensive. In the past the birth rate was much higher because parents didn't have to pay as much for education and healthcare. We need to start addressing this problem and looking for ways to solve it.
Only issue there is that there was also a higher infant mortality rate to go along with the high birthrate.
The Past infant mortality rate kind of evens out the high birthrates point you made.
Still a good point though.
As old russian liberal saying goes: "Они просто не вписались в рынок" - "They just didn't fit into the market". Now they have freedom, democracy, and they can become rich!
Рыночек порешал всех. В итоге получилось, что у олигархов всё, а у людей ничего. Дорешались.
me and my mom were talking about moldova this morning and how everyones leaving and its falling apart rlly sad to see
World population is still growing. Humanity will survive at least for awhile longer
@@dreamsdeep1076 humanity, also known as "the civilized west"
@@dreamsdeep1076 but growing far away from said countries
@@dreamsdeep1076 China's population has started declining, India's population has reached replacement level in fertility rates and drop lower in a decade or two. Most of Europe has declining population, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan etc. Southeast Asia will also experience the same in a decade. It's only Africa that's exploding in population
@@shreyaskumarrath721 Expoding is an understatement. In Nigeria on average each woman is having 9 kids.. NIIIIIINE JESUS
I have checked the demographics of all the former Eastern Bloc countries. The percentage population losses are even larger than what you reported here. For example, there is no way Ukraine only lost 15-18% since 1991. Ukraine peaked at 52 million at the point of Soviet dissolution. Even before the "Special Military Operation", Ukraine's population had fallen to 41 million. Even this figure does not account for 8 million Ukrainian migrant workers who had gone to the EU, only returning for major holidays, but are still in the book as Ukraine's permanent population. Georgia and Armenia are another two former Soviet republics with 20-30% population losses. Capitalism concentrating not just wealth into a few hands, but people/capital in a few geographic areas is actually a worldwide phenomenon. Even in a still-growing country like the US, if you looked at the growth rate county by country level, most of the US is actually losing population, because all the growth is concentrated in a few metropolitan areas. Japan has a very similar problem as Eastern Europe of villages populated only by elderly people which are turning into ghost towns. Meanwhile, the Tokyo metro area is actually still growing.
3:37 - That's exactly what's happening in Lisbon right now. A small home with 1 room and a living room costs about 400,000€, the average annual wage in Portugal after taxes is about 15,000€. That's 3.75% of the house price.
ora viva camarada :)
I was visiting Lisbon talking to locals. They were blaming the high prices on the rich tourists.
@@ibn_klingschor zero structural analysis
A house in my village in Germany costs that much. If you go anywhere close to Berlin it will cost you millions of € to get a flat sadly.
A lot of things in this video reminded me of Portugal. And funnily enough our liberals constantly point to Eastern Europe as an example to follow. Hell, our libs want to copy Eastern European liberalism so hard that they also blame all of our current economic problems on "socialism", despite Portugal not being or having ever been a socialist country.
The people in Eastern Europe fail to see that instead of gaining independence, we lost any resemblance of independence we had. We can now only get as prosperous as our imperial overlords will let us and it was never the plan to let us flourish. Countries like Poland are relatively better off as they are a natural extension of German border and a buffer zone.
Thanks for covering this topic, love from a polish emigrant
so the only alternatives are not being prosperous at all (as before 1989 - very slow economic growth and social progress, falling behind other nations more and more) or being prosperous by delivering goods and services to "imperial" countries?
@@spizganypywak7338 The only alternative is adopting the dollar and reducing the workweek. Or go bankrupt
@@phoneticalballsack I don't quite understand.
@@Yk9o The dollar is shitting on every other worthless currency. It's just credit. Better to have a common currency like in Europe. A commodity-backed world reserve currency will not work.
@@spizganypywak7338 The only alternative is communism
Spain and Italy also are having a problem with abandoned villages. People want to live in larger towns and cities.
People that remain in the villages...how do they sustain themselves? If they're elderly, do they get a state pension? Are there viable farms? Tourist enterprises? How do they get money for basic necessities?
I always get emotional driving through Bosnia and seeing all the abandoned villages.
Why? It's a normal process.
@@LMB222 low iq comment
I had the same reaction
@@LMB222 Normal process of what? Mass deculturalization?
As a Romanian, thank you so much for covering this topic, it's hardly ever talked about even inside the country, and it's pretty much going to lead to this country basically dying out, and i don't mean in the failed state way.
@FredTheTed Well, it's kinda neutral, i mean he's leagues above any of the clown school rejects we have nowadays. In the late 60s and 70s he wasn't that bad, stuff started going downhill in 79 mostly because stuff in the USSR was going downhill. But like 80% of this country was basically built under Ceausescu, 15% or so under the monarchy and like 5% in the last 30 years if i had to make some statistics. The blocks most people live in Ceausescu, the Bucharest metro - Ceausescu, we had some of the best railways in Europe in the 70s, also Ceausescu, btw said railway system ever since the transition to capitalism is now by far the worst. Thing is Ceausescu also ruled in a troubled period full of uncertainty. In a way, i think people remember the bad stuff too much like the austerity or his personality cult, but his first decade or so was a time of great progress. He essentially managed to somewhat put Romania on the map. And probably, the best thing he did in my opinion, and the reason why i think he does deserve some sort of respect is the fact that at least he had some backbone. When the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, Romania was the only Warsaw Pact country that did not partake in the invasion, and Ceausescu is the man to thank for that. What do you think happened in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq. Cowards like Iliescu and Basescu quickly hopped on board, and helped the US pillage another country and murder millions. Btw, Iliescu is a man responsible for a lot of bloodshed in this country, the fucker is 93 years old and still lives comfortably. Back during communism, he was Ceausescu's main rival within the party.
@@Quark214 The invasion of Czechoslovakia was the one thing that got Tito and Hoxha to stop bickering with each other. Funniest shit I've ever seen.
Wow you can really see improvement in hakims editing. Even the way he cites sources is far superior than what he previously had done. Even though I don’t see eye to eye sometimes, Props
These stalinist/leninist nazbol scumbag youtubers all of sudden popping up everywhere that are presenting their solution to the crisis of Europe is all part of this whole evil plan. It's why so many people are getting fooled to become marxist but they fail to realize both marxism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin created by these psycho globalist scoundrels who want to control the world.
@@jochn919Just take the mask off and say Jew we know what you're talking about little natsock.
Something very similar happened in South Africa post-1994. The apartheid government used to subsidise certain industries but the end of apartheid came with an IMF loan and trade liberalisation that killed these subsidised industries virtually overnight. The textile industry in Cape Town shed a few hundred thousand jobs in a few short years and skilled workers were left with nowhere to go. Now we get all our clothes from China.
If you don't like post-apartheid South Africa, you can always return to the Netherlands, where your ancestors came from.
Kiss the Boers!
It happens all where IMF and WB are involved
If China was a freer country, they could go there and put their skills to good use.
China is better than IMF and the world bank
Seeing all these comments is more than enough to absolutely destroy the "Just ask someone who lived under Communism" meme that capitalists like to push.
Just because capitalism is horrible doesn't mean that communism was any better. It was in fact worse. We need to find other solutions.
@Tohrµ Why not? You can always move to North Korea. Nobody's stopping you 😁
@Tohrµ There's literally hundreds of communes and thousands of co-ops. Grow a pair.
@Tohrµ go move to Cuba and tell me it’s the best thing since sliced bread. But since you’re a communist, you probably don’t even know what bread is in the first place
@Tohrµ Cuba Venezuela e Nicarágua te aguardam
This only shows devastating impact of communism on these countries. When communist dictatorship finally fall, 20% of people were working in agriculture. Now it is bellow 4%. Modern agriculture is far more effective and unskilled people had to find new jobs - and it was hard. Production of steel dropped by 75%, USSR stopped producing weapons and could not pay for steel anymore. Thousands of miners got unemployed. Something similar happened in Britain when they lost their empire.
The whole transformation was painful, unregulated, and former communist abused all opportunities and stole everything could be stolen.
I'm from Southeastern Serbia and my town alone lost over 20,000 people since the last census. In the city centre there are abandoned houses and buildings. The surrounding villages are depressing and full of misery, some pensioners receive only 100$ and less pensions, there are no jobs in the area and all young people who want to study have to go somewhere else where there is higher quality education, they usually never come back. The only place in Serbia gaining population is Belgrade due to migration from Southern Serbia, and even there, unemployment is rising, you must join the party and have your intelligence insulted to get a job in the public sector, inflation is going up as well and housing prices are through the roof even for shitty apartments on the outskirts of Belgrade that are more expensive than some decent places in the USA. Honestly I have no hope for this country and want to get out as soon as possible.
In Serbia Novi Pazar, Tutin, Presheva and Bujanoci also saw population increase vs last census. This is because they are overwhelmingly Albanian or Bosniak municipalities where population is younger and has more kids then ageing Serbian population.
imma keep it real with you hakim the reason marrige fell so far down in Georgia was mostly because half of our male population just got slaughtered in the 3 wars we had between 1989 and 1993
3 wars? I thought it was just 1 really long war.
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45 nope
1989 ethnic conflicts all over the country (including ethnic clensing on both ossetian and Georgian sides)
The 1991 civil war
And the 1991 Russian invasion/intervension
All in all Georgia in the past 30 years has had 7 wars
but that only happened during the final days of the USSR, no?
For sure it played a role, but the pattern was region-wide.
@@YaBoiHakim oh no i agree just shedding some extra light on the situation so its more obvious
the whole ethnic conflicts happened because of our fascist post soviet government (literally fascist too considering Gamsakhurdia started advocating for a "Georgia for Georgians" and stealing property from ethnic minorities)
Western developed nations', being dominated by private enterprises, are only interested in taking advantage of cheap labor from the east. These companies are only for profits (and short term profits at that). They are not interested in long term investments, least of all in infrastructural investments. Sadly, the depopulation trend will continue as it maybe too late to do anything about it, especially under current environment.
If it wasn't for former colonies and immigration from said colonies, Spain and Portugal likely would also be suffering a similar fate due to economic disparities between wealthier countries to the north which speak Germanic languages for the most part. More particularly, Andalusia's economic income per capita is more comparable to Croatia and other depopulated areas than to Basque Country within Spain itself.
In between all the urban centers of economic activity like Madrid, Barcelona, and Basque Country? You end up with Teruel Exists and heavy depopulation similar to Moldova, Serbia, etc with migration first inside of Spain and Portugal and if they can't find a job good enough but still have funds, they'll flee to the Netherlands, Germany, etc.
Edit: As in there's more people of Cape Verdian descent in Portugal now than in Cape Verde for a scope for how significant the immigration from colonies whether formerly of the country in question's possession or a French/English colony like how Inaki Williams has both a Spanish cap and 6 Ghanian caps.
Yeah, Spanish country side and villages like my grandparents in Galicia are either empty or filled with old people that will be dead in 20-30 years at most
@@Markel_GR And the population growth is mostly as I described it, centered around cities with extreme depopulation elsewhere. Teruel is perhaps the most extreme example of a declining province with the population having peaked some 130 years ago and is the size of the American state of New Jersey yet has 1% of the population where about 60% of it is in just two dying towns.
Edit: Teruel's so sparsely populated these days that there's no place in the EU as sparsely populated. The closest places would either be in Greenland, Western Kansas, or Siberia.
Most of the west keeps itself alive with migration, otherwise they would die out like eastern europe.
Even with that immigration Portugal managed to stagnate economically and get overtaken by Slovenia & Czechia. The heck they doing over there in Portugal?
@@arminivanics1916 It's a problem which explains why the McDonalds orders in the US never seem to get much faster than 2 minutes 45 seconds, extreme turnover of the workforce from emigration and immigration at the same time.
Edit: Just do the issue of what's going on at a McDonalds over a whole country and reduce the rate a fair bit for both entering and departing. It's not good for improving productivity which requires a more stable workforce. A lot of the best automation is also a bit too expensive for a Portuguese corporation which also leaves them at a disadvantage to Germans, Dutch, Americans, etc who can afford it.
1:35, i'm honestly more surprised that it's just doubled. There's a story I like to repeat, about creation of the first fallout game. If you know the lore, nuclear war in it started between America and China, which is a little bit strange, considering that it's mimicking 60-70th America, and USSR would've been a natural choice. Well, the story goes, that one of the higher ups during development (~1995-1996) was talking to his Russian friend on the phone, when he heard a loud bangs coming from his side. He asked "What was that?" to which Russian friend nonchalantly answered "Oh, that's just bandits shooting each other". It happened in the middle of the day. In St. Petersburg - second Russian capital. So basically seeing Russian in such a poor state, it simply wasn't a fit for "Nuclear superpower" in their game anymore.
These also apply to Turkey. We maybe are some years behind what you are suffering from but our main population growth is from Kurdish people. Lack of taxing (violent reactions) gives them a better economic growth and their feudal mindset also plays a huge role.
Fantastic Video Hakim. These problems in Eastern Europe have to be addressed more in the mainstream
As an Albanian, a video that greatly (yet sadly) describes the situation we have :(.
Thank's for the topic and especially thanks for including the former GDR. As we are now a part of unified Germany this history is often overlooked in western countries. Our history of change is really special as we share the past with Eastern Europe but had a totally different road to change with loosing our state on one side but getting a lot of help also on the other side.
Ramadan Kareem, brother hakim
Ramadan mubarak habibi!
And it hurts to think that all these years people have being responding to Marxists with the phrase: "Ask someone from Eastern Europe about what they think of Socialism!"
I think they should give Socialism a second run to be honest.
Socialism in Eastern Europe was brought by the Red Army at the end of WWII and was established first by political repressions, then by collectivisation (the state seized all "means of production"; if you refused you were beaten and ostracized). There were also labour camps (some for political prisoners, but also for priests, "amoral people" (gays, lesbians, prostitutes), people who didn't subscribe to the "communist morals"; most of those who went there never came back). A softer measure was to deport you to other side of the country. To this day there are only approximations of the casualties related to ascension of the Communist party. Not having a job, earning money on the side, immigrating were illegal; travelling abroad could be done only with special papers, but it was next to impossible to go to a capitalist country.
It was written in the Constitution that the Communist Party had a leading role in the state affairs. A lot of the infrastructure, buildings and even whole towns were built by conscripts. The salaries were almost the same for everyone, but even if you had money there wasn't much to buy - in order to buy a car you had to be put in a waiting list, electronics were exclusively from the Eastern Bloc countries, you can get Western European/Japanese only in special places with US dollars or on the black market; there were also regular blackouts and shortages of some foods in the end of the regime because they were exported in order to repay the rising government debts. Of course, a lot of those problems didn't exist for party officials; connections and bribes helped a bunch when it came to applying for jobs, promotions and getting into schools and universities.
Also towards the end of the Communist regime the Party grew paranoid and caused what was later called "The Big Vacation" when thousands of people from the Turkish minority were made to leave the country because of repressions on ethnical basis (like forced name changes). Granted, things were easier for people had the right connections, but I still have a lot of relatives in Turkey.
I am Bulgarian from the aforementioned minority, who had grandparents with some Communist Party connections. If you want to see real socialism, visit Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea or Belarus.
Eastern Europe got hit by feudal empire led by a lowlife mob who called itself communists. They had nothing common with western type socialism.
It would take so much longer to reason with people on socialism than it will take capitalism to destroy the planet. Our literal air and water are being taken away, but we sit around acting happy that there’s new shopping malls opening everywhere
@Adrians Cehins If there is only one entity which rules over the economy, the politics and all the institutions this is a dictatorship in the making. There are always people who want more or just something else and Socialism has to suppress them or let them go (most regimes opt for suppression).
The closest thing to Socialism without being an authoritarian regime is Scandinavia - political and economic freedom, excellent social net and very high taxes.
Eastern Europeans who lived through the Cold War and have questions like that asked to them must really be fighting the urge to cave the heads in of every so called “western communist”.
It is still way better than what is happening in Asia (China specifically). In 2022 in UE 4.5 millions were born while the UE is about 450 million people. In China which is 1.5 billion people country it was only 10.5 million newborns
but china is communist so this info has to be suppressed so we can achieve fully automated space homosexual communism!
Shame that Serbia is mostly always brought up in some negative light on the internet. Greeting from here, love your work!
Why do you think that is the case? Do you think it s false data on Serbia? What positives should we know more about Serbia?
I am Hungarian and Serbs are nice people. I had to say it.
As a Macedonian, I appreciate this video. Thank You, Hakim.
Edit: Just to put into perspective how fucked we are:
Foreign Debt of Yugoslavia in 1991 [in 2023 dollars] - *$41.7 billion*
Foreign combined debt of ex-Yugo states - *$159 billion*
GDP of Yugoslavia in 1991 [in 2023 dollars] - *$263.8 billion*
GDP og Yugoslavia in 1989, it's peak [in 2023 dollars] - $312.4 billion
Combined GDP of ex-Yugo states - *$252.2 billion*
Population of Yugoslavia in 1991 - *23,532,279 people*
Population of Yugoslavia in 1990, it's peak - 23,657,623 people
Combined population of ex-Yugo states - *20,466,318 people*
Edit: Converting 1991 dollars to 2023 dollars accounts for the inflation of the dollar in that time period.
@radiohead3719 "Macedonians" identify as "Greeks" (Hellenes). "North Macedonians" identify as "Albanians" (30%), "Serbians" (10%) and "Definitely-Not-Bulgarians" (60%).
Although a lot of the 3rd group are slowly coming out as less sure they aren't Bulgarians as time goes on.
0 we
@Radio Head They are Bulgarians in all but name. They don't identify as such because they've been fed anti-bulgarian propaganda for a century as a result of the 2nd Balkan war
Well, Macedonians got out of Yugoslavia easy. Rest had to fight a war.
@radiohead3719as a (north) Macedonian i can answer this question. We do not identify as bulgarians in any way. Our country has been under bulgarian rule ( same with ottoman hence why we also have alot of turkish words).
JUST LOOK AT THE DATA CONCERNING POLAND, CZEKIA, SLOVAKIA OR THE BALTICS TO SEE HOW ABSURDLY UNTRUE YOUR CONCLUSIN APPEARS TO BE, AND NOTICE THAT GERMANY AND OTHER COUNTRIES OF WESTERN EUROPE HAVE GOT BIRTH RATES EVEN LOWER.
As a romanian hearing u say Cotul Morii is so funny 😂
I genuinely had no idea how to say it, my bad I know it's terrible lmao
This really backs up something that Yugopnik and others have touched on: Eastern Europeans are "real" Europeans when it's convenient (e.g. when they can be used as a cudgel against Russia), but ultimately the imperial core views them no differently than they view Africans or Latin Americans, just a source of cheap resources and labor.
The descendants of Eastern Europeans who moved to the US or UK are certainly viewed as "real Europeans" (or Americans).
Could be worse. We're considered unwashed barbaric Asian-mongolian finno-ugric mordovian moksha erzya orcs, you can guess where I'm from.
@@retrocomputing they ain’t wrong
@@gloverfox9135 prove that I'm a barbarian then. But if you can't, you would just apologize to me, deal?
@@retrocomputing ok. I have never heard of civilized countries and peoples invading sovereign nations with no provocation(Ukraine), killing civilians, targeting civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools, raping women, kidnapping children and sending them off to the invading country to be brainwashed that they’re actually not Ukrainian but Russian. That’s pretty barbaric behavior.
Russia calls itself democratic and civilized yet behaves the way they do when invading other countries.
If Russia wasn’t comprised of barbaric mongol orcs, why do Russia’s neighbors try desperately to get in NATO to be protected from future invasions? Surely if Russia was a friendly country, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania wouldn’t be in NATO? Why do those countries feel the need to be in NATO? Because of the Russians who have historically oppressed them for centuries.
Bulgarian here. Recently visited Barcelona and the biggest culture shock for me was the number of young people I saw.
same thing happening in Greece that remained "capitalist" through the cold war
the true difference is not being capitalist country, but being rich country
The frustrating thing is that young people still blaim socialism for this. They claim that it's because of socialism's failure that it takes us this long to recover.
Self-protection, capitalism is an inhumane system that spreads poverty, famine and war. It's a bottom of the pit and you can't have any vestiges of it left.
Communism is what brought them in the state of being exploitable by the west following its unavoidable fall.
В России то же самое. Тут многие пишут из Румынии, Болгарии, стран Прибалтики, и т.д., что ж, напишу и я. Я родился в деревне в 90х и мог наблюдать всё это воочию - безработица, нищета, нищета даже среди работающих людей, алкоголизм, неуверенность в завтрашнем дне, и т.д. Всё это было и всё это есть и поныне.
Обидно, когда некоторые пишут что это закономерный процесс урбанизации и роста производительности труда в деревне, в результате которого сельские рабочие оказываются не нужными и просто переезжают в город. К сожалению, это не так. "Мирная" урбанизация это не тот процесс, который внес основной вклад. Основная причина - это развал и деградация экономики, да и вообще всех сфер жизни. В моей родной деревне я в сознательном возрасте застал только огромные руины сельскохозяйственных строений - ангаров, токов, коровников и т.д., также как и заросшие сады и высохшие пруды. Всё это было, но в считанные годы оказалось "неэффективным". Эффективные собственники пилили всё на металлом и уезжали. А после оставались одни руины. Теперь работы там нет, возвращаться мне некуда - все родственники лежат на кладбище.
Что ещё производится, так это зерно - земля то довольно богатая, а зерно даёт прибыль здесь и сейчас. Тем не менее, даже на этом производстве дорабатывают своё одни старики - и их с каждым годом всё меньше. В свете этого особо умиляет хвастовство властей о рекордных урожаях зерна и рекордных уровнях вывоза его за границу. Тут радоваться нечему, если знать как дела обстоят на самом деле. Недоедим, но вывезем, ага. Они вывезут. А что осталось - сдадут на металлолом, и тоже вывезут. А деньги выведут сначала в столицу, а потом в иностранные банки, и купят недвижимость в Европе. Теперь "невойну" устроили, говорят проклятый запад нас ненавидит. Ладно, это другая тема, тут можно ещё много всего написать.
А вот сейчас я живу в городе - семьи нет, времени нет, денег не особо, но что хуже - нет уверенности в завтрашнем дне. Вернее, есть уверенность что дальше будет только хуже, когда знаешь к чему всё дело идёт.
Критика по ролику - можно было бы привести больше статистки тотальной деградации - "русский демографический крест", количество школ и поликлиник в России по годам в сравнении с количеством церквей, падение доходов населения, рост количества наркоманов и ВИЧ-инфицированных, средняя продолжительность жизни и т.д. Вот где самое дно
Хорошо ты все расписал, товарищ.
I am living in Russia. Just from the percent of population gone, many people may have thought, that we are doing not that bad. But in reality, our natural growth is horrible: -13 million since 1991. The only reason for relatively stable demographics-migration of Russians, that after the collapse of the Union were left abroad, in newly independent republics(esspecially Ukraine), and therefore needed to leave their homes for Russia.
Explains why desperate Putin invaded Ukraine. Russia is a country without a future.
Yes, but the Muslim population in Russia is growing really fast and Russia will be a Muslim majority country by 2050.
@@larryc1616 ..what about it ?! Muslim in Russia are in their Land ....
Muslims of Russia a native not like in France or Germany
@@larryc1616 Muslims in Russia are not growing very fast. they have a slightly higher birth rate, and not all of them. there are different Muslims in Russia
Damn, YOU TOOK YUGOPNIKS JOB!!!
I traveled through Bulgaria in 2019. Aside from the seaside, the capital Sofia, and some Roma camps, it was pretty darn empty.
A sad and beautiful video, thank you! This might become my go-to quick reference on the topic. Greetings from a Lithuanian doctor in Germany.
Whoa why is this the first I'm hearing about this? You constantly hear about this in Asia but never in Europe. That's so strange.
There are parts of the American South and Midwest experiencing this also. The huge income losses because of the layoffs in tech plus all the bank failures make me think it's going to intensify soon. :/
glad you were interested in learning!
It's only propaganda because they are overpopulated with Imigrants.
Where is their generation
Because these eastern countries are part of "civilized world". Have to keep quit or they would like to go back to Russia.
This always happens when you surrender your national interests to a supranational bureaucracy that was not created by you and not for you.
As someone from Hungary it’s always funny to hear libs (mostly the below 30 generation) about how “socialism’s fault that we are 40 years behind the west”.
My reply is always “if it wasn’t for socialism, then we would have fallen a 100 years behind the west, but go ahead, live in the global south”.
Almost like everything is a tradeoff with the US as a global hegemony being a capitalist regime that places trade sanctions on anyone who won't allow billionaires to exist. Maybe a reason North Korea has nuclear weapons, too.
Same in Russia. They scream about poor business, GDP and stuff, but never ask how Europe and US are the only rich places in the world.
And I'm not even talking about Ukraine. It feels like they inject pro-capitalism anti-soviet propaganda directly in their bloodstream. It's just sad.
And why do you think it would be like that? The baltic states were on par economically pre 1940 with finland, yet we can see Finland currently being way ahead of us
@@mr.dagger437 realistically Germany 🇩🇪 would have wiped these places from earth without Stalin
As a romanian, something I always found interesting was the ignoring of the 90s in romania by the capitalists. The 90s were by FAR the worst point in romania's history, and coincidently this is also the decade "communism" fell. Or was it really a coincidence? Its almost as if switching up an entire government like that into capitalism when the people used to live in social safety nets is a bad idea....not to say romania was ever communist, nor that it didnt try, though the last few years were filled with more of a dictatorship than a communist party, though again, there are many positives from it, such as having the highest home ownership rate in the world, or one of. India is an even better example of capitalistic damage when forced, over 100 million deaths in india alone could be atributed to the British forcing of a capitalist government.
First economic revolutions are always terrible but one has to look at the longevity and total damage done. Like Aden Yemen (a Yugo-type system) was far off better than what it is now.
Remind me, what was the nationality of Nicolae C., the man that destroyed Romania?
China killed 200 millons and IS comunist ,what happened in india was during ww2 ,they had to send food to soldiers and that caused a scarse in india .
@@LMB222 He shouldn't be blamed alone, because it would lower the blame on all the others who contributed to the fall of Romania, from the Americans who bombed Bucharest and sent PoWs to gulags, to the Securitate apparatus, to the Western communists, to the traitors who care more about being prestigious in the EU than the citizens.
@@LMB222 He didnt destroy romania, nazi
His enemies did
Someone i was talking to used east and west germany as an example of capitalist superiority.
I was tempted to tell them that it was more a take over than a unification. How can you call yourself unified if you double the size of your country, yet take no policy or government from the ones that join you?
It's chilling to think that in the end the Nazis got almost everything they wanted one way or another. Really an awful timeline
Literally everything from No More USSR to the disappearence of Europes massive Jewish minorities who were near majorities in places like Odessa to the depopulation of Eastern Europe to Germany as the leading European power.
I don't think Nazis wanted immigration of refugees in Europe.
Well you know.. paperclip
@@ciii4361 Paperclip isnt even the worst Nazi rescue, its kinda funny how people focus on it.
@@neo-nkrumahist5765 it’s because it’s more famous
Hakim habibi, I love you and your work so much you are doing an essential service. I am here to just ask if you could put your sources in the description, it really helps with introducing others to the evidence of these arguments. thank you bro, amazing video as always
To be fair, demographic trends in Eastern and Western Europe are very similar. The difference is that the West has immigration (also in substantial part from the East), while the East is still an emigration region. What worries me the most is how quickly a population ages as soon as trends go that way and how many crises come about after this process has hit a critical point - and how impossible it is to reverse such trends afterwards, because each generation gets smaller and the relative share of people beyond their "reproductive age" grows accordingly. I don't think technological progress can keep pace with the demands of societies that are so aged. The only positive trend is that people tend to be "more healthy" longer, so that, on average, what it means to be 60 years and older, has changed in the last 50 years (positively). Still, I think radical system change must happen. We don't have societies that can cope with modern demographics, but societies must adapt if trends cannot change (which they can't, many countries have tried).
Exactly! The actual birth rates are similar...
Some eastern European countries even have positive immigration like Czechia...
Thanks for the great video!
I remember talking with a friend from Dutchlandia (they shall drain the North Sea) about this. He mentioned that a lot of their tradesman are from Eastern Europe. I asked him if he saw any sort of problem with that. He said no iirc. Its a bit saddening innit?
"Well they could just stay where they were, they are here by choice."
It's a very good thing that they have more choice as to where to live. I'm happy for them.
It should be noted, however, that while emigration hurt Eastern Europe hard after the collapse of the USSR, it would have happened DURING the USSR times if those countries had had open borders. My parents grew up in the USSR and it wasn't paradise. Just FYI, why did people in the USSR not leave villages behind? You think, because it was a good place to leave? Nah, simply because villagers could not legally move out of a village. They were "assigned" to them just like during feudal serfdom. If people could move out of the USSR, they would. Hence, many famous cases of sportsmen, scientists, and other "brains" leaving the USSR at the earliest convenience. Stanislav Kurilov, for example. And damn, illegal USSR dissolution? Tell it to all my ancestors who died in GULAG. Our people voted out of that jail of nations, over 90% voted out.
Thank you for including east Germany into this. People tend to look at the shiny cities, like Berlin, Dresden or Leipzig, which got massive attention by investors and public funding (there are some fantastic clips of my hometown Dresden, just after the reunification, a city I still got know as a child. Compared to what it is now it is really astonishing). Both for the better and the worse. The cities are gentrifies to hell and back with great public transportation and job opportunities, while the rural towns have become desertes. This isnt a new phenomenon, but long ongoing. I remember field trips in small villages where you could see rotten huts and fences, farm equipment that belonged into a museum and empty windows. And the answer for why is as clear as can be: the Treuhand/forced privatization.
(This is going to delve into an unrelated topic to this, but the same time it's somewhat related because of the imperialism):
You should sometimes also mention the always unmentioned and forgotten part of the Global North/the Developed World, Japan and South Korea. Because they are essentially doing the same thing as Western Europe, doing economic imperialism on it's southern Asian neighbors.
And that Imperialism is prevailant in my country the Philippines. I recently I saw an article on Google (I think) of just a very tiny group of Filipinos protesting against several Japanese corporations apparently building their coal power plants in the countryside.
And there's also a Filipino prostitution sentiment (because Japanese men have been using Filipinas, Filipino women for prostitution/their own comfort).
Not to mention, most Filipinos are vying for Japanese culture (like Japanese food, manga, anime, self-discipline culture etc.) because of the economic exploitation that the Global North is imposing, creating a sense of dread for Filipino society and culture. And because of the liking and constant vying for other cultures, this phenomenon in the Philippines is always known as a "colonial mentality".
It honestly makes me sad, angers me, and it's heartbreaking, knowing that your country has been both an economic and social slave to your own enemy since WW2 (because Japan occupied us the Philippines during the war).
And I must admit, I do have some interest in anime, although at least I don't praise the Japanese and their culture often as someone superior than to us Filipinos.
I have to mention the problem of the Filipino colonial mentality on praising Japanese culture, because it reflects on us Filipinos. Because the more we Filipinos praise our enemy too much, the more passion for Filipino culture and society fades away.
Philippines needs to have Socialism with Bayanihan characteristics.
The Yakuza are known for stealing filipino women for sex slavery and pornography, the sex tourism and exploitation of women there is horrible..
Hi, I'm from Serbia near Repušnica.
TLDR: The declining population in Serbia is almost dramatic. The mentioned Repušnica is mountainous and inaccessible, its and similar villages depopulation started during the industrialisation. Economic decline after Yugoslavia dissolution is not the sole reason. It is interesting how socialist managed in 20 years after ww2 to bring the country to its peak in industrialisation and economy, and now after 20 years of Yugoslavia dissolution, we are not even returning to the previous standards.
I confirm the depopulation of my region, the municipality is like halved in population. There are a lot of villages like Repišnica here, but they are not good examples for depopulation after Yugoslavia dissolution. Most of those are mountainous villages which started to be depopulated when the industrialisation started in 60's and 70's. I have visited Repušnica several times, and one of the villagers explained to me that people moved to the cities to work in factories. They would dismantle their houses, transport the bricks, roof tiles, wooden beams, and other materials to the city, and rebuild their homes there. This was happening even before the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
As you can see on the image of Repušnica you provided there are only hills and forests have, little to no surfaces for agricultural fields. Repušnica has no permanent residents, and people mostly visit in the summer for hunting and logging. Some other mountainous villages near the Bulgarian border are also left with only a few residents. The roads to these villages are often in poor condition and not asphalted. To reach the farthest villages, one usually needs a terrain vehicle. Therefore, living in these remote locations is not very convenient in modern times when people need more access to the city.
The narrative is that people populate this remote locations during the Ottoman rule to escape oppression. However, after the liberation and especially during the industrialization period, people moved to cities for better and more convenient lives. That was the story for the mountinous villages, but in Vojvodina, a rich agricultural region, there is also a declining village population.
In my city, after the wars and destruction of the industry in the 90s, the population has almost halved in two decades. Many people are leaving for Belgrade, larger cities, or some western countrie. Many doctors and nurses are migrating to Germany, for example.
Today marks the 24th anniversary of the beginning of the NATO bombing of Serbia. We have barely recovered to the level of the 1980s. After World War II, Yugoslavia was already a backward country and had been destroyed by the war. However, the socialist government managed to achieve peak development and industrialization in just 20 years by the 1970s. New capitalist regimes inherited all of the infrastructure and facilities but sold them for almost nothing. As a result, factories were left empty and deteriorating. Only in recent years have some of the factory facilities and halls started to be renewed and operational again, albeit with minimal wages for workers.
Sta pricas covjece??? Ja zaradjujem 2600 eu u BG sada. Najbolja drzava na planeti. Svi se vracaju u Srbiju. Niko ne odlazi u inostranstvo.
Happy Ramadhan al-Karim to you, Hakim
Ramadan kareem habibi
Now do west Europe's housing crisis! The free movement of peoples is only good for the employers(&service providers), and the people moving(although you're effectively knee capping yourself if you don't). It's all short term gains while Europe crumbles.
This is a good article, I've visited most countries featured and seen for myself the semi deserted towns and villages, where it is common to hear people say they wished they were still living in the communist era, because whilst life might not have been that great, at least they knew what the day would bring. In parts of Bulgaria the farming methods are straight out of the 15th century, everything is done by hand, with an occasional donkey helping out. The EU is one massive failure unless you live in one of the richer overcrowded countries. What possesses manufacturers to import labour when the obvious solution is to move the factories to the areas where they are needed? Is the EU just a few very selfish countries hoarding everything at the expense of their neighbours? Another thing I notice whilst travelling through these countries is how unspoiled and beautiful they are. Slovakia, East Germany and many of the countries of the former Yugoslavia are awesome, why would anyone want to leave? For the answer to Eastern European countries in decline look at West Germany and to a lesser extent France. Britain is also part of the East European problem, instead of training its own people and investing in automation, it raped Eastern European countries of their most able people, the very people who were most likely to bring prosperity to their own countries. Job agencies are in it for the money and they don’t care whose lives they wreck, far too many don’t even place adverts for local workers, preferring to bypass them in favour of cheap labour from elsewhere, often Eastern Europe. Multinational companies are the enemy of common sense, they have one aim and that is too make a tiny number of people disproportionality rich. Why do the rich EU countries buy so much from China instead of supporting the poorer countries in the EU. The EU baffles me, it’s unelected, unaccountable and appears to hate the very people it claims to represent. Shame on the EU at every level.
These stalinist/leninist nazbol scumbag youtubers all of sudden popping up everywhere that are presenting their solution to the crisis of Europe is all part of this whole evil plan. It's why so many people are getting fooled to become marxist but they fail to realize both marxism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin created by these psycho globalist scoundrels who want to control the world.
I can tell you that the successful people stayed in Eastern Europe. Companies rarely hire people from abroad even if they have the right skills. They prefer local candidates who already live in the country. Living in another country is grounds for auto rejection of job application.
@@Alex-df4lt I wish my home country "Britain" acted in the same way, many jobs are never advertised in Britain, especially when it comes to farm or factory work.
Hakim, can you make text versions of your videos or write some articles on these topics? You make very deep analysis of many interesting problems, so i think many people would prefer reading to listening for better understanding
Even in Slovenia, where I'm from, which is regarded as one of the better off countries of the former "Eastern Europe", we-well, some of use, anyway-can clearly see the decay, both economic as well as societal, and it's heartbreaking.
Also, will never *not* laugh at the "Ch*mtrails just lines of c*ke for Jesus" patron name.
what kind of decay?
If Jesus saw what Capitalism has done for the world, he'd do a few lines to forget.
It's not former "Eastern Europe".
It's Eastern Europe. Period.
@@fuqupal Only if you're taking in consideration few decades of the 20th century, otherwise not so much. Culturally Slovenia is more on the west side than Greece for example. Iron curtain was just a short phase, and people still treat it like it was in Europe like forever and still exists. Not even mentioning the fact that Slovenia was never behind it.
Why did you destroy Yugoslavia???? And you are crying. Shame on you. You destroyed Yugoslavia with Croatia.
I can't get over the fact that at 13.00 someone playing Monopoly has put houses on the Water Works. WTF??