All I know, that Hungary couldn't have rebuilt
the terrible destruction of the war without
soviet energy and raw material, and
that hungarian shops always had more food
in them - even in the early 50s -
than the soviet ones.
I suppose we should stop referring to anecdotal evidence,
perhaps some figures are available somewhere.
I guess they stripped a load of assets -
I doubt if this was pre-meditated, probably
the motive was to revenge (or being seen to
revenge) the fascists. As Czechoslovakia
was more of an occupied country and not
a fascist ally as Hungary, I am puzzled.
Though they also had a better developed industry -
perhaps there was more to take.
Eva
>
> Ed Weick wrote:
>
> > Many writers have refered to the Soviet system as "state capitalism".
>
> A fellow blacksmith who lived near Prague said to me (in 1980),
>
> Es gibt kein Communismus! Es gibt nur Staat Capitalismus.
>
> There is no communism! There's only state capitalism.
>
> With regard to "who was screwing whom", he also recounted his
> experience just after the war. As a young teenager, he watched the
> Red Army direct the loading of trucks with every piece of industrial
> machinerey and materiel that could be found and ship it off to Russia.
> He was exceptionally fortunate to have a power hammer in his shop
> (commonplace among N American and western European smiths) because it
> had fallen from a truck headed for Moscow, broken a casting and been
> pushed into a ditch. A Czech smith had found a way to lug it home
> and, more remarkably given the conditions, repair it.
>
> Perhaps the notion of the SU having been the net exploiter is/was
> tilted by recollections of immediate post-war events.
>
> - Mike
>
