chapotraphouse

If you look for it, you can find a video of children offering themselves up as prostitutes in post-Soviet collapse Russia. Please really stop and think about what would force someone to have to do that. When we think of some generic image of an Eastern Bloc, post-Soviet shithole, whatever your mental picture is wasn't created by that nation. You're thinking of a post-collapse nation. We have our own in America called the Rust Belt. We don't blame the existence of ford and general motors as causing the dilapidation of Detroit. Their departure and subsequent economic collapse destroyed that region. It's a similar story writ large all over the former Second World.

And sure, Soviet cars sucked. Fortunately most people didn't need them.