At least you had bread!
We, in the friendly community of friendly socialist republics had to know the shopkeep to even get the bread. Or just do a lot of "haltura" (jobs from the side) to get some bottles of vodka to exchange it for other goods.

To be fair, while I'm no adherent or fan of communism, the Soviet Union - including Poland - really was communism in name only. It was a vile dictatorship that basically abused Marxism and Leninism as some vague justification to keep the political elite in power and then never adhered to many of the principles underlying it.

For example, one of the pillars of communism is direct democracy. When did the worker groups ever have any real influence over party policy? Another problem was that - despite the classless nature of communism, social classes with very real differences in standards of living were a very real thing in the Soviet Union, and the workers basically got the shit end of the stick.

Marx also was a pretty staunch defender of freedom of speech, opinion and the press (pretty revolutionary at the time - freedom of the press and freedom of speech were foreign concepts pretty much everywhere), except when that freedom was abused to benefit the elite. The Soviet version of "communism" also failed on all of these fronts, as you pointed out with the secret police.

Yes but you were all paid the same wages correct? You didn't have millionaires/billionaires pocketing the vast majority of the wealth? I personally would like that kind of equality, even if it meant a lower standard of living than I currently have.

Well, yeah. If Jobbik ever got into power, I suspect ethnic cleansing and a revival of Hitler's Lebensraum programme would be on. But between Fidesz and Jobbik, it's basically akin to asking if you just want your finger chopped off or the whole hand.
There was no equality in the Soviet Union. The political elite and party friends pocketed most of the wealth. As I said above, it was communism in name only.

Do you have any evidence of this? I'm not denying that corruption existed, but afaik in the USSR all industry was state-owned, so theoretically at least all the wealth should of been in public trust.

TOP KEK TOP KEK, naive westerner alert!

Do you even...
Jesus.

Party functionaries were the same like they are now, living the life, pocketing money left and right. The working people were poor then, they are poor now. We just had better social services as Moscow poured money into pribaltika. Also bigger export to Russia (they couldn't get enough of our Vana Tallinn, Kalev chocolate and our pig and cow meat and dairy products).
We just didnt have the press that time to show the inequality, but people talked.

If you wanted good life, then university was a big no-no as doctors had a smaller wage than some cleaners at military factories.
If you wanted a good life then you HAD to do haltura and jobs for people who then gave you contacts and stuff you needed.

Source: lived in Estonian SSR

Yes corruption, I mentioned that. People who are in the political elite have special privileges, this is evident in every society for all of human history. But that's completely different than a company CEO who owns a factory and profits from the work of his employees. Are you telling me that politicians in the USSR were literal millionaires who owned private companies? I seriously doubt that.

The fact that the Soviet states even had a currency in the first place is evidence of this. But here:

http://50.economicus.ru/index.php?ch=2&le=20&r=5&z=1 (Google Translate might help, haven't tried it myself)

USSR figures are addressed from Figure 11 onwards, the graph and Table 12 are particularly relevant.

That being said, as bad as the problem was in the USSR, it's several times as bad now under capitalism, which seems to apply the naively misguided Reaganist-Thatcherite principles of trickle-down economics.

No it's not the same, goddamn those young western people. People are inherently evil. You can keep dreaming your dreams of friendship and perfect equality, but people are selfish and those systems will never work, as some people will always, ALWAYS corrupt the system and start fu*king it up. Read up about Khmer Rouge, would be a perfect world if they lived in a world they dreamed of, but real life was very fu*ked up, same with North Korea, same with CCCP. Russians and Middle Asians were mostly the only ones who liked CCCP, Russians got their egos buffed by running the biggest country in the world and having colonies (friendly socialist countries). Middle Asians got the most democratic forms of governance that they had ever seen (Usbeks, Tadziks, Kyrgisis) and education.

Those were the politicians friends who did that (ran the factories)
That's why a lot of younger people here can't wait until the older generation dies off, as they were politicians during the soviet times, and suddenly they changed colours and are politicians to date (some very nationalist aswell).
During the 90-s the same factory owners privatized those factories they were appointed to run by their friends in the system and are still rich and corrupted.

from what i read ,the CCCP temporarily armed and trained the PLA too, if that's worth anything.

and my distant chink commie cousins were supposedly quite "democratic" in the beginning. they killed off the landowners, then shared the land among themselves. too bad china has a ridiculous number of people, so they ran out of stuff to split up... even after they killed off like 3 million of themselves mostly by starving.

I like your priorities :) Will read the thread later, if the folks not in Poland could comment how the election is being reported would be interesting I guess.

My quick takes are that very little will change other than symbolic rhetoric and that the result of the election was known well in advance, with only the fact PiS went over 50% as a small surprise.

If you are a nationalist in Europe today your best, and perhaps only choice, are these right-wing parties.
Nationalism does not equal racism and bigotry, which much of popular media seems to think.
These parties attract various kinds of people with different goals, hopes and expectations.
Some of them are racists bigots but in my experience most of them are not.

Some of the followers mainly want less immigration, some seek policies that help the sick, unemployed and elderly, some wish for stronger solidarity within the country, some want all of this, and so on.

Two things have lead to these parties becoming really popular in Europe, in my opinion:
1. an increased "Americanization" of the economy
2. a large influx of Muslims into the EU

A bit off-topic: I am maybe not fully aware of the domestic situation in Hungary (is the media really suppressed? I recall hearing some odd law in the making in Hungary how educated university people who were going to emigrate, would have to pay for their education or something...), but when it comes to the immigration control of its borders, I think other EU countries are two-faced complaining about it.

Hungary does exactly what it is supposed to: controlling what kind of people are coming in through its borders from outside the EU. That is considered inhuman now? If it wasn't for Hungary controlling its borders, there'd be far more illegal immigrants coming in to the Schengen area.

I find it odd how some EU countries have lectured Hungary for guarding its borders as if it is racism or something, but now eventually those same countries are like "Yeah... maybe we should control the EU borders better than what we do now. Too many people are leaking in uncontrolled.". So which way is it, open the doors wide open or control the borders who is allowed to come in?

Other EU countries should be thankful for Hungary's actions. If only other EU countries would use similar control, especially about controlling paperless people traveling through their countries. The "free movement of people and goods" is not meant for persons who are illegally in the Schengen area, that much should be clear.