Do not believe all the propoganda that has been put about regarding Eastern European and former soviet block countries, ...
Indeed, on should not. I don't. There were some acceptable engineering products from some of the eastern bloc countries, but I would suggest these were the exceptions, and they were usually competitive because the proletarian workers were paid one-third the wages with three times the workforce. And, I suggest, these achievements were mainly the result of a inherited engineering culture, particularly in Czechoslovakia, rather than some centrally directed five-year planned miracle.
I believe what I believe because I went to most of these countries during communism. I was in Romania in the revolution of 1989. I know hundreds, possibly thousands, of people from the former eastern Block who well remember pre 89 years. And it is true, some of them, one or two, look back to pre-89 days with, rose tinted glasses. Indeed, against all the odds, there is a trend in Romania today that they produced good products then. Just as the French have forgotten how the country en masse hated Napoleon after Waterloo, it seems there's nowt so queer as folk. But if you want to believe Cl 56s from Craiova were a great product, so be it.
... we were fed as much mushroom manure about them as they were fed about us.
I believe this to be untrue. Very much so - although there were vast differences in the countries of the eastern bloc, most especially towards the end.
Many people had a good standard of living and were in well respected jobs.
Within their own countries, relatively, in some cases, yes. Compared to Austria and West Germany, the countries closest at hand, it's nonsense. And by 1989, everyone in the Soviet Bloc, including most party secretaries, knew it. That's why it collapsed in the way it did. Romania was an exception. In the case of the Ceausecus, particularly the lady with 15* doctorates, she still actually believed it.
* sorry, I can't remember the actual number she supposedly had, but it was stupidly high
This all changed with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Russian communism. A lot of manufacturing was transfered to the West this saw western econimies grow at the expense of the former.
You are joking, right? There was no 'transfer' in the normal sense of the word - the manufacturing industries collapsed because nobody, not even workers from the factories that produced them, wanted the crappy products they produced. Some industry survived after some savage cuts enacted by local managers, often with the help of govt bail-outs. Some companies like ABB, GE and VW came in and rescued some legacy industries. Mostly it's German and other manufacturers who've gone in and set up green field industries. In the past 20 years, IT has been quite successful from Macedonia to Estonia (including Romania) based on a strong mathematics culture. Several of the top, global anti virus companies originated in the region, not to mention Skype (Estonia) and Prezi (Hungary).
As to the railways, these were prev run for the people with fares acordingly set. But under the capitalist system fares rose , patronage declined and the rot set in.
Most of the inter-city services in all these countries are fine. Well, ok, I had a Flirt-type train with several seriously cracked windows in Romania a couple of years back. Czech and Slovak trains are excellent, and well filled IMX. FAres by UK standards are stupidly cheap.
But the various governments don't want to cut branch lines, even though car ownership has quadrupled since 1989. The railways eat subsidies - all helped, albeit mostly but not entirely, indirectly, by EU subsidies. They try to be like Austria - but alas, most countries in the region (Czechs excepted) don't actually have the productivity track records of that country, and as wages rise and they become less competitive with western Europe, there will be some crunch decisions to be made in the next two decades on big spenders like rail.