Apparently Churchill said « Stalin inherited Russia with a wooden plough and left it in possession of atomic weapons ».
Rationalwiki claims that : Under his long administration, Enver Hohxa oversaw the economic and social transformation of Albania from a feudal relic which was formerly ruled by a despot named Zog to a relatively modernized state.
Rationalwiki also claims that : Yugoslavia tended to enjoy a better quality of life than its Warsaw Pact neighbors with significantly better access to consumer goods (both foreign and domestic) and generally had fewer restrictions on its citizens.
I dont get it. I though that socialism caused economies to collapse ?
Are those socialist dictators actually hated for the brutal repressions under their regimes, and not for their economic policies ?
But then, if their economic policies had been applied by a non-dictator person, like Alexander Dubček, could have socialism turned out better ?
This is a highly politically motivated question and might do better under r/askpolitics however from a purely historical perspective I can do my best from my knowledge on Yugoslavia. u/commiespaceinvader has made excellent posts in the past but I believe I can add some things here.
The economies of Communist nations in Europe is a story which has not ended well in any situation. However, in most, while the economies were a main factor in their dissolutions, many other factors also played a key role.
In Yugoslavia specifically, the economy was structured in such a way that it was built like a command economy however over time the introduction of markets led to some instability. Yugoslavia also had quite a large degree of workers' self-management - a fairly Syndicalist policy rather than communist policy - which allowed for the election of management within the workers. It was viewed very differently by many historians. David McNally believes that it was the main cause of all economic problems. McNally comments "in the case of the Yugoslav economy of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. …the results were entirely consistent with the analysis we have presented: inherent tendencies towards unemployment (partially relieved for a time through emigration), inflation, increasing social inequality, and concentration and centralisation of capital". However, there are just as many who disagree with McNally as agree with him, such as the economist Harold Lydall who states that "What was needed was more freedom for independent decision-making by genuinely self-managed enterprises within a free market, combined with tight controls on the supply of domestic currency”. Lydall's views mimick the views of many in the topic, with that being it was not the presence of left-wing ideas and policies that caused instability, it was the lack of commitment to those ideas and policies.
As for other aspects of the economy, much of the failing policies and tactics were not original left-wing political ideas as the Yugoslav SFR had a policy of emigration of the unemployed, by where they would transfer unemployed to Europe for skills and employment, however this was only a temporary solution as many of the workers were immediately sent back. While this was not a communist, socialist or syndicalist practise, it was, nonetheless, an economic failure.
Again, it is important to remove biases in this question, as I may be biased towards my own view (please tell me if something comes off as biased) and so this is why I believe that this question maybe better suited to r/AskPolitics instead of here.