(Via Instapundit) It does not in fact surprise me that a person’s enthusiasm for Communism is usually [directly] proportional to how long it’s been since he or she had to live under it*:

[Estonian finance minister] Parts is vigorous, blonde, and athletic, but seems tired. He tries to conceal a yawn, explaining that he and his wife have just had their fourth child and nights have been short. “Comparisons are always difficult,” he says. “But when [Estonia] finally escaped from Soviet socialism, we were sick and tired of government centralism. We wanted precisely the opposite in all respects: We wanted a transparent state. A country that isn’t constantly intervening, nationalizing businesses, placing a bureaucracy above everything and imposing rules on people in every respect.”

But that’s because I know that Marxism is intellectualism for stupid people.

Anyway, read the whole article: particularly entertaining is the Spiegal author’s faint bafflement at how calmly and stoically the Estonians accepted an austerity program in 2008 (which paid off, by the way). It’s entertaining because said author wrote this:

When the Soviet system collapsed almost exactly 20 years ago, the Estonians crept out from under the ruins, declared independence and reinvented themselves, making sure that their legal system, administration, legislature and economic system were as far from socialist as possible.

…but apparently did not connect the actual dots. Which is that the Estonians have clearly collectively decided that the short-term pain of dealing with the free market still beats dealing with Communism. And do you know what the funny bit is? The funny bit is that Estonia isn’t a spectacular success, unless you grade on a curve**. Just a steadily expanding economy with a population growth that apparently seriously bemused the (German) author of the article.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*We cannot, of course, adequately judge the sentiments of those poor unfortunates who are still required to live under a Marxist regime. Aside from everything else, there’s never been a Communist regime that didn’t have to build a fence, staff it with guards with guns and permissive ROEs, and set up a vast system of snitches and informers in order to keep its population under control.

**To be fair: Soviet-style Communism was in fact so horrifically bad at… well, everything except turning live peasants into dead ones… that you probably should grade on a curve.