I have some extended family from Eastern European countries. It's just so unfortunate what happened. The road to hell, paved with good intentions. They're normal people stuck picking up the pieces of a failed regime. Even with some things being adjusted, it might take weeks to comfortably afford what a typical SDE could afford in an hour here.

No idea how people in the west romanticize it or say it was a good thing. I've even seen hostility directed towards Eastern Europeans living in the west (almost exclusively from radical college kids) joking about how they got what they deserved or anyone that ran from the USSR was a greedy business person and that the stories are made up.