In Eastern countries, officially things were "cooperative" centric, in reality, breadlines and such meant you looked out for number one.

That's extreme generalization and is not based on reality. I will assume the author never been to Eastern bloc. Breadlines are a thing of just end of 80's. So 5 years max of entire history of the region?

I find the culture was less individualistic. Now of course it shifted but still core values remain. And each part of the bloc has variations of course.

Lines for literal bread were only 80s thing to be sure, but general shortages of everything, bribing officials to be advanced in a queue to get apartment, or a car, or bribing shopkeepers to get dibs on building materials, or bribing doctors to get better care, or bribing nurses to get better rooms and beds, has been a constant throughout most of 20th century.

Russia and Romania, as compared to the US, are known for dishonesty in some other areas: corruption and bribery in the government, cheating in schools and universities, counterfeit goods, financial fraud, tax evasion, etc. So it might be surprising to see honesty when it comes to returning a lost wallet.

(I think the important difference might be "being dishonest to the system" vs. "being dishonest to a concrete individual in your community".)

“Known for” mostly stands for “western media paints them as”.