>>75193
The story is "cool". Although you should avoid using the term Eastern bloc. First of all, it's been over 30 years since that thing disappeared.
Secondly, and I really must elaborate here, what was the eastern bloc 30 years ago is now a bunch of thriving and prosperous countries with one exclusion. Let's check them one by one, shall we? Eastern block used to include:
Hungary - currently a NATO member, and one of the fattest countries in EU.
Poland - the fastest growing, heavily industrialised country. One of the strongest EU economies. Features a high level of life and is known for prominent FA community.
Slovakia - not outstanding, but a nice EU country, with nice fat girls and yummy foods.
Bulgaria - makes weapons, known for its resorts, had old population which is now declining. A comfy place.
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia - nice small European countries. Fine jobs, law-abiding citizens are proud of their cozy neighbourhoods.
Ukraine - your car's software and your favourite apps were probably written by coders in Ukraine. Besides strong tech industry features strong agricultural sector. Feeds half of the world.
Kazakhstan - huge country, agriculturally strong, exports oil and natural gas, uranium ore some gold.
Azerbaijan - one of the region main oil exporters, a nice country which is good to visit. A rarity among predominantly muslim states.
Belarus - this one lags behind the others as it has a crappy dictator. However he managed to keep his population at least well-fed as he is known to inspect agricultural facilities himself, coming from supposedly agricultural background himself.
I believe you get the idea now. There is pretty much no former eastern block countries where "how shitty life can be there".
However there is one, for which this can be said. And that's Russia.
After promising and great decade of growth in the 90-ies it fall back into grim and dark dictatorship. It features declining population, ridiculous levels of alcoholism and cheap-ass drugs abuse. African level of poverty, illiteracy, rundown infrastructure and internal conflicts. For ideological reasons it kept starting wars throughout the years after Soviet Union collapse. All those took its toll on Russian population.
Right now it fights a stupid war against its successful neighbour - Ukraine. It is sanctioned as shit and is unlikely to have any good changes in foreseeable future. Russian also features ridiculously derelict model of power. It's a clan feudalism. Yes, there is still a country where clan feudalism is a thing. Get ready to watch Russia in yet another civil war and when you want to name some place with really shitty life - use Russia.