>>17787476 (OP)Because many of those countries have a ton of small isolated villages scattered everywhere that are hard to modernize.
Also, contrary to what OP says, Ceausescu for example wanted to erase the Romanian villages completely and merge them into small towns instead with miniature commieblocks instead of separate individual houses.
So, in theory at least, no more outhouses, no more peasants riding horse-drawn carriages, no more taking water from wells.
Also, as an interesting side effect,in the late 80s there was an entire media campaign in the West by some Hungarian diaspora and other Western organizations to "Save villages in Romania"l, and also presented this as a conspiracy by Ceausescu to destroy the Hungarian ethnic minority in Romania. even though the first few villages erased were Romanian ethnic ones in Southern Romania.