>>213085248
>since people would buy it anyway, as they had no alternative
there were still products and services that were advertised. hotels, taxis, appliances, hifi, bars and restaurants, jewelry shops, etc. communism sucked for sure but you act like people lived on bread and water. just because there was less competition between the services they still could advertise themselves

>Communist Hungary (probably also Czechia, Yugoslavia) had a tourist-oriented economy
kek no. only croatia had tourism on the adriatic sea. the only tourists we had were germans on the balaton. no one visited the warsaw pact cities at all. even after the fall of the system the only country that got foreign tourists in the first 20 years was czechia