[gassius]

As a Venezuelan, I think the difference is not the Natural Resources, or at least is not the main difference. In 2017, the shortages and economic crisis generated by 15 years of communist policies has pushed around 4 million people out, and then, the regime "elected" a Constitutional Assembly which has the power to create a new Constitution and to overrid any previously elected organism (as it was at the time the opossition controled National Assembly).

At that point I leaved Venezuela inmediatly with my 2 minor aged kids, because for me it was a NO BRAINER that the first thing they will do was to limit the emigration and the free ciruculation. My train of tought was very simple. As any other Socialist Dictatorship before, this one needs to halt the staggering loss of skilled proffesionals like Medics, Engineers or whatever they deemed of National Security, I mean, you still need Doctors, you still need the Electricity and Water to get into the industries and houses, and specially for Venezuela, you need to keep the Oil flowing off the earth...

BOY WAS I WRONG, they never put a formal limit to the emigration and at least another 5 million people leaved Venezuela (so far). It did not matter at all that the already in shambles Public Health system collapsed, they doctors that stayed were private and they attended only the capacity that could pay for the scarse services, the basic services did not matter that much either, as people got use to get them once or twice per week, and even a country wide blackout of 3 weeks was not the end of the regime, and the Oil, well, does not matter either because what was once 3.5 million barrels per day went to be as low as 300.000 bpd.

So, what was the difference? well, for all its downfalls, it seems to me that the XX century Communist/Socialist dictatorships were guided by Ideology, they really thought theirs ideas were for the better of their people, so having no Healthcare was a REAL PROBLEM, having no public services was a REAL PROBLEM. Of course, their recipes were doomed as their political ideals, but at least they tried.

The Venezuelan Regime has no Ideology (it has some in form of propaganda, but that is different that actions) as the latest news can attest, They couldn't care less about the people and the wellness. They did not use any "Natural Resouces" to keep any level of living conditions, they just let loose the ruins of the economy they had messed so badly to let the most savage neoliberalism to correct the course while they stayed in power to keep leaching two sources of income, whatever oil they could produce and the drugs operations revenue, alongside their cut on any business their allies (AKA "Enchufados) could come up in the "liberalized" economy.

All the people that leaved the country (including me) just made them easier to keep control of whatever was left. Ever decreasing political or social opposition, less pressure of the shambles public services and so on and on...

The Natural Resources is just a part of their Income, it does not affects the hability to control or to even extract richness from the system.

[Squarex]

I can only speak of Czechoslovakia, but from 1968 to 1989 there was no ideology. After the soviet occupation, there was normalization era, that was explicitly about compliance with the regime, not about believe in communism.

I agree though that it is more complex, but for some reason, Czechoslovakia wanted to keep all the people and exploit their work, while Venezuela and Iran seems to let the people go in exchange for the regime stability.

[bregma]

Would that be possibly because while Venezuela and Iran have oil to extract and sell on the international market to enrich the coffers of the oligarchs in power, the only resources Czechoslovakia had was labour. The oligarchs could only enrich themselves by exporting manufactured goods like shoes and buses, mostly made from imported materials, extracting the excess wealth from the labour of others the way Venezuela and Iran extract oil from the ground?

[qcnguy]

No, the whole USSR had exit visas but it was resource rich. Russia still is. It's not the case that the USSR's only resource was labor.

[gassius]

First, of course I am talking about Socialist Dictatorships of the XX Century in an academic way, from what I have read, So I really don't know as much as what I have lived through in Venezuela.

When I talk about Ideology, I am not referring to the people, but the regime hiercachy. I would guess in the case of Czechoslovakia the regime had some Ideology alignment with the Soviets, but I truly don't know. But yes, they modern approach seems to favor the exile instead of the reclusion or so it seems

[qcnguy]

No communist ideology? What was the regime demanding compliance with, do you think? The normalization era was a return to Marxism-Leninism, not a departure from it.

Czechoslovakia in that period had one party politics, justified because multiparty democracy was "bourgeois deviation". It was a state run centrally planned economy, because the left wing don't believe in capitalism or free markets. Officially unemployment didn't exist, because only imperialist capitalist right wing economies had unemployment. Party membership and associated ideological compliance was required for any important role. Culture was censored, people were imprisoned by ideology police.

It is bizarre to claim that the USSR was not ideological. It collapsed because it was pure ideology in defiance of reality.

The reason the USSR kept people behind a wall is because they were able to mentally justify it to themselves within the framework of their far left ideology. They viewed the west as corrupt and, more importantly, full of corrupting ideas. They were just much more committed to winning the propaganda war than a place like Venezuela is because their worldview was formed at the end of the Victorian era when travel and communication was much more easily restricted. Maduro's socialist worldview was formed much later, when the idea of preventing Venezuelans having access to capitalist ideas would have seemed much more ridiculous.

[Squarex]

Of course there was a state ideology. Just the majority of the society and even the party did not actually believe it. There was a saying that there was more communists at a western university than in the whole Czechoslovakia

[Dansvidania]

Are you Czech or Slovak to be able to speak with this much confidence?

I have spent 13 years in Czech Republic, admittedly after the curtain fell, and I can tell you for a fact that they were “communist” because otherwise tanks.

You can see the relationship they had with the ideology in pretty much any sliver of cultural material from the period and after.