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However, the percentage of Eastern Europe's population involved in agricultural production has gone done steadily in the postwar period, as industrialization policies under the ruling communist regimes brought more and more peasants in from the countryside to the cities to work in factories, a common pattern for developing countries.  The increase in industrialization and urbanization, according to Robin Okey, was particularly marked in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the economies of Eastern Europe grew at a rapid pace (see Tables 1 and 2).

TABLE 1                                                                    TABLE 2
1960-1970                                                                                      1965-1975
Increase in Industrial Production                                                % of population in agricultural production
Romania         +19 times                                                               Romania           57%-37%
Bulgaria          +16    "                                                                   Bulgaria           46%-26%
Yugoslavia      +12    "                                                                   Yugoslavia         not available
Poland             +11    "                                                                   Poland               not available
Source:  Robin Okey, Eastern Europe 1740-1985                                                                        Source:  Robin Okey, Eastern Europe 1740-1985
(University of Minnesota Press, 1982, p. 216).                                                                            (University of Minnesota Press, 1982, p. 216).
 

 

Industrialization in Eastern Europehas had dire consequences for the environment, as illustrated by this view of an industrialized section of Warsaw, Poland.  Poland, Hungary, and the former Czechoslovakia--the three most industrialized East European countries--rely heavily on low-grade coal for power.  Coal emits high levels of sulfur into the atmosphere which is then returned to Earth in the form of acid rain, a problem throughout Europe but especially pronounced in the East (this problem, by the way, is even more serious in contemporary China for much the same reason).  Poland in particular is known for its poor air quality, especially in its two most industrialized cities, Warsaw and Gdansk.