@F100 I think it matters that while the UK had faster per capita growth in 1945-65 than in any 20-year period from the Middle Ages to WW2, Russian growth was infamously shit in 1988-2008, while the Warsaw Pact vassals grew quickly. (Ukraine grew even slower after the USSR's demise, but it was atypically militarized during the USSR - it was politically colonized but economically part of the core, unlike Poland.)