In the late Eighties, before the revolutions, East Europeans were avid cinemagoers. By 1997 cinema attendance in Latvia had fallen by 90 percent. The same was true everywhere - in Bulgaria it was down 93 percent, in Romania it was down by 94 percent, in Russia it had fallen 96 percent. Interestingly, cinema attendance in Poland in the same years was only down by 77 percent, in the Czech Republic by 71 percent, in Hungary by 51 percent. In Slovenia it had hardly fallen at all. This data suggest a direct relationship between prosperity and film-going and confirm the explanation offered in one Bulgarian poll for the decline in local cinema attendance: since the fall of Communism there was a better choice of films ... but people could no longer afford the tickets.

Tony Judt: The reckoning, in Postwar, A history of Europe since 1945, Penguin Press, New York, 2005.

A direct relationship suggestion? Doubtfully direct, life is not as simple as that. Maybe it is only a coincidence.

First of all, the suggested direct relationship would require a common reference value for the countries compared, e.g. cinema attendance as a percentage of country’s population. It could be that the striking differences in the decrease of attendance actually result in an approximately equal post-revolutions attendance for the listed countries when normalized to the country’s population. A question than arises why the differences existed in the first place and could they be attributed to the prosperity of those countries. This is not the same question because ‘prosperity’ here is before the revolutions.

Secondly, what was the cinema attendance in the Western World in eighties and nineties? If there was a change, could it be attributed to prosperity? If yes, is label ‘prosperity’ of the same meaning for East and West?

In particular, I doubt the "a better choice of films". The selection of films I had in the socialist Yugoslavia is matched here, in USA, only in very specialized theaters with international movie series. Could Tony Judt imagine that film-going East Europeans are affected by the fall of movie artistic quality as well as the fall of Communism?