What explains the survival of illiberal political preferences in former authoritarian countries? While most research has focused on repressive experiences under authoritarianism, much less attention has been paid to the systematic assessment of why citizens in former authoritarian countries maintained illiberal political preferences. This is particularly evident in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) where a large share of the electorate suffered under repression, and yet continues to support more pro-authoritarian parties. Thus, I focus on policies which could have created support towards the communist regime, namely modernization. I argue that citizens which have profited from modernization under communism remain more supportive of pro-authoritarian political parties. As these citizens have experienced stronger increases in living standards compared to pre-communist times, they might be more receptive to authoritarian ideas. I use three sources of evidence. First, I present survey evidence confirming the pro-authoritarian pattern. Second, I collect fine-grained housing census data from major CEE countries to study the relationship between construction as modernization proxy and pro-authoritarian political preferences. Third, I focus on the case of Systematization in communist Romania where the regime sought to accelerate urbanization. Using a regression discontinuity design leveraging the population cutoff that has been used to allocate investments, I can identify more precisely the relationship between pro-authoritarian political preferences and communist modernization strategies. Overall, I find that modernization under communism leads to stronger pro-authoritarian preferences. This paper seeks to offer novel evidence on how pro-authoritarian preferences persist, underlining the economic foundation of political culture in post-authoritarian societies.