This would be too OT but since you have offered an example... to keep it simple, lets take infrastructure.
The western Europe were developed countries then. It was more about restoring, rebuilding and improving. The roads existed before, people had knowledge, had data how it worked, where was heavy traffic and where was not, feedback from factory owners and therefore also should think of improvements and with the new technologies.
Soviet part of Poland was nothing like this. It was mostly agricultural area where were few (rail)roads connecting inland Poland and few manufactories. Lot of people died in war or sent to gulags. Soviet engineers now had to get idea how to build the roads to connect new area to USSR, connect it with their cities and with the newly build heavy-industry factories in new economical system.
Where would be money spent more efficiently?
Except Eastern Germany and western Czechoslovakia there was no industry and knowledge. Sure the communism made it worse, skilled people not killed by war and nazis run away or were jailed and sent to uranium mines/gulags. But the idea that Soviets were just pillaging its satellites is too simple, they had much harder job from the start.
The amount of money spent by Italy to its south during the decades is another example with less ideological/economical influences. Wouldnt it be better if would south just adopt without any Italian/EU subsidies and incentives? In fact, one user told us about need of less tariffs to third countries in this thread. First victims would be agricultural EU countries, not these wealthy ones. Because they live like in laboratory, dependant on state money and regulated market.
And now take what money would mean to improve Ukraine with its oligarchs, Russian influence and corruption. And there is still relatively good education, no religious fanatics and quite limited armed conflict. I would be willing to spend my taxes to help them to keep them independent from Russia, but I do not think that any my money would be spend effectively. I would help mandkind much more if I would spend same money to just adopt/sponsor some child.
