1) Violent crime rates in the USSR were lower than most Western countries. Not one school shooting in 80 years. 2) It had better reading indices, higher life expectancy and better healthy food access than the US. There are CIA documents admiting that. 3) Why do you think socialists like Putin?
What good was healthy food if it wasn't available every day in a shortage economy? Do you remember how long people had to queue outside shops for meat and milk in socialist countries?
That was in the eighties, AFTER the reintroduction of markets and the dismantling of central planning mechanisms. Find me a single source describing food lines in a period where: 1) there wasn't a foreign invasion going on, 2) there wasn't a reintroduction of capitalist practices going on
Elena Osokina, Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia, 1927-1941: “By the end of the 1920s, Muscovites were already standing in long lines outside stores for hours to obtain the few consumer goods that were available."
During an extremely bloody "civil war" that saw 14 foreign armies invade to try to restore monarchy, with the foreign financed and trained White Army rampaging through rural Russia burning supplies and intense economic blockades. C'mon. At least try.
True, but you omitted the fact that the "civil war" ended already 1922. Your argument does not diminish the eyewitness reports from that time, that planned economies have so far been inferior to market economies. Is there a socialist future, where human need will be satistfied via robot labour?
And it's not like there wasn't famine before the revolution. Part of what precipitated the revolution were famines in the years prior to 1917. Russia did not went from abundance in 1917 to famine in the 1920s. It went from EXTREME abject famine in 1917 to the hope of maybe getting out of it.
The USSR ENDED the famines, didn't cause them!
There were food lines in the USA in the 1930s after the crash. You know which country wasn't affected by it and even donated food to the US? Yes. The USSR
This is a lie. In the 1930s, the Holodomor (1932–33) and other agricultural crises, such as those in Siberia, prevented the USSR from 'donating' food to the US, which indeed suffered from long queues for food for a decade.
Please feel free to believe that a command economy is superior to a free market in any way. In the USSR, you usually survived, but there were never enough goods. The same applies to the GDR, the 'little brother' of the USSR and a satellite state. Ultimately, the GDR was bankrupt.
Also: show me a single "free-market" which doesn't rely on extracting resources from other nations through unequal exchange that is not suffering from profound social problems like violence, high rates of crime, hunger, unemployment, and disenfranchisement of entire groups of the working class.
Free-market agriculture in the EU ensures far better food supply than the Soviet bloc ever could. The EU produces most staples at high self-sufficiency, adapting quickly via trade to meet demand. In contrast, the USSR’s rigid command economy caused chronic food shortages, poor quality, inefficiency.
In order to say to me that "communist countries go hungry" you have to first explain to me how it is that when people go hungry in a socialist country, it's the fault of socialism but when people go hungry in capitalist countries it isn't a fault of capitalism.
And why when socialist countries develop extremely fast and eliminate social problems in mere decades, it is not a virtue of socialism, but when capitalist countries develop their economies it is a merit of capitalism?
The GDR was bankrupt because instead of reinstating the Nazis and pumping money into it like the US did in the western side, the USSR punished the Nazis and forced the country to pay a steep price for the war and all the people they killed. The West treated Germany as a showcase. The USSR didn't.
The GDR's reparations to the USSR ended in 1953. Later, the Soviet Union also offered short-term trade advantages, such as cheap oil. West Berlin was the only true Western 'showcase'. The direct effect of the Marshall Plan on the FRG's economy was around 0.5% of GDP per annum.
What???
What what? Are you not familiar with the Russian "civil war"? Didn't you knew that 14 foreign armies invaded Russia after the revolution in 1917? And then called it a civil war? Read a fucking history book. This is not even controversial. It's just common knowledge.
Initially (1950s/1960s), the Soviet Union caught up significantly, but from the 1970s onwards, life expectancy declined, mainly due to alcoholism, cardiovascular disease and a poor healthcare system. By the end of the 1980s, life expectancy in the USSR was 5–7 years lower than in the USA.
It's amazing how people can write shit like this without mentioning that they did all this without holding the rest of the world at gunpoint like the USA did, and also while the USA and the rest of the imperialist countries were trying to starve and destroy it
It's amazing how far right and far left ideologies are so similar....
Far right: wants to kill people because of their race and uphold structures of domination. Radical left: wants to liberate workers and give dignity to them and eradicate poverty. "Centrist": can't see the difference between those two "violent and intolerant options". Ok then.
That's after Kruschev started rolling back core a bunch of stuff and post-Brezhnev party bureaucracy became incredibly out of touch. The first 40 years where incredibly impressive though in terms of how much quality of life was gained.
We are VERY aware of the problems of the USSR, specially in the post-kruschevite capitulation. Isn't it funny that quality of life standards started to decline right when Kruschev started flexibilizing central planning and reintroducing proto-market mechanisms as production incentives?
Socialists like Putin?
Just the nazbols, but the shitlib seems to think we do
The Bolshebols are not better than the Nazbols....