You could replace USSR/Russia with USA/NATO and Ukrainians with Russians in your second paragraph and everything would match. You can’t in good faith tell me Russia is brainwashing it’s population but that the West isn’t commanding every major media platform to parrot it’s geopolitical narratives. You can’t tell me that “Greatness” is what matters most to Russia and pretend that the US/EU isn’t drowning in rabid chauvinistic sentiment against it’s opponents out of fear of losing it’s greatness to a country like China.

Oh look, more Baltic capitalist brainrot. I hope you enjoy living in an ethnostate.

If you judge countries by GDP, you should adore not only systems of USA, but also Quatar and Emyrates. Numbers only tell a fraction of story.

I never said that GDP was the only metric worth looking at, this is bad faith.

GDP growth in the ashes of war was impressive in percentages. Like if you go from 1 to 3 dollars a month, you grow astonishing 300%.

Ha yes, excuse me. They only went from a backward quasi-feudal society poorer than India that still used horses in their army and fields to an industrial superpower capable of repelling what was then the most powerful military on earth and becoming the first nation to send a human to space in 40 years despite a civil war, an invasion from a dozen major world powers, a famine, the great depression, the second world war, constant internal and external sabotage and more, nothing worth mentioning.

This is just anti-communist cope that ignore reality.

And all just by copying foreign solutions: there was almost nothing originally created in USSR.

Blatantly false. Even if you ignore all their world’s first achievements in the space race the soviet have invented plenty of stuff: the world’s first nuclear powerplant(1954), the world’s first implantable artificial heart (1937), The world’s first cell phone (1961), etc. Plus, of course countries that are technologically late -as the soviet union was- are going to copy what the more advanced are doing, that’s just the smart thing to do, why bother spending the time and resources to re-invent a tech that’s already out there?

Even now russia is primarily primitive dig-out-and-sell economy. Russians often say that we in the Baltics owe them all these factories. As if we wouldnt build industry ourselves after a prosperous interwar period. As if Finland now was poor and regretting that it fought back this “marvelous” empire.

This has nothing to do with communism though, it’s the Russian nationalists and capitalists who say and do those things.

And of course you are right: employment in almost forced labour environment was high :) Even if GDP numbers were ok, life was shit: you couldnt buy things even having money, and people wer not allowed out, instead of not allowed in, like real prosperous countries do. So no, GDP is not a good benchmark here.

[citation needed], again.

No sources for claims so bunkers that not even notoriously rabid anti-communist try to make them. From where do you get that the entire population, or at least a majority, was forced to work? Or that peoples were not allowed out?

The only claim in here that’s even remotely defendable is the “you couldn’t buy things even having money” part in the sense that since the consumer industry was underdeveloped consumer products were not systematically available, but given the rest of the paragraph I doubt that’s what you mean.

As for the sentiment for USSR - of course it is strong inside brainwashed russia, where all media is state controlled. Currently their main national narrative is about the war, about being a superpower. USSR was a large, war-winning empire (even if with allies, even if repressive and evil).

This is more complicated than that. While the government narrative do like to refer back to the USSR for it’s military might and geopolitical influence, they are verry anti-communist and anti-Lenin. So the pro-communist sentiment can’t be explained by the propaganda alone.

On top of that, russians who still remember USSR are on the edge of poverty in their current cleptocratic liberalism, but they were young and somewhat secure then. But try looking at this data not from imperial centre of russia, but any Baltic state - you will see a different picture.

Good on you for not dismissing the opinions of peoples who lived under socialism as just nostalgia, a lot of anti-communists like to pull this one to “get rid” of inconvenient testimonies. Yes, indeed these peoples have noticed that they are far worst off now than before the dissolution of the soviet union and that’s why they regret the dissolution.

As for your second link, I may read it and get back to you with my thoughts later, but given my quick look at the sponsors and content I already seriously doubt the objectivity of this document. 👇

International conference materials, Riga, 17-18 June 2011 Social, economic and environmental losses/damage caused by the Soviet Union in the Baltic States

Conference organizers: – The Occupation of Latvia Research Society – European Parliament member, Inese Vaidere

Conference supporters: – European Commission office in Latvia – EPP group, European Parliament – European Parliament Information office – Daugavas vanagi (Latvian Veterans and Relief Association) – American Latvian Association (ALA) – World Federation of Free Latvians (PBLA) The book is published with a financial support of the EPP Group in the European Parliament and Prof. Inese Vaidere, Member of the EPP Group in the European Parliament. Free copy The Occupation of Latvia Research Society www.loib.lv

As for the sentiment for USSR - of course it is strong inside brainwashed russia

If the citizens of Bad Country agree with my propaganda, that’s proof of how bad their country is.

If the citizens of Bad Country reject my propaganda, they’re brainwashed, which is proof of how bad their country is.