the leadership ends up ruling the population with an iron fist and horrible corruption that has benefitted mostly the ruling party and rarely anyone else
On the second point you’re so wrong it requires no discussion. In the 20th and 21st centuries the countries that had the greatest reduction of poverty in the world are the USSR and the PRC respectively. Whatever definition of ‘corruption’ you have, the fact that those governments not only benefited their people but benefited them more than any other nation on the planet is not a debatable point.
So what exactly do you mean “iron fist”? Are you from the US? Because if you’re saying it from the perspective of the most intrusive surveillance state in history and the largest police state in history, I feel like we’re going to have to sort our semantics.
I’m from one of the countries the USSR did their imperialism on so I’m definitely going to take issue with your assertion that they benefitted their people more than any other country. They benefitted the people in Russia by draining resources from satellite states. By iron fist I mean the people who spoke out against their regime were either executed outright, worked to death or near death. And by corruption I mean any wealth went straight into the pockets of party leaders and members.
Also why does everyone who defend the USSR go into US bad dialogue tree instantly? Like I really don’t give shit about the US and I’m sure it’s bad too, but that completely irrelevant. At least the US doesn’t generally outright annex countries to do imperialism.
NPC DIALOGUE TREE BEEP BOOP SELECT OPTION: WHINE WHATABOUTISM AND IGNORE THE QUESTION
Fucking clown.
And BIG IF you actually are from a former soviet satellite you’re either over 80 years old or you don’t know shit better than anyone else based on “I live here”
Yeah and I hear shit from people who live in South Carolina about the Civil War all the time.
Wow, you spent most of your post complaining I ignored a question I didn’t ignore while ignoring half my points. Impressive. If you missed my answer to “what about US” it was that I don’t care, both are bad.
Also you need to be 40 to remember life under Soviet rule. And my grandparents are well over 80 and they do remember the mass deportations personally.
