You could make a case for that . . . but there are so many different interpretations of Marx that by the end of his life he declared in exasperation, “Je ne pas un Marxiste!” The real problem is that he never fleshed out in detail how a communist society would work, so who can really say the CPSU wasn’t following his model?
Indeed. The biggest flaw in the Communist Manifesto is it was all theoretical.
Well, a lot of horrible shit went on under Stalin. But in economic terms – from Khruschev on, the average Soviet citizen (so long as he or she stayed out of trouble and made no waves) probably ate better, was clothed better, had better job security, was better educated, and got better health care than the average subject of the Tsar – and better than a lot of Russians now. (In 1992 a joke was making the rounds in Russia: “What have two years of capitalism accomplished that 70 years of Communism failed to achieve?” “Making Communism look good!”) As for “politically” and “socially” – a lot of people would say a measure of personal freedom is an indispensable element of those, and the Russians probably had more personal freedom under the Tsarist regime (a despotism tempered by incompetence), and have more freedom now (at least, freedom from the arbitrary but rather ineffectual government; freedom from gangsters is another story).
Not really. The Third Reich was a whisker away from having atomic weapons. In fact the most likely scenario under which it could have won the war, is one where it pipped the Manhattan Project to that goal.
Correspondingly, the Manhattan Project benefitted from the collapse of Nazi Germany and the flow of German science to the United States.
Whereas in reality the USSR didn’t have atomic weapons until c.1950. In fact one might say one benefit of the USSR is that it was effective at limiting US imperialism.
Indeed.
Sister in law.
Because the alternative was so attractive no?
The good thing is neither side got their evil way.
:rolleyes:
You realize of course that the United States was the only country on the planet that nuclear weapons for five years, and yet those imperialist bastards never overthrew a single country.
The United States has never been imperialistic. After WWII, the U.S. strode the world like a collossus. It was a super-bomb. Its soldiers were all over the world, occupying numerous countries. There was no other country that could even approach the level of industrial production, military production, or current military might.
And yet, what did this evil imperialist country do? It dismantled its armed forces and went home. It dismantled so much of of its military that a scant five years later it had a hard time fielding troops for Korea.
Imperialist my ass.
“It was a super-bomb”? It HAD a super bomb.
I can’t think of too may good things to say about the Soviet Union.
The Bolsheviks did make some economic improvements for the average citizen. But they didn’t create anything new; they essentially just eliminated a lot of previous property owners and redistributed their property to the surviving people. Their actual creation of new wealth was relatively meagre.
Internationally, the Soviet Union’s legacy was mostly disruptive.
The Soviet Union handed power to Josef Stalin, who then used this power to kill millions of people.
On the plus side: the Soviet Union did have a very good educational system.
And it does deserve credit for defeating Nazi Germany. But who’s to say that if the Soviets hadn’t been ruling in 1941, that the Russian Empire (or Russian Republic) wouldn’t have done the same?
[tom lehrer]
"Vunce the rockets are up, who cares vhere dey come down?
“Dat’s not my department!” Say Wehrner von Braun!
[/tom lehrer]
Thank you, Sam! After the Canschluss, I’ll recommend you as an internment-camp trusty! 
That’s completely untrue, Nemo. See post #29.
In fact, after WWI and the Civil War, there wasn’t all that much wealth for the Bolsheviks to redistribute. They pretty much had to rebuild Russia’s economy from the ground up. (Of course, as the Commies would be the first to admit, it was the people who did all the work.)
I have to agree, there wasn’t 14 million people in the Gulag for nothing, you know.
Come on now, I don’t think very much of the USSR’s economic capacity was attributable to slave labor. Under industrial conditions, slave labor is usually pitifully inefficient, especially when you factor in the cost of penning and guarding and overseeing the slaves. (One of many reasons the Germans lost WWII.)
From Country-Studies.com:
The Soviet Union had only one period of reasonable growth between 1950 and 1970. But it was starting from such a pathetic point due to wars and the mismanagement of resources under Communism, that such growth wasn’t surprising. But then the economy stalled out again, and in the 1970’s to 1990’s the Soviet economy underperformed the rest of the world’s by a large margin.
I have a hard time seeing how anyone can argue that Communism was good for the Soviet economy, when that economy declined drastically under the communists for years and remained a basket case until the fall of the Soviet Union.
A better question would be, “how much better would the Soviet economy had been if the NEP reforms under Lenin had evolved into an actual capitalist economy?” Does anyone doubt that it would have been much, much better?
Or maybe if the NEP reforms under Lenin had evolved into an actual democratic-socialist economy?
Yes, but it is also cheap, and the Soviets used it extensively so they didn’t have to buy money on foreign equipment.
I really hate to hijack this further, but the statements
aren’t true.
Hitler abandoned the atomic bomb because he thought it wouldn’t be done by the war’s end. We also had the same guys working on the bomb up to its completion. Von Braun and others were useful after we were already atomic. In fact, Germany’s nuclear engineers hadn’t even made a reactor by the time they were sitting in an Allied prison. They were years away at best.Cite
Back to the OP, the USSR probably caused the “evil” and “imperialism” from the US. We probably wouldn’t have touched Vietnam or meddled in Latin America without the threat of the Cold War. Social conservatives would have been less popular. Desegregation likely would have been sped up and no “Under God” in the pledge.
As for good things, the Soviets had plenty of great Olympic Athletes, and made Bond movies fun.