this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2025
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The USSR, PRC, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. all were massive expansions on democracy and working class control. They were finally free and just for the working classes, and society became more about trying to satisfy everyone's needs than endless private profits, with public ownership as the principle aspect of their economies.
Well, most of those I could at some point agree on just, but definitely not free. And the USSR in particular i would not say just either. Holodomor and all that.
They were absolutely free, compared to the horrible brutality of prior systems and the vast expansions in democratization and social welfare.
As for the USSR, the 1930s famine was tragic, but was the last major famine outside of war time. After collectivization of agriculture, yields were greater and more stable, and the bourgeois kulak system was practically abolished. Adverse weather conditions, crop disease, and kulaks violently resisting collectivization were the causes of the famine, and replacing that system with a more effective one ended famine.
If you take control of a region that is famous for periodic famines, and then only one more famine occurs ever, you have in fact ended the famines.