this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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Thanks for providing a graph that makes it difficult comparing socialist states with captialist ones. Your graph also doesn't capture how fast life expectancy increased, it purposefully expands the timeframe to make it less significant. After the dissolution of the Soviet union Russia suffered the largest known drop in life expectancy in peace time
It has knobs, twiddle them or use the raw data.
Yes - societal collapses tend to do that.
If you twiddle them, you'll see exactly what the previous commenter is talking about. For example, try comparing socialist countries like Russia and Cuba to other countries of a similar level of development, like any random country in the Third World, or Africa, Asia, or South America that didn't use imperialism in the 1800's, to boost its development.
You'll see a 15-25 year difference in life expectancy during that time. And that's without causing the awful conditions in the rest of the world that Europe and the US did by boosting their development through slavery, war, imperialism, and colonialism.
Russia started out in a terrible position (with no small thanks to the late abolishment of serfdom). But it isn't particularly surprising that it improved when or as much as it did with the arrival of new technology, urbanisation trends, better sanitation and health care (especially pre-natal care), and of course its location. The world was changing fast, and russia was well primed to change with it.
I think that the fact that the capitalist world achieved the rapid 20th century development from the plundering of the global south, while the USSR managed comparable growth as they lost 27 million people in the fight against fascism (and were later forced to spend ridiculous amounts of resources developing weapons to maintain MAD against the US) should also count for something. Capitalist development isn't very impressive in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile (despite the Allende admin), Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, etc. Even with some jumps in life expectancy and literacy rates, uneven capitalist development is undeniable and a much graver problem than its analogue in the former second world.
Recovering from WW2 losses was indeed a challenge for many soviet bloc countries. My suspicion is that without the cold war, W.Europe would also have recovered much slower as US investment and interest could have taken quite a different form.
Latin America is a different beast, worthy of its own discussion separate to this one.
@ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net provided a graph that did that. It shows how fast life expectancy increased. And it's only one metric of many in which the UDSSR dominated. Literacy rates, industrialization, GDP growth, scientific achievements, etc. are other areas that come to mind.
Neoliberal shock doctrine aka capitalism does that dipshit naziboy
The original poster was terribly one sided, clearly meaning to shock people into thinking that the USSR's socialism was solely responsible for it.
That the USSR achieved what it did is not in dispute... that socialism alone could have achieved this is my point.. russia was a blank slate, primed for rapid improvement. It also didn't improve uniformly (not surprising given its size and geography).
Russia's internal collapse and slide was quite special, and most other former USSR states did better (even pre-1991), including Belarus & Ukraine. That speaks very much to russia, not the USSR of course
I expect people here to be capable of basic research and forming their own opinions. If your opinion is "ussr was perfect, does no wrong" then OK, good for you.
I'm not saying non socialist countries did not achive improvements in life expectancy, a cost effective part of the appropriated surplus value is allocated by the oppressing classes to their labor pool.
In socialist states a larger part of the surplus is used to improve the labor pool, which explains the rapid growth. Your provided graph obscures it. You'd have to fiddle with the time slider and notice how quickly socialist states pop dark blue in comparison to others.
I agree that the UDSSR needed to be reformed and it was also the result of the only referendum they had. But to see the stark contrast from before and after the dissolution, and to say that capitalism improved living standards is just assassine
Sorry about that. Your dismissive response triggered it
Sure. If the right policies are prioritized and investments made, it should be much more efficient. Investments in primary healthcare and education in particular tend to be clear winners.
Russia's sudden shift to oligargchic capitalism was deeply corrupt and destabilising, harming russia itself and much of the neighbourhood.
It's not capitalism that improves living standards. It's sustained (and sustainable) growth, stable institutions and investment over time. Both capitalism and socialism can (and have) supported that, each with risks and caveats.
Thanks
Which knobs do you twiddle to out the Soviet bloc, China n all?
And if you are talking about it without doing the twiddling when younshared it, aren't you now just making s pasable reply?
If you want country specific data, you might have to explore the data sources itself.
I was just trying to add context, because the huge jump in life expectancy was a global phenomenon, which casual readers may not know.
But Soviet Union, the related Sovket bloc, China, India(our version was more influenced by Fabian/Nehruvian socialism, not really Marxist) n all were influenced by communism/socialism and account for a large portion of the global population.
In your graph, the World curve follows the Asia curve. So the global trend could likely be because of the communist influence itself.
Without adding that context, your addition of context doesn't really add context, right?
The graph serves as simple contextualisation.
All european countries were already on the same trajectory. Russia was lagging behind for perfectly understandable reasons, but it was on the same trajectory. The soviet movement came at the right moment to benefit from this (and yeah, there's a good chance they accelerated it, and in the worst case were "not bad" as someone phrased it).
A government would have had to monumentally screw up to not benefit from the rapid changes across europe at the time.
If the OP (or many of the commenters here) want to demonstrate uniquely soviet achievements, there are better metrics to focus on than life expectancy.