this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2026
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Indeed! I wonder how the world would look now if the USSR won the cold war and didn't collapse.
Much brighter. There'd be no Russo-Ukrainian War, Eastern Europe would not have seen the largest collapse in peacetime life expectancy, and the overall world would be more advanced in the transition to worldwide socialism.
Oh they tried to spread their beautiful system by occupying Czechia - they were always bullies and everyone hated those that moved here during the occupation.
The Czech workers and peasants formed militias, overthrowing their bourgeois government and established socialism on their own terms. Of course, in such an environment, the Soviet Union was a vital trading partner, especially considering the Red Army was the primary liberating force in Europe against the Nazi onslaught.
The Hungarians did the same, remember what happened to them?
Yep, they enjoyed a socialist system that saw an enormous uplifting in working class quality of life before the end of socialism in Europe took that away.
Is this the Stalinist USSR that you think was socialist and would be much brighter?
The fact is that Russia would invade any country and kill any people that tried to separate from them. Ukraine, Hungary, anyone.
You're high on nearly century old propaganda.
You’re high on over a century of anti-communist propaganda from the imperial core, the Five Eyes states in particular for the Anglosphere. Billions have been spent to have you see communism & communists as cartoon villains.
The USSR was socialist, and if it continued to exist the world would indeed be much brighter. You are making a racist argument that sees Russians as genetically evil, rather than making a materialist argument based on the mode of production and distribution.
The world would be much brighter if the US never got its independence, then there wouldnt have been the civil war, independence war etc! They would just continue being a colony peacefully!
(Maybe not the best example. But you really need to read some factual books about soviet history.)
I've read a good number of books on soviet history, I am a communist and a core part of that is understanding what went right and what went wrong in existing socialist societies. The Soviet Union was the world's first socialist state, so there's an enormous wealth of information to be learned from it. I stand by the simple assertion that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was an immense tragedy for the working classes around the world.
The problem is that you've identified any book that says anything bad about the USSR as "western propaganda" and any book that literally lies about the USSR as the one and only truth.
The Soviet Union was the world's first socialist state. And then Lenin came along, and put an end to that. And that's what gave us Stalin.
It's incredibly easy to project a complete reductionist take onto me, then make a vague and catchy statement without backing it. No, not all books that say "bad things" about the USSR are "western propaganda." Many of the books I link, such as Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance are actually quite critical of Soviet democracy, while still providing an actually useful critique based on concrete reality. As for the vague statement hurling, how did Lenin end socialism, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks created the first socialist state, where workers controlled the government and social ownership was the principal aspect of the economy?
Again, this is all utterly baseless and devoid of any meaningful substance by which to even respond.
They would have had to open up for trade and capitalism. So it would have looked like another China.
China made the right move, to quickly increase & develop its productive forces, which is a prerequisite to the ultimate goal of communism. Capitalists in the imperial core gladly assisted because it maximized their profits. Those foreign capitalists either didn’t know or didn’t care that, unlike the Warsaw Pact states, China had no intention of ceding power to the capitalist class.