On the spaceflight note, it’s rather sad that the Soviets harassed and imprisoned Yuri Kondratyuk since his work was vital in the moon landing and orbital mechanics in general.
If his work in space flight was supported and not repeatedly crushed by authorities, the USSR might’ve landed on the moon first. Instead, he was imprisoned by the NVKD for some of his engineering designs (for “sabotage” of not using nails, which is a dumb thing on its own).
And eventually, he gave all his aerospace notes to a friend to smuggle them out of the country because he feared the govt would accuse him of treason like they had Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (the guy who made Sputnik 1).
The Soviets could have won the space race, if it weren’t for the “authoritarianism” you’re trying to make light of
The Soviets could have won the space race
A) that’s actually good meme haha
B) the space race ended when the US landed on the moon, if you run a 5k and get to 4.9k ahead of everyone but then don’t cross the finish line, you’ve still lost the race
Anyway the point of my comment wasn’t “the US beat the Soviets because they’re authoritarian” it was “the Soviets had everything they needed to absolutely dominate space travel but their authoritarianism hindered their scientific progress significantly”
You’re placing far too much importance on the potential excessive actions taken by a state under constant infiltration and siege against a scientist. As we showed, the soviet space program, without said scientist, took numerous firsts over the US. The soviets weren’t incompetent and needed a super-scientist to save them, they had an extremely competent team that took them to space before the US while being a semi-feudal backwater 50 years prior. If anything, the fact that they took so many firsts despite their dramatic hinderances, including recovering from World War II, is an excellent showcase of the effectiveness of soviet science.
B) the space race ended when the US landed on the moon, if you run a 5k and get to 4.9k ahead of everyone but then don’t cross the finish line, you’ve still lost the race
Im not sure how to explain to you that if youre the one declaring what the goal is, you essentially declare yourself the winner. If I declare that the first person to be in space is the winner of the space race, the UDSSR won? It’s what the meme is hinting at
the Soviets had everything they needed to absolutely dominate space travel but their authoritarianism hindered their scientific progress significantly
A) every single state in this planet is authoritarian. What matters is the class character. Read this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
B) habe you considered that the reason the Soviet had everything they needed to absolutely dominate space travel was due to the system they had?
Oh hey it’s that weird undergrad who keeps lying about being being involved in research (and who keeps calling himself an engineer while still in school). Now you’re here vomiting up garbage about how bad the USSR was? When aren’t you cringe as fuck?
Oh look it’s the creep who calls me a liar for not specifying I was a student in a single comment section where I’d previously mentioned I was a student.
I even apologized last time you made a comment like this (once I figured out that was the “lie” in my comments), and I edited that old comment for clarity just for you. Your reply to my apology ended up getting removed by the mods before I could see it, so I guess that didn’t help, and here you are again this time claiming I’m not even involved in research.
Idk what to say anymore man, just block me if my username pisses you off enough that you feel compelled to keep bringing this shit back up. It’s not healthy
Ah yes, life was just a peach for ppl living behind the iron curtain for the bulk of the 20th century.
kindly shut your hole
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That’s right I’m sensitive to seeing imbecilic drivel spewed in public.
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Here’s an idea: read a single book
I’ve read a few on the subject. My favourite of which was called the anti Humans by Dimitru Bacu. Have you read it?
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a Romanian anti-communist organizer has a bad opinion of socialism, nor do I think it especially worth reading over better books.
Exchange of ideas implies having actual ideas to exchange which you clearly do not.
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The only thing that’s delicious here is your dedication to making a clown of yourself in public.
My dude, just because you don’t agree with my position on communism doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Are you 10?
It’s not me not agreeing with your drivel, it’s literally every piece of empirical research showing that you’re spewing utter nonsense.
- Life expectancy decreases by 10 years. 2. 7.7 million excess deaths in the first year. 2
- 40% of population drops into poverty.
- GDP instantly halves.
- One in ten children now live on the streets. Infant mortality increases. Was 29.3 in 2003 which is around (current) Syria and Micronesia, 7.9 in 2013. Infant mortality in USSR was 1.92, literally the lowest in the world.
- 1996 election rigged by the US, Yeltsin sends in tanks to disperse the supreme soviet.
- Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. https://archive.ph/9Z12u
-
Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possible:
Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:
A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:
This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
Romania, the inustrialization of an agrarian economy under socialist planning
We can also look at how people who lived under communism feel now that they got a taste of capitalism?
Even the CIA admitted they had just as much food as they did in the US. People voted not to dissolve the USSR for a reason and then they did it anyway. Overall, life wasn’t that bad there, you’re mostly falling for propaganda.
Even the surveillance wasn’t that bad (compared to let’s say the US where the FBI was running amok at the time spying on every leftist organization, doing assassinations, blackmail, wiretapping, etc). They didn’t have Pizza Hut and jeans were hard to come by, but other than that, they managed to improve the lives for the vast majority of their population without having to do the colonialism and imperialism of the US and the West.
Not being mean, but curious, why did they dissolve the union? How does it differ from what I was taught about it being an economic collapse
It was dissolved illegally. It was a coup, and those involved got rich selling the commons off to Western capitalists at fire sale prices. They became oligarchs.
Was it peach for others?
Compared to where they were, their progress was quite cool. Their revolution also motivated a lot of the anticolonial movements.
Overall it was indeed pretty good, and got significantly worse after the dissolution of socialism and restoration of capitalism.
To be fair, I’m not endorsing capitalism. Capitalism is the 21st century blight as communism was in the 20th.
straight up nazi shit
Socialism was never a blight, while capitalism in the 20th century absolutely was, and had already reached the imperialist stage.
I can get onboard with socialism. I understand the need to have a strong social safety net. But many here seem to be falsely conflating socialism and communism.
How can you not know what socialism is if you’re gonna bark all fucking day long about it? How sad are you?
Socialism isn’t safety nets, it’s a mode of production characterized by public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy with the working class in control of the state. Communism is a post-socialist mode of production by which all of production and distribution have been collectivized, are oriented towards satisfying the needs of everyone, and the state, class, and money have withered away. States like the PRC, DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the former USSR, etc are socialist, not communist yet, even if most of those are governed by communist parties.
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I lived under communism and I can definitively tell you that you’re full of shit.
The majority of people who lived in the USSR want it back. This is increasing over time, a desire for socialism is on the rise, especially in Russia and Belarus.
So, uh, did communism work for them?
My confusion is why collapse back to capitalism?
Let’s start with some axioms. There is a continuum of stages of human societal progression with socialism following after capitalism. Under socialism the workers run the state. USSR socialism was great for the worker.
Given the axioms, why would the USSR decide to create a capitalist class again?
The USSR’s results in the face of outside pressure were great however. Why buckle after putting up such a fight?
Why can struggle against external power move human societal progression backwards?
The USSR didn’t “decide” to do so, it was couped and hollowed out by Yeltsin and co. These are the new “oligarchs.” While the economy had started to slow, the combination of the devastation of World War II resulted in the deaths of 27 million soviets, many of which were some of the most dedicated to socialism and defending it. This was also combined with growing nationalist movements, often supported by the west. This complicated mish mash gave favorable conditions for a coup, despite popular support for retaining the soviet union.
I grew up in USSR, it worked fine. The real horrors started after the wonders of markets and capitalism were introduced.
Yeah, right up until the US successfully ruined it as usual
Socialism did work in the USSR, yes. They doubled life expectancies, ended famine, passed prison reforms, dramatically expanded democracy, nearly eliminated homelessness, transformed a semi-feudal backwater into a modernized industrial country, passed free universal healthcare and education, and plenty more. There were problems and struggles, and obviously it no longer exists, but socialism absolutely worked for the soviets for neaerly a full century.
The dissolution of socialism in Eastern Europe was multi-faceted and complex, and had more to do with conditions particular to the soviets as compared to universal to socialism. Today, the CPRF is rising in popularity and is the most significant opposition to United Russia, and the majority of Russians wish to return to socialism.
It was socialism and yes it worked tremendously considering the fact that they sacrificed 20M+ lives in WW2 and were subject of western imperialism forcing them to spend most resources on the cold war
Seems relatively on par with the rest of the world…
https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250731-112524/grapher/life-expectancy.html
- Across the world, people are living longer. In 1900, the global average life expectancy was 32 years. By 2023, this had more than doubled to 73 years.
- Countries around the world made big improvements, and life expectancy more than doubled in every region. This wasn’t just due to falling child mortality; people started living longer at all ages.
The rate of growth after 1917 and 1945 is absolutely not on par with the rest of the world, or you would have linked an example to prove it. And if it was on par with the rest of the world, that would still show that communism was indeed not bad.
While no country is the same, you might look at finland (independent) and the baltics (joined USSR in 1940) for a somewhat comparable shared modernization trend and the resulting improvements in life expectancy, the 1970s dip, etc.
where do people go to learn this skill of filling empty air with words and not addressing the thing they’re ostensibly replying to in any way?
The users here are fully capable of doing minimal research and applying critical thinking without being spoon-fed.
Another completely incoherent reply in the context of the conversation. Zero actual interaction with anyone speaking with you.
What a magnanimous excuse for not actually providing any evidence for your claims
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.
It has knobs, twiddle them or use the raw data.
@[email protected] 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.
Yes - societal collapses tend to do that
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).
Neoliberal shock doctrine aka capitalism does that (followed by a rule 1 violating insult)
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.
socialism alone could have achieved this is my point
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.
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 cou
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
followed by a rule 1 violating insult
Sorry about that. Your dismissive response triggered it
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.
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?
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Based
