I am from Austria, “not everything was bad under hitler” was said a LOT by the older generations.

You say this like they were wrong, but from their perspective, they were right. Those people (having survived) were probably white facists who profited from forced labour of racialized groups or landlords/capitalists/petit burgoise who profited from the murder of union leaders and communists or they looted and occupied the homes of genocide victims. Either way, they were objectively better off for a while. Fascism is initially always a quick material improvement for the privileged and the oppressors until the contradictions mount and the death cult inevitably turns on them to eat the ones who helped to start it.

The difference is, that the Soviet Union lasted much longer and genuinely improved the quality of live of millions of people, even all over the world beyond it’s borders. Not just temporarily bribe a few willing fascists enablers.

This graph means, if you don’t work 70 hour weeks, thank the Soviet Union. The “communist threat” made employers afraid enough to grant concessions. It’s all gradually being taken back since then.

ok there fash, now let’s look at the real world

• A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country’s economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country’s switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary’s integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.

• The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.

• Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an “illegitimate state.” In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

• A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -“during the time of socialism”. The survey focused on the respondents’ views on the transition “from socialism to capitalism”, and a clear majority said they trusted social institutions the most during the rule of Yugoslav communist president Josip Broz Tito. The standard of living during Tito’s rule from the Second World War to the 1980s was also assessed as best, whereas the Milosevic decade of the 1990s, and the subsequent decade since the fall of his regime are seen as “more or less the same”. 45 percent said they trusted social institutions most under communism with 23 percent choosing the 2001-2003 period when Zoran Djinđic was prime minister. Only 19 per cent selected present-day institutions.

• 75% of Russians have expressed increasingly positive opinions about the Soviet Union over the years. Only a small portion of those surveyed said they had negative associations with the Soviet Union. The economic deficit, long lines and coupons were named by 4% of respondents each, while the Iron Curtain, economic stagnation and political repressions were named by 1% each, the Levada Center said.

it can be both. you can have people who miss the security but also hate communism. you cant just expect them to be consistent or to make sense.

Yeah production stopped but we’ve got warehouses of them still in their packaging. It’ll be decades before we go through all the brainlet wojaks produced before 2023.