[xbejdjched]

But you're missing the point of what I'm saying:

I suggest taking the notion that communism is always bad with a grain of salt, given that our nation has been propagandized to despise communism much as the Soviets were propagandized to hate capitalism.

The Soviet Union went from a third world country of farmer peasants to becoming the world's first spacefaring civilization in only 40 years. Considering where they started, I believe that is quite impressive.

During the cold war, each side's media focused exclusively on the other's shortcomings, turning molehills into mountains, so to speak. To not acknowledge the reality distortion field around reporting of the era is an assault against the historical record.

[cmdkeen]

The USSR becoming the world's first space faring nation is to a large extent the result of the Second World War and the knowledge gained from German scientists - because Stalin purged the nascent Soviet programme during the Red Terror.

Was the breaking of the kulaks - causing the Holodomor which killed an estimated 2.5m-7m Ukranians let alone deaths across the rest of the USSR - a necessary step in the industrialisation of Russia?

Capitalism industrialised - and indeed created industrialisation, with some pretty nasty consequences which led to unionisation and the growth of the middle classes. However none of those nasty consequences were anything close to what Communist regimes have brought us - that isn't bias, historical propaganda, it is just fact on whatever measure you choose to adopt.

[snowwrestler]

Regardless of past propaganda, anyone can go straight to former USSR countries now, to learn what happened there, as millions of regular folks and scholars have. And of course there is the undisputed fact that the USSR failed as a nation, despite its earlier successes.