[mantas]

Those people just love to support enemy of their enemy. It's mind boggling how many mental hoops they're willing to jump.

As eastern european, it was very sad to meet fellow europeans who didn't like that my country got away from monstrosity that was USSR and couldn't care about suffering of people as long as it helped to move forward their idolised ideology. Meanwhile they pretended to be "progressive" and caring about "common man" whatever that is...

[icebraining]

Well, in our case it's a bit more complicated, because here, the USSR was actually helping the common man. We were living in a right-wing dictatorship ourselves and the communist party, which was one of the most important groups fighting against it (and whose members were tortured and sent to concentration camps in Africa), got a lot of help from the USSR.

I was born after the transition, so it's easy for me to separate the issues (and to understand that good deeds are not always done for good reasons), but to the people who lived it, there is a real dissonance that is hard to deal with.

[mantas]

Did communist party built at least single successful country in Africa?

It's like saying that Nazis helped a common man in Germany. And they did! Life for a common German man definitely got better in mid-late 1930s. But at a cost..

Regarding USSR, that help to far away countries was one of the reason why it fell. Life in USSR was shitty (maybe not Africa-shitty, but still). And people were unhappy that resources are sent away instead of improving their lives. There were plenty of jokes that there's no food or merchandise since some revolutioner dude in South America or Africa eats or wears them.