[bluetomcat]

> The “Russian occupation” of the hearts and minds of boomers who are still alive today is difficult to shake.

Which isn't to say that most "non-brainwashed" millennials and Gen-Z'ers are at all trying to be objective about that historical period. For them it's only prison camps, state surveillance and shortages and queues. Nothing like an accelerated industrialisation and modernisation in a few decades, transitioning from a backwards agrarian rural society to a well-educated population and reaching western-like levels of human development in the 1980s.