Sounds to me USSR revolution wasn’t that “successful” afer all
Reducing the USSR to a “failure” because it collapsed is ahistorical idealism and the height of liberal nonsense. We should judge a formation by the contradictions it resolved, not by whether it achieved eternity. Tsarist Russia was a feudal wreck where peasants starved and most couldn’t read. Within decades, the Soviet project doubled life expectancy, wiped out illiteracy, and industrialized a continent-sized country, dragging millions out of poverty.
Women gained full legal equality in 1918: abortion rights, divorce, workplace access, while Western women were still fighting for the vote. Socialized childcare and mass employment pulled women into public life on a scale capitalism wouldn’t match for generations.
And let’s not forget who actually broke fascism: the Red Army fought four-fifths of the Wehrmacht, lost 27 million people, and took Berlin while the West sat on the sidelines and even continued to trade with the nazi beast for years into the war (see the history of ford factories and IBM).
Collapse doesn’t retroactively erase what was built. “Anarchists” like you who dismiss seventy years of concrete progress because the state eventually fractured aren’t radical they’re reactionary. Material gains for millions don’t vanish because the system that produced them later unraveled.
The aftermath of the collapse proved the stakes that people like you refuse to grapple with. The 1990s were catastrophic. Life expectancy cratered, millions plunged into homelessness and destitution, women and children were trafficked by the tens of thousands, and the entire country was looted by oligarchs with IMF blessing. The chaos bred Yeltsin’s drunken comprador regime, which paved the way for Putin’s rise as his right-hand man a direct product of the Soviet collapse. When you cheer the unraveling of a workers’ state even a deeply flawed one, you’re not celebrating freedom. You’re celebrating the road that led straight to oligarchs, fascists, and some of the worst reaction imaginable. But you don’t really care about anyone but yourself.
Reducing the USSR to a “failure” because it collapsed is ahistorical idealism and the height of liberal nonsense
'Tis what MLs perpetually do for every Anarchist revolution.
Collapse doesn’t retroactively erase what was built. “Anarchists” like you who dismiss seventy years of concrete progress because the state eventually fractured aren’t radical they’re reactionary. It achieved the same great improvements for living standards all other such capitalist revolutions did throughout history. Material gains for millions don’t vanish because the system that produced them later unraveled.
I’m not erasing anything. I consider the USSR revolution a great success for capitalism, as it turned an agrarian society into an industrialized capitalist nation. It also imporoved the people’s living standard like any society becoming industrialized through capitalism. It’s the only thing all such ML revolutions every achieved and the only thing they can achieve.
It’s an abject failure at achieving communism (and anarchist argue, even socialism) though.
Reducing the USSR to a “failure” because it collapsed is ahistorical idealism and the height of liberal nonsense. We should judge a formation by the contradictions it resolved, not by whether it achieved eternity. Tsarist Russia was a feudal wreck where peasants starved and most couldn’t read. Within decades, the Soviet project doubled life expectancy, wiped out illiteracy, and industrialized a continent-sized country, dragging millions out of poverty.
Women gained full legal equality in 1918: abortion rights, divorce, workplace access, while Western women were still fighting for the vote. Socialized childcare and mass employment pulled women into public life on a scale capitalism wouldn’t match for generations.
And let’s not forget who actually broke fascism: the Red Army fought four-fifths of the Wehrmacht, lost 27 million people, and took Berlin while the West sat on the sidelines and even continued to trade with the nazi beast for years into the war (see the history of ford factories and IBM).
Collapse doesn’t retroactively erase what was built. “Anarchists” like you who dismiss seventy years of concrete progress because the state eventually fractured aren’t radical they’re reactionary. Material gains for millions don’t vanish because the system that produced them later unraveled.
The aftermath of the collapse proved the stakes that people like you refuse to grapple with. The 1990s were catastrophic. Life expectancy cratered, millions plunged into homelessness and destitution, women and children were trafficked by the tens of thousands, and the entire country was looted by oligarchs with IMF blessing. The chaos bred Yeltsin’s drunken comprador regime, which paved the way for Putin’s rise as his right-hand man a direct product of the Soviet collapse. When you cheer the unraveling of a workers’ state even a deeply flawed one, you’re not celebrating freedom. You’re celebrating the road that led straight to oligarchs, fascists, and some of the worst reaction imaginable. But you don’t really care about anyone but yourself.
'Tis what MLs perpetually do for every Anarchist revolution.
I’m not erasing anything. I consider the USSR revolution a great success for capitalism, as it turned an agrarian society into an industrialized capitalist nation. It also imporoved the people’s living standard like any society becoming industrialized through capitalism. It’s the only thing all such ML revolutions every achieved and the only thing they can achieve.
It’s an abject failure at achieving communism (and anarchist argue, even socialism) though.