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It's already been mentioned in this thread that the pre-1917 Russia had a lot of people living in poor conditions and had fallen behind Western Europe. I am al

It's already been mentioned in this thread that the pre-1917 Russia had a lot of people living in poor conditions and had fallen behind Western Europe. I am also not an expert, but my understanding is that they made some progress on things like education and literacy rate. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union It doesn't excuse the many things that went wrong during the period. But my intuition is you cannot say it was composed 100% of bad actors and total maliciousness or even incompetence.

romwell 7y ago
And human rights, actually. No-fault divorce, universal suffrage, equality of races - at least in official policy - all at once, by the 1920s. It was unprecedented. And it worked, to a certain extent at least. Women got education and entered the (educated, professional) work force (and, during the war, combat divisions). The change for Jewish people (officially oppressed with race-specific laws in Imperial Russia) was immense (Trotsky, one of the top guys, was Jewish - as were many others, before Stalinism). There was an explosion in arts: a revolution in cinema, music, literature, poetry, architecture, visual arts. Basically, a lot of the bad things that people associate with Communism are Stalinism, but that came in the 30s, and went away by the 60s. Now, a lot of other bad things were there from day 0, and some developed post-Stalin. But there were a lot of changes from 1917 to the 20s, to Stalinism, to WW2, and then to Khruschev and Brezhnev. The country stabilized in the Kruschev-Brezhnev era, and remained static for so long that even those who liked the regime got tired of it. But it's important to see what the changes were.
- beerandt 7y ago
  But equality of race (or really nationality, at the time) is relative, in the sense that quality of life was worse than probably what most minorities experienced in most other Western countries at the time. And equal suffrage in a single party system? What is that worth?

romwell 7y ago

And human rights, actually. No-fault divorce, universal suffrage, equality of races - at least in official policy - all at once, by the 1920s. It was unprecedented. And it worked, to a certain extent at least. Women got education and entered the (educated, professional) work force (and, during the war, combat divisions). The change for Jewish people (officially oppressed with race-specific laws in Imperial Russia) was immense (Trotsky, one of the top guys, was Jewish - as were many others, before Stalinism). There was an explosion in arts: a revolution in cinema, music, literature, poetry, architecture, visual arts. Basically, a lot of the bad things that people associate with Communism are Stalinism, but that came in the 30s, and went away by the 60s. Now, a lot of other bad things were there from day 0, and some developed post-Stalin. But there were a lot of changes from 1917 to the 20s, to Stalinism, to WW2, and then to Khruschev and Brezhnev. The country stabilized in the Kruschev-Brezhnev era, and remained static for so long that even those who liked the regime got tired of it. But it's important to see what the changes were.

beerandt 7y ago
But equality of race (or really nationality, at the time) is relative, in the sense that quality of life was worse than probably what most minorities experienced in most other Western countries at the time. And equal suffrage in a single party system? What is that worth?