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 unprecede

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.