> You do realize that tsarist Russia was largely an agrarian society that was lagging far behind industrialized nations of the time, yes? Russia did better the

> You do realize that tsarist Russia was largely an agrarian society that was lagging far behind industrialized nations of the time, yes? Russia did better then literally every other empire. Yes it lagged behind Britain, France, Germany and the US but it industrial output growth was outpacing Austria-Hungary. Compared to other Eurasian Empires, Safavid, Qing and the Ottoman they did amazingly. And if you actually study WW1 history in detail, you would see Russian industrial output was pretty amazing in WW1. Cut of from all its allies far more then in WW1 they produced an amazing amount of industrial capacity. In fact much of the Soviet success in the 20s is build on that infrastructure. Russia during this time also built the longest railroad in history. And saying 'its an agrarian society' is hardly a negative, in fact, by many measures Germany was too. What you are simply ignoring is my point about the largest land reform program in history. > I hope you also realize that the whole reason the revolution was possible was due to mass famines and horrific working conditions that radicalized the population into taking action. Nonsense, the revolution was possible because of WW1 and the demilitarization of the autocracy The last large famine had been decades ago and Russia was the most success agricultural country in the world Germany also had a revolution, failure in war and the collapse of political authority tends to have that effect. The were also multiple revolutions in Austria-Hungary. You had the three large Eastern and Central European empires collapse. What actually made the Communist revolution stick in Russia is that they had one year to consolidate power in the industrial core of Russia. > However, it's sheer absurdity to argue against the gains that were rapidly made in USSR and the quality of life improvements that followed within decades. Multiple million people starved to death in the early 20s and multiple million people starved to death in the late 30s. Millions of people were put into labor camps. Of course if you don't count those people because they are dead or in the labor camp, then by the 30s they made some gains. But lets not ignore the 10-00k of people who were basically forced work and died in large soviet industrialization. But again, you have yet to show that this would not have happened under the alternative regime. As literally every statistical model would tell you that it would have. > USSR demonstrates that communism was able to achieve nearly a hundred years of progress under capitalism in the western countries in mere decades while also having some of the most progressive working conditions at the time. Again, you are repeating all the typical communist myths. The idea that Imperial Russia was some backwards country from the middle ages while within 10 years after the revolution Soviet Union was some paradise. This is not the case, Imperial Russia was one of the industrial super powers of the world, they had a war economy that basically without allied help fought against the Ottoman, Austria-Hungary and Germany at the same time on a war front that was about 10x larger then the front Britain and France fought on. In the 20s the NEP basically reactivate that industrial capacity and it took until the late 20s for farm productivity to reach leaves of before. Then it took millions of people to starve to death and more to be malnourished for the Soviet government to buy technology and tools from the West to build up industrial capacity. A fact that you consistently ignore. The idea that working conditions were progressive under Stalin are frankly absurd. Go read about how the White Sea–Baltic Canal was built and tell me about progressive working conditions. And from 1917 to 1954 is almost have the existence of Soviet Union. And while after that things did improve somewhat, by the late 70s economic growth had stagnated for the most part and the Soviet Union elites all preferred Western import for most of their consumption. Many countries that were technologically behind managed to have rapid growth in the last century and most of those started from far less industrial capacity compared to Soviet Union. And most didn't have massive amounts of oil and natural resources to exploit either.