In order to get an accurate picture though, you can’t cherry pick and you have to account for nostalgia. Russians and Serbians were the dominant ethnic groups under the USSR/Yugoslavia, and Hungary is an outlier among the former Warsaw Pact countries (it’s healthcare is so bad right now that the association of doctors said it was the worst it’s been since WW2 and its doctors are leaving in droves, I haven’t seen any other countries make similar declarations or be stuck in a similar situation.) I think there would be a lot less Soviet nostalgia in Ukraine, where the Soviet Union conducted what some (I haven’t done enough research about it) consider to be a genocide (search up the Holodomor.)
That’s not to mention that the Anarchists’ fear of authoritarianism is completely valid. Nobody who lived under Mao and emigrated from China before the propaganda machine ramped up (before 2010) believes he was good, even though he was supported by the USSR. In fact, all the Chinese people I know are fiercely anti-communist, and I am a second-generation immigrant who is also fiercely anti-communist. (I support social democracy, and I hope that counts as leftist enough to be here?)
Besides, Mao and Stalin killed over a tens of million combined, and Mao’s cultural revolution caused the suicide of my grand-uncle, according to my dad.
TL;DR The USSR and Yugoslavia were racist, and that racism contributed to the economic success of the republics that separated; fears of authoritarianism are justified; and Belarus shows how the USSR was bad.
In order to get an accurate picture though, you can’t cherry pick and you have to account for nostalgia. Russians and Serbians were the dominant ethnic groups under the USSR/Yugoslavia, and Hungary is an outlier among the former Warsaw Pact countries (it’s healthcare is so bad right now that the association of doctors said it was the worst it’s been since WW2 and its doctors are leaving in droves, I haven’t seen any other countries make similar declarations or be stuck in a similar situation.) I think there would be a lot less Soviet nostalgia in Ukraine, where the Soviet Union conducted what some (I haven’t done enough research about it) consider to be a genocide (search up the Holodomor.)
That’s not to mention that the Anarchists’ fear of authoritarianism is completely valid. Nobody who lived under Mao and emigrated from China before the propaganda machine ramped up (before 2010) believes he was good, even though he was supported by the USSR. In fact, all the Chinese people I know are fiercely anti-communist, and I am a second-generation immigrant who is also fiercely anti-communist. (I support social democracy, and I hope that counts as leftist enough to be here?)
Besides, Mao and Stalin killed over a tens of million combined, and Mao’s cultural revolution caused the suicide of my grand-uncle, according to my dad.
Besides, you can get a good idea what the USSR was like by looking at Belarus, which is arguably the former SSR that preserved socialism the best. After their leader, who thought that Vodka could cure COVID, was elected in a sham election, protests which lasted for months were responded to with what were considered to be (human rights violations)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020–2021_Belarusian_protests#Human_rights_issues].
TL;DR The USSR and Yugoslavia were racist, and that racism contributed to the economic success of the republics that separated; fears of authoritarianism are justified; and Belarus shows how the USSR was bad.
TL:DR your comment was a bunch of state department talking points already debunked.