This guy from Romania put everything down splendidly.
I understand, most "woke" US teens want to push "US bad" narrative nowadays to look cool, but for those of you guys who feel depressed - because your media has been constantly telling you about America's many failures in foreign politics in the last 50 years as if it was all a failure.... But guys. Guys. My guys. Americans.
YOU LITERALLY FREED A DOZEN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.
FREED. Do you understand me?
People here in Eastern Europe CELEBRATED it like they celebrated the end of WWII. People CRIED and hugged and went to the streets when the fucking empire fell.
People created human chains that SPANNED COUNTRIES to tell the world they do not want to be part of USSR (Google "The Baltic Way").
In Ukraine, the all-country vote for leaving USSR got the overwhelming ~90% in favor support throughout all the country (YES, IN RUSSIAN-SPEAKING DONBAS TOO)
The propaganda (fed by Russian spies in the West) has warped your own impression of yourselves, so I am putting it all in perspective so you would know - you did some incredible good too, guys. You helped a dozen of previously military occupied countries free themselves.
And now you are helping the same countries protect their Independence when the same regime that had occupied them previously have now recovered its strength and have started trying to re-collect them all again.
Stained glass windows in the administrative building of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was one of the largest in the Soviet Union and the poster child of the Soviet nuclear power industry. As such, little expense was spared on details like these windows.
The Soviet Union often used motifs in abstract art to promote Communism and laude their successes.
We think that it’s worth noting that the Soviet Union actually preserved the Yiddish language.
Whilst it’s true that Jewish life under the Soviet Union was far from perfect, and thus eligible to be critiqued — the diasporic Yiddish language would NOT have survived the Holocaust if it weren’t for the USSR’s support. There was a Yiddish language magazine called “Sovietish Haimland”, from 1961, which published Jewish art, which was particularly encircling Jewish culture. It also carried Yiddish lessons in a serialized textbook. 100s of Yiddish established writers contributed to this magazine. However, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this magazine no longer recieved that same state support and came to an end.
Again, we cannot act like the Soviet Union were perfect. The USSR was far from it. it is there that we can see where to learn from, where to do better. Communists look at history to learn from it; we see where mistakes were made even by our forefathers that tried to implement revolutionary reforms.
But the USSR actively combatted the Nazi’s attempts to systemically destroy the Yiddish language— and that is noteworthy.
This is from “Soviet but Not Russian: The ‘Other Peoples of the Soviet Union” by William Mandel. We are working on getting this PDF resource in our Drive, along with a Soviet Union section, if people would like to read it themselves.
We must look at our history, especially at our Communist forefathers, and assess what we need to work on as a society to truly liberate everyone from the tyranny of Capitalism. Looking to the Soviet Union, we can see many examples of great progress made as much as we can see great losses.
I found this meme, and now this one pops up in my head every time I see a russian or a tankie claim that the USSR "saved the world from nazism" and ignore this "minor" detail.
Since people wanna celebrate the moon landing so bad, lemme remind you which country actually hit most milestones in the space race first (image source in alt)
If the United States broke apart like the Soviet Union...
When the USSR fell, Moscow's empire instantly lost -48.6% of its population -38.8% of GDP. For comparison, this is how it would look if the U.S. broke apart with the same ratios today.