Joe

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I heard that Ukraine’s parliament had been considering a proposed deal from EU foreign ministers for a transitional leadership period for Yanukovych (after 100+ protesters had been killed on his watch and likely orders) until new elections could be held at year’s end. THAT would have been bad.

Instead, they hesitated when the prick fled Kviv instead, leaving them with a constitutional dilemma. They resolved it politically as best they could with bi-partisan votes, and scheduled early elections to restore legitimacy.

This would have been a peaceful internal transfer of power from a leader (whose executive legitimacy had collapsed after most police and security services publically refused violent repression of protests) following democratic principles… unfortunately putin’s russia hated that idea and invaded instead (crimea & donbas, with subversive tactics and collaborators in both cases).

Russia’s invasion effectively disenfranchised Ukrainian voters in Crimea and Donbas regions.

In socialist states a larger part of the surplus is used to improve the labor pool, which explains the rapid growth.

Sure. If the right policies are prioritized and investments made, it should be much more efficient. Investments in primary healthcare and education in particular tend to be clear winners.

stark contrast from before and after the dissolution

Russia’s sudden shift to oligargchic capitalism was deeply corrupt and destabilising, harming russia itself and much of the neighbourhood.

to say that capitalism improved living standards is just assassine

It’s not capitalism that improves living standards. It’s sustained (and sustainable) growth, stable institutions and investment over time. Both capitalism and socialism can (and have) supported that, each with risks and caveats.

Sorry about that

Thanks

Recovering from WW2 losses was indeed a challenge for many soviet bloc countries. My suspicion is that without the cold war, W.Europe would also have recovered much slower as US investment and interest could have taken quite a different form.

Latin America is a different beast, worthy of its own discussion separate to this one.

The graph serves as simple contextualisation.

All european countries were already on the same trajectory. Russia was lagging behind for perfectly understandable reasons, but it was on the same trajectory. The soviet movement came at the right moment to benefit from this (and yeah, there’s a good chance they accelerated it, and in the worst case were “not bad” as someone phrased it).

A government would have had to monumentally screw up to not benefit from the rapid changes across europe at the time.

If the OP (or many of the commenters here) want to demonstrate uniquely soviet achievements, there are better metrics to focus on than life expectancy.

The original poster was terribly one sided, clearly meaning to shock people into thinking that the USSR’s socialism was solely responsible for it.

That the USSR achieved what it did is not in dispute… that socialism alone could have achieved this is my point… russia was a blank slate, primed for rapid improvement. It also didn’t improve uniformly (not surprising given its size and geography).

Neoliberal shock doctrine aka capitalism does that (followed by a rule 1 violating insult)

Russia’s internal collapse and slide was quite special, and most other former USSR states did better (even pre-1991), including Belarus & Ukraine. That speaks very much to russia, not the USSR of course

I expect people here to be capable of basic research and forming their own opinions. If your opinion is “ussr was perfect, does no wrong” then OK, good for you.

The users here are fully capable of doing minimal research and applying critical thinking without being spoon-fed.

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While no country is the same, you might look at finland (independent) and the baltics (joined USSR in 1940) for a somewhat comparable shared modernization trend and the resulting improvements in life expectancy, the 1970s dip, etc.

Russia started out in a terrible position (with no small thanks to the late abolishment of serfdom). But it isn’t particularly surprising that it improved when or as much as it did with the arrival of new technology, urbanisation trends, better sanitation and health care (especially pre-natal care), and of course its location. The world was changing fast, and russia was well primed to change with it.

If you want country specific data, you might have to explore the data sources itself.

I was just trying to add context, because the huge jump in life expectancy was a global phenomenon, which casual readers may not know.

It has knobs, twiddle them or use the raw data.

Yes - societal collapses tend to do that.