Enough about the bad, what was GOOD abot the Soviet Union?

[alcibiades_mystery]

36. Soviets invented (modern) cinema...often forgotten in the Hollywood myth

Soviet five year plans transitioned a feudal economy into an industrial capitalist economy in about 30 years. Under the "natural course" of development, it took most of Western Europe at least 80 years to do the same, if not 300. Of course, this was very artificial, and as stained in blood as the emergence of capitalism itself. The massacres were, indeed, doubled to produce the same effect in a shorter period of time, but the transition from feudalism to capitalism was about as bloody as it was anywhere.

Stalin looks like a brutal tyrant because he condensed the outright murder and depravity that was the emergence of industrial production everywhere. What Stalin did was really no different than what capitalism did everywhere it emerged - Stalin's terror was just more visible.