this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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So, uh, did communism work for them?
Socialism did work in the USSR, yes. They doubled life expectancies, ended famine, passed prison reforms, dramatically expanded democracy, nearly eliminated homelessness, transformed a semi-feudal backwater into a modernized industrial country, passed free universal healthcare and education, and plenty more. There were problems and struggles, and obviously it no longer exists, but socialism absolutely worked for the soviets for neaerly a full century.
The dissolution of socialism in Eastern Europe was multi-faceted and complex, and had more to do with conditions particular to the soviets as compared to universal to socialism. Today, the CPRF is rising in popularity and is the most significant opposition to United Russia, and the majority of Russians wish to return to socialism.
Seems relatively on par with the rest of the world...
https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250731-112524/grapher/life-expectancy.html
Thanks for providing a graph that makes it difficult comparing socialist states with captialist ones. Your graph also doesn't capture how fast life expectancy increased, it purposefully expands the timeframe to make it less significant. After the dissolution of the Soviet union Russia suffered the largest known drop in life expectancy in peace time
It has knobs, twiddle them or use the raw data.
Yes - societal collapses tend to do that.
If you twiddle them, you'll see exactly what the previous commenter is talking about. For example, try comparing socialist countries like Russia and Cuba to other countries of a similar level of development, like any random country in the Third World, or Africa, Asia, or South America that didn't use imperialism in the 1800's, to boost its development.
You'll see a 15-25 year difference in life expectancy during that time. And that's without causing the awful conditions in the rest of the world that Europe and the US did by boosting their development through slavery, war, imperialism, and colonialism.
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.
I think that the fact that the capitalist world achieved the rapid 20th century development from the plundering of the global south, while the USSR managed comparable growth as they lost 27 million people in the fight against fascism (and were later forced to spend ridiculous amounts of resources developing weapons to maintain MAD against the US) should also count for something. Capitalist development isn't very impressive in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile (despite the Allende admin), Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, etc. Even with some jumps in life expectancy and literacy rates, uneven capitalist development is undeniable and a much graver problem than its analogue in the former second world.
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.
@ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net provided a graph that did that. It shows how fast life expectancy increased. And it's only one metric of many in which the UDSSR dominated. Literacy rates, industrialization, GDP growth, scientific achievements, etc. are other areas that come to mind.
Neoliberal shock doctrine aka capitalism does that dipshit naziboy
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).
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.
I'm not saying non socialist countries did not achive improvements in life expectancy, a cost effective part of the appropriated surplus value is allocated by the oppressing classes to their labor pool.
In socialist states a larger part of the surplus is used to improve the labor pool, which explains the rapid growth. Your provided graph obscures it. You'd have to fiddle with the time slider and notice how quickly socialist states pop dark blue in comparison to others.
I agree that the UDSSR needed to be reformed and it was also the result of the only referendum they had. But to see the stark contrast from before and after the dissolution, and to say that capitalism improved living standards is just assassine
Sorry about that. Your dismissive response triggered it
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.
Russia's sudden shift to oligargchic capitalism was deeply corrupt and destabilising, harming russia itself and much of the neighbourhood.
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.
Thanks
Which knobs do you twiddle to out the Soviet bloc, China n all?
And if you are talking about it without doing the twiddling when younshared it, aren't you now just making s pasable reply?
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.
But Soviet Union, the related Sovket bloc, China, India(our version was more influenced by Fabian/Nehruvian socialism, not really Marxist) n all were influenced by communism/socialism and account for a large portion of the global population.
In your graph, the World curve follows the Asia curve. So the global trend could likely be because of the communist influence itself.
Without adding that context, your addition of context doesn't really add context, right?
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 rate of growth after 1917 and 1945 is absolutely not on par with the rest of the world, or you would have linked an example to prove it. And if it was on par with the rest of the world, that would still show that communism was indeed not bad.
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.
where do people go to learn this skill of filling empty air with words and not addressing the thing they're ostensibly replying to in any way?
The users here are fully capable of doing minimal research and applying critical thinking without being spoon-fed.
What a magnanimous excuse for not actually providing any evidence for your claims
Another completely incoherent reply in the context of the conversation. Zero actual interaction with anyone speaking with you.
It was socialism and yes it worked tremendously considering the fact that they sacrificed 20M+ lives in WW2 and were subject of western imperialism forcing them to spend most resources on the cold war
Yeah, right up until the US successfully ruined it as usual
I grew up in USSR, it worked fine. The real horrors started after the wonders of markets and capitalism were introduced.
My confusion is why collapse back to capitalism?
Let's start with some axioms. There is a continuum of stages of human societal progression with socialism following after capitalism. Under socialism the workers run the state. USSR socialism was great for the worker.
Given the axioms, why would the USSR decide to create a capitalist class again?
The USSR's results in the face of outside pressure were great however. Why buckle after putting up such a fight?
Why can struggle against external power move human societal progression backwards?
The USSR didn't "decide" to do so, it was couped and hollowed out by Yeltsin and co. These are the new "oligarchs." While the economy had started to slow, the combination of the devastation of World War II resulted in the deaths of 27 million soviets, many of which were some of the most dedicated to socialism and defending it. This was also combined with growing nationalist movements, often supported by the west. This complicated mish mash gave favorable conditions for a coup, despite popular support for retaining the soviet union.
Based