Consider not learning your ww2 history from pop culture
The USSR killed 80-ish percent of the nazi troops, and suffered 26 million casualties, mostly civilians exterminated by the nazis. They were mainly responsible for the victory and suffered the heaviest losses, including a lot of the lower level communist organization whose absence lead to the bureaucratic centralization (that Stalin opposed heavily before his death) that let corruption gradually take over the project.
Weird how the socialist command economies lead to a massive increase in literacy, life expectancy, women's rights, access to education, doctors per person, decreased infant and maternal mortality, I could go on.
Almost like there is a difference between a capitalist command economy like the nazis did and a socialist command economy. Wonder what the difference between those three word phrases are, hmmmmm 🤔🤔🤔
Its why they defeated the nazis, who had a 50-100 year industrialization lead when the USSR started doing a command economy. The USSR also ended up liberalizing, especially in its last decade, creating the circumstances for a coup that resulted in balkanization and massively decreased living standards.
And all Eastern European countries experience explosive growth post communism?
This is counterfactual
The soviet economy was insane(ly good)!
https://youtu.be/Hcl3R-yARX8?si=Z2Us5pkG9a7FBPUw
Well sourced easily digestible video on it.
You're going to need to show that you have a serious understanding here or you're going to need to stop posting on the topic in this comm.
People generally need some validation but I think you're making an inaccurate generalization
Oh, do you have private statements or writings where he was secretly supportive of it? Or are you operating entirely divorced from historical research?
Also:
Stalin often edited reports of Kremlin receptions, cutting applause and praise aimed at him and adding applause for other Soviet leaders.[33]
Ignoring this bit i see
Wikipedia has a capitalism supporting bias and says this
Like Lenin, Stalin acted modestly and unassumingly in public. John Gunther in 1940 described the politeness and good manners to visitors of "the most powerful single human being in the world".[6] In the 1930s Stalin made several speeches that diminished the importance of individual leaders and disparaged the cult forming around him, painting such a cult as un-Bolshevik; instead, he emphasized the importance of broader social forces, such as the working class.[33][34] Stalin's public actions seemed to support his professed disdain of the cult: Stalin often edited reports of Kremlin receptions, cutting applause and praise aimed at him and adding applause for other Soviet leaders.[33] Walter Duranty stated that Stalin edited a phrase in a draft of an interview by him of the dictator from "inheritor of the mantle of Lenin" to "faithful servant of Lenin".[6]
A banner in 1934 was to feature Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, but Stalin had his name removed from it, yet by 1938 he was more than comfortable with the banner featuring his name.[35] Still, in 1936, Stalin banned renaming places after him.[36] In some memoirs Molotov claimed that Stalin had resisted the cult of personality, but soon came to be comfortable with it.[37]
The Finnish communist Arvo Tuominen reported a sarcastic toast proposed by Stalin himself at a New Year's Party in 1935, in which he said: "Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled off all the appellations applied to him in those days] – Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening."[38] In the beginning of 1938, Nikolai Yezhov proposed renaming Moscow to "Stalinodar".[39] The question was raised at a session of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Stalin, however, reacted entirely negatively to this idea and, for this reason, the city retained the name Moscow.[39]
There is no such thing as unbiased
Communism also failed to fend off capitalism - and before you say b-but actually the USSR lasted a really long time,
The USSR being couped didn't stop it from sponsoring revolutionary movements around the globe until the coup. The US still hasn't defeated places like Cuba. In this sense the project still lives on.
ask yourself if the USSR at any point actually lived up to the ideals of the revolution.
Yes, in many ways. In some ways it did not.
You are mistaking the movie enemy at the gates for a history lesson, or are absorbing myths that ultimately originate with that movie.. During particularly desperate times troops would have to split rifles during training. General order 227 created penal detachments for officers who kept ordering retreats without cause, and created blocking units to turn back retreating units. They weren't machine gunning conscripts in the back.
Also even if not one step back was as US propaganda claims, every step back allowed the nazis more population to exterminate or enslave. The Soviets lost 19 million civilians, exterminated by the nazis.