> [...] the USSR was the greatest success story (until China) at lifting a very poor population out of poverty.
It is much easier to display numbers showing that you "lifted poor population out of poverty", when most of that poor population either got genocided or sent off to gulags or simply died off due to the aforementioned poverty. Not even mentioning the classic number massage.
Before someone tries to go full-on "you are just an american shill", I grew up in Russia during 90s, and my parents+grandparents grew up in the USSR. One of them had to cover up his jewish ethnicity his entire life, I only found out about it many years later, after his passing. Let me just say, he wasn't doing that cover-up for some personal reasons at all.
When it comes to the Soviet Union, the closer you are to the source material, the worse it looks.
It is much easier to display numbers showing that you "lifted poor population out of poverty", when most of that poor population either got genocided or sent off to gulags or simply died off due to the aforementioned poverty. Not even mentioning the classic number massage.
Before someone tries to go full-on "you are just an american shill", I grew up in Russia during 90s, and my parents+grandparents grew up in the USSR. One of them had to cover up his jewish ethnicity his entire life, I only found out about it many years later, after his passing. Let me just say, he wasn't doing that cover-up for some personal reasons at all.
When it comes to the Soviet Union, the closer you are to the source material, the worse it looks.