My views on the Soviet Union have shifted over the years, when I learned about Stalin's offer of a unified Germany in the 1950's which was rejected, for example, and you realise the USA also was guilty of prosecuting the Cold War.

The technological progress made was impressive, although I thought it was made largely at the cost of the people and workers, rather than in co-operation with them. I am a socialist, (anarchist) and anti-Bolshevik. The October revolution was more of a right wing coup, which came after a true broad based revolution according to my interpretation of history. That said, despite the brutal methods employed to reinstate managerial control of the factories and so on, the country did progress from an impoverished, illiterate state in 1917 to an advanced manufacturing state.

The same can be said of China, which in 1948 was developmentally on the level of say India or Africa.