Their population never boomed like it did in the US post WW2, possibly because of the massive loss of lives in the war. I feel like all that development would be pretty useless if there were no people to actually do anything.
Checked the censuses:
USSR:
170,467,186 (1939)
208,826,650 (1959)
132,164,569 (1940)
179,323,175 (1960)
USA: +47 mln
I'd say it's pretty comparable, if you also consider that 26 mln Soviets were killed in WW2
You have seen that in stats or just assume? Because civilian causalities in WWII outnumber military ones. Old people, kids and sick people are extremely vulnerable during wars and die a lot.
Especially in WWII. First, obviously holocaust - most victims were from Eastern Europe and old, sick, kids had even lower chance to survive then physically strong people (not that it was high there, but). Second, German army was cleansing Eastern Europe for German settlement. That meant whole villages routinely burned out to ground. Third, famines and such, cause military extracts resources from people.
BTW: WW2 losses are still exorbitant, even if we subtract those 10 millions, but no longer that "impressive" (Poland lost 6 millions people, which was almost 20% of the population, killed by Germans and Russians - till 1941 Hitler and Stalin were best pals).
Ukraine's Holodomor happened in 1932-1933, and the census I mentioned is from 1939-1959. If you are implying that they were hiding Ukrainian losses in the 1930's and secretly added it to WW2 kill count then it's not quite true, censuses in 1926 and 1937 registered a drop in Ukrainian population from 31 mln to 26 mln. The results of the 1937 census were declassified only in 1990 and the revised number (26 mln) was estimated in the 1990's after the collapse of USSR and on the basis of declassified documents in Soviet archives.
>adding to the WW2 kills victims of Soviet Gulag system (about 2 millions)
Documents from the Soviet archives number the total deaths of prisoners in the Gulag from 1941 to 1945 at 621,637 (Evdokimov, 1995)
A better comparison is Russia by itself:
1939: 108,377,000
1959: 117,534,000 (+10% over 20 years)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Uni...
Compare with the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
And population growth in the pre-WW1 Russian Empire was even higher, despite having regular food shortage and hunger period. In general, pre-industrial agrarian societies tend to have much higher birth rates than industrial and post-industrial ones.
For some strange reason the US nowadays is comparable in the percentage of prisoners in USSR in worst Gulag years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in...
I don't have an explanation here, TBH. The US is a rich and socially advanced country. In comparison to Europe this feels very wrong.
The US justice system is very broken. No matter where one stands politically (e.g. be more lenient or be tougher on crime), the current system is suffering from bureaucracy, ineffectiveness, ineptitude and slowness. It's caught in an endless feedback loop.
> killing/imprisoning a lot of your own population
the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world
> creating an economic climate where it was hard to sustain your family
the cost of housing has far outgrown the median household income and in many places you need 2+ income earners to sustain a household meaning nobody has time to raise children