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Well, those that entered the EU are now far better off by all the metrics that count, and you can take your pick from GDP, income or life expectancy. This didn't happen for all the countries under USSR, depending on whether they stayed within Russia's influence. Obviously, when you have Russia invading a country or threatening to invade, that country won't do well. But even in countries left out of the EU, such as the Republic of Moldova, you can see progress and a strong opposition to regional Russian influence. And Russia does what Russia always did. But it's pretty telling that Eastern European countries like Poland or Romania now have a higher GDP per capita than Russia, lower poverty and higher quality of life included.
In defense of the US, I will say that the Marshall Plan has rebuilt Western Europe after WW2, while USSR's response, the Molotov Plan, was designed for extracting resources. And that Pax Americana did the West, at least, a lot of good is an understatement. ALAS, it appears that world is ending, helped in no small part by the changing views of western citizens, “informed” by the Internet, and guess what will happen next.
Anyway, it's baffling to me to see such a changing tide in opinions on HN, now that the US administration has changed. I mean, I've seen stupid opinions denying reality on HN before, but now it's on a whole new level. I get it, we had cancel culture and all that, but such opinions don't change overnight, so I'm amazed at how many uneducated cowards the world has, even on HN.
Romania was a neighbor of USSR and was part of the Europe that was under USSR domination, so countries that were not neighbors with USSR like India might cry about USSR death while all ex-USSR countries are still in danger from Ruzzia's imperialist dreams.
OP is right, you can be very objective here because you can observe countries that look West and enter EU and NATO and countries that looked East, the former are better economically the later a poor, corrupt, and with territories occupied by Ruzzia. And if you really want to study this area of the world try to see the puzzeling Ruzzian mind, where they pretend USSR was the best democracy in history and they pretend that there is ZERO motives the exUSSR countries hate imperialist Ruzzia.
And no, the United States is not perfect. No country with that amount of power is. But for all its flaws, it's vastly better than the Soviet Union ever was, but for the people living there and internationally.
This is the old "the United States is horrible and has done terrible thing, so let's for a country that ... has done even worse and is completely unrepentant about it". Like, wut?
Militarily US didn't much better than the Soviets and could've won relatively easily if they used similar methods and comparable goals.
Answer this if you know so well how bad Mississippi had it
1 Do people there have food in stores? Because in communist times you might have money but could not buy food since the shelves were empty and there were rations.
2 Do neighbors there rat you out to the authorities if they did not like you with accusations like "my neighbor listens to illegal radio post" so you would get beaten and then send to gulag without any evidence?
3 were the border closed so people do not leave the state/country ? (do you wonder why if communist countries were a paradise there was a need to close the borders and shoot the people that try to ecape the paradise? and why so many wanted to escape ?
I though USSR already genocided the capitalists, anyway I don't think today Ruzzia killed more people and more Russians then USSR , so is better for the world and maybe worse for some regions in Ruzzia and worse for the Zeds ego.