In the same boat, and I have a question if anyone can answer it. I'd appreciate it.
I watched a documentary on Soviet Russia and communism came up. In the documentary they were talking about Russia's planned economy. They went into to explain how much the USSR struggled building this economy and how they were so desperate as to copy American Sears catalogs to get an idea on pricing of commodities.
Something about that seems off. The obvious intimation is that the USSR was fumbling around and how socialism can't work; Praise capitalism and such.
What is this all about?
Blake Morales
It's a common talking point in anti-communist circles, but it's more of a myth. Never actually seen evidence of it, I mean, why the fuck would they do that? They had an entire ministry for prices and why the heck would you copy prices from a completely different economy with a completely different economic system, income, purchasing power and production output? Maybe there was an incident where they checked the catalog in 1990 or something, during Perestroika.
Isaiah Roberts
One of the biggest redpills you need to take is that comparing quality of life in the USSR with west germany, the USA, france etc. is completely retarded for a million reasons. Compare it with countries like Italy or Spain and you will see it was pretty good. While Italy and Spain are never praised as super prosperous or heaven on earth you will never see people point out every flaw a million times and make up another million. You won't get strange looks if you tell people you'd like to visit Rome someday. "Didn't you know 100 million people starved in Italy?"
Landon Watson
Finnish bolshevik made this video I really enjoy watching:
Despite some of the obvious problems with Jacobin, they've had some good pieces about very interesting topics regarding how ambitious and inventive the Soviet Union was. I mean the Soviet was literally a league 3 team that clawed their way through constant war and sabotage by massive capitalist empires and they made to the fucking final and barely lost. They were the underdogs x100, and even while they were fighting on every conceivable economic, political, military, and cultural front, they still managed to have things like science fiction, architecture, education flourish. some links that kinda talk about these things: calvertjournal.com/features/show/9100/holidays-in-soviet-sanatoriums-ussr-tourism-photography jakkkobinmag.com/2017/12/red-diaper-babies jakkkobinmag.com/2016/08/soviet-architecture-bus-stops-design-history
Soviet sci-fi is extremely underrated. There was a ton of interesting stuff published aside from the Strugatskys, including a whole subgenre of revolutionary sci-fi from the 20s-30s