Karl Marx was European. His publisher was European. His early adopters were Europeans. The evidence that Europe cannot be communist is not there. Soviet Union is a pinnacle of socialist achievement. It is possible that your communism will have mass starvation and hoe strikes breaking skulls phase which is not followed by space exploration and nuclear power phase.
You are miserable now, let's asusme. People were miserable under socialism (not all of them, but the vibe was off). We can't rule out you will be happy under socialism, but no facts support that even indirectly. It will require a leap of faith.
P.S. I was replying to much longer, non-tautological and less-borderline-racist version of your comment.
I glimpsed last years of Soviet Union and it was pretty meh.
I remember seeing anything in the street (a payphone or a playground for kids) and assumed it will only degrade because as a general principle, things in the streets are unmaintained.
You could say that Soviet Union was bad specimen of socialism because of these stupid Russians?
Except, Russia actually got 100% out of socialism with our space exploration, passenger planes and nuclear stations.
It's just that 100% of socialism is worse than your average capitalist dystopia.
Hello! This is Moscow calling. What are you doing with these planes of yours now? Can you pass them under the table for an unspecified amount? Regards £ wishes!
By 1998, Yahoo was the beneficiary of a de facto Ponzi scheme. Investors were excited about the Internet. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's revenue growth. So they invested in new Internet startups. The startups then used the money to buy ads on Yahoo to get traffic. Which caused yet more revenue growth for Yahoo, and further convinced investors the Internet was worth investing in. When I realized this one day, sitting in my cubicle, I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of "Eureka!" I was shouting "Sell!"
Lankov has described the coupon system in some detail. I believe Cuba has a similar system with CUC or had it until recently. I'm not sure at which point NK ditched coupons for Euros.
Artemy Lebedev, a known Russian web designer, visited North Korea and posted his notes with pictures (in Russian, should not be an obstacle these days).
There are three more sections with the selector below.
They likely go to specialized shops for foreigners where you may only pay with US$-backed coupons, and can purchase most of stuff you can commonly buy in Japan.
> people on the Baltic coast are not Russians, have nothing in common with them, nor have never wanted to be close with them
That wording already shows an unexpected amount of agitation that would prompt further inquires.
> have been driven away from their land like Native Americans and decimated with hostile policies that have resulted in their rapid decline
That's mostly an unfaithful description of what's been happening, no. It also runs counter to the previous "have nothing in common with them, nor have never wanted to be close with them". If you really didn't want to be close to Russians you would get out of our hair for a chance.
The West encouraged Georgia to invade its breakaway former province South Ossetia in 2008. Turns out it was a lousy idea. Why blame Russia for bad voluntary choices of Georgian government?
Russian Federation still maintains freedom of travel with most of ex-Soviet republics. Good luck entering Britain without visa being a former colonial subject.
Also, this convention of not digging into a country's history can only ever work before it brings its history as a topic of conversation. In case of small, post-colonial countries that often happens on the first contact.
Soviet nomenclature did consist of Jews to significant extent. At times more, at times less, but it's disingenous for you to mention Jews being overrepresented among the victims without mentioning they were also overrepresented among Soviet officials, including high ranking ones.
Of course, it weren't these random religious small business owners but people significantly conditioned by the socialist regime, which they participated in creating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parrot_Speaking_Yiddish the movie highlights that fact: a Soviet military officer occupying Lithuania in 1939 turns out to be Jew, which does not preclude him from internment of the movie protagonist, also Jew and Polish army soldier at the time in the plot.
> any military operation not sanctioned by the target region's people or government counts as an invasion
It does not give one an excuse to skip the whole history of the region and start it where it fits them. I wonder if their values include skipping uncomfortable trivia or highlighting it when appropriate.
With regards to values, the legitimacy of a 3 years old government is in deep doubt. The values you've mentioned repeatedly lead to political backing of seriously unpopular regimes just because they fit the narrative that was never true in the first place.
I also struggled there, perhaps that's the wording for Russia doing some flagpoling without claiming 1st place at any point of time.
There's three awfully huge flag poles in St. Petersburg erected last year, perhaps these are the culprits of that sentence. For the curious, these exhibit Emperors' flag, Soviet hammer-sickled and Russian tricolor.