Cleverdawny

When you're contrasting communism and capitalism, it's strange to do it by asking someone in a fascist kleptocracy whether they miss being at the heart of a massive empire

Russia is about the only former communist nation which is worse off now, excepting perhaps Ukraine - blame Russia for that, too - and it's because they're Russia, not because they're ex communists.

Russia is sometimes included in that, I wasn't. My apologies for being unclear. Russia is the former imperial center of the Soviet Empire, so they benefited dramatically from the labor and resources of their colonies. They also never adopted the kind of modern democratic capitalism which was a competing ideology to communism during the Cold War, instead adopting a form of fascism, so I thought it was obvious to anyone that when making the comparison between capitalism and communism in Eastern Europe, a good faith participant in a discussion would look at Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, etc.

It's unsurprising that many Russians look back fondly to the time when they had imperial domination over more than a dozen foreign countries, looting them for resources and using them as military puppets.

If capitalism destroyed Eastern Europe, it's news to Eastern Europe

Hey! Literal communist propaganda. Honestly, the better thing to do instead of this is just ask someone over 50 who lives or lived in Eastern Europe.

Okay? And? The USSR was the center of a massive empire and exploited the hell out of that empire. They definitely had the resources to be the world's scientific runner up.

So, the Soviets couldn't do their own research. Got it

If it was all an evil capitalist conspiracy, why did the communists go along with it? Hmm?

You know, it took until 2003 for Russia to remove leaded gasoline from stations. The Soviets never did it LMFAO

but nice try