Mhm. I get that your country is hostile to the world and its own citizens. I do. But that doesn’t make Stalin - or any era USSR - good.
The USSR was good based on its own progressive merits.
From your post I can see you preemptively dismiss any critisizm or argument and while you said MLs don’t idealise Stalin, it seems that you do.
I don't.
I’m from Poland. To us, to a country betrayed by the Allies and sold to Stalin, their occupation did not bring prosperity, or equality, nor socialism.
I've spoken to people from Poland that have the opposite to say. The fall of socialism in Poland brought a dramatic collapse in any kind of left, which is why Poland is so far-right today.
We were systematically robbed by the USSR from the wealth, intellect and industry (as noted by then governments and listed as a plea for USSR to stop), we were made take loans to invest in the Empire, while staying a satelite country. We did call then the Red Army - Red Locust. You need to realise that when you glorify it, you automatically dismiss our traumatic past. It is like getting told by a stupid child that if we’re hungry we should eat cake.
Again, I've heard much the opposite. That's why anecdotes are terrible measures of truth. The collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe brought skyrocketing poverty rates, prostitutuon, drug abuse, homelessness, and 7 million excess deaths.
Since USA wages war outside its territory and was never invaded, you might not know that trauma - especially from war and being a conquered nation - is transgenerational https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma
I'm aware.
Were they people who thrived under USSR occupation? Yes, but they are thriving currently too, both politicians and capitalist leeches. Did Poland progress under the occupation? Yes, like every damn other country in Europe. We would progress more as free people, no historian thinks differently.
And yet Poland is now in a far-right spiral with far greater disparity.
When I read your comments I can’t not see you as anything else than a guilt feeling nepo baby. Or at least someone so privileged, that they never ever thought about other people lives outside of statistics. An empty headed academic.
Cool story, you know nothing about me. Believe it or not, statistics and historical fact do outweigh simple anecdote, and the idea that I have never thought about people's lives outside of statistics is deeply wrong.