tburger: All in all: Hitler, Stalin, Communism, Nazizm - it's all the same from my perspective. They offered only death, fear, anty-humanity.
Propaganda :)
What do you know about communism?
In short, it means: government owns everything, people work for free =( 100% taxes) and get everything for free - education, food, medication, housing,
Because it wasn't possible to achieve at times, there was socialism - government did own everything, but money were implemented - so you could motivate people to harder job with better payment.
Humanitarian capitalism also goes to communism - food stamps, free shelters, free medication from people like Bill Gates
Socialism's problem was in management and social lifts.
When plant needed to send representative to government, most useless person was chosen (to not ruin management at place) As a result of cherrypicking imbeciles into government for 2-3 generation, we got lazy management which controlled everything.
There was problem with getting innovation - you needed to conform it with ministry of planning (government owns everything, remember?).
Result:
Plant A and Plant B produce 1000 cars each. A invented innovation, which would let it produce 2000 cars.
Lazy ministry of planning refuse to let implement it - dealing with distribution of additional cars from Plant A, fired workers from plant B, its logistics...
As a result USSR always was step behind in tech for mass-production.
On the other hand, we had amazing social policies, which let small ethnics prosper. Russia is a house to almost 200 nationalities, we never had segregation, we had black general before US existed, and so on.
For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Estonia Look at the hit they got after the end of "soviet occupation", there are now less estonians than in 1922.
Same with Lithuania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Lithuania Ukraine...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine As for bad things... It was harsh time everywhere.
But I don't know why Gulag is no longer exists and no one bats an eye over Guantanomo?
Jokes about "In soviet Russia TV watches you" and real life initiatives like Prism...
HijacK: Your anti-US propaganda is pathetic. If you spent as much time researching as your spend puking this Putinist nonsense you would know the "US money" were loans, and guess what? The entirety of Europe had those loans! Almost all the European countries affected by WW1 applied for these loans.
And which EU country now do self-profitable politic?
Bulgaria lost South stream
Germany can't return their gold from US, Merkel instantly shut up when US spying was uncovered.
Greece is close to default because given to them quotas below their needs.
France can't give us Mistrals - which ruins their reliance. As a result India cancelled $20B deal.
Baltic countries spend billions on useless military tech from Nato. Yeah, it is justified for population that "Russia is an aggressor".