This was the first successful socialist uprising in the world, which transformed Russia from a poor and backward feudal country into a leading economic, political, military, scientific, technical, cultural and educational power!

Russia went from a backwards agrarian society where people travelled by horse and carriage to being the first in space in the span of 40 years. Russia showed incredible growth after the revolution that surpassed the rest of the world:

• https://wid.world/document/soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016/
• https://wid.world/document/appendix-soviets-oligarchs-inequality-property-russia-1905-2016-wid-world-working-paper-201710/

USSR provided free education to all citizens resulting in literacy rising from 33% to 99.9%:

• http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PubEdUSSR.htm
• http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/anglosov.htm
• http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0000/000013/001300eo.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez

USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960's, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
• https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5054/index1.html

Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:

• https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp84b00274r000300150009-5
• 

USSR moved from 58.5-hour work weeks to 41.6 hour work weeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960:

• https://books.google.com/books?id=x8JYjwEACAAJ
• https://web.archive.org/web/20210509140019/https://b-ok.cc/book/2669908/77497f

USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996:

• https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/1994/94B09_66_englp2.pdf
• https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm

In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67 and the average (not median) retiree household in the USA could expect $48k/yr which comes out to 65% of the 74k average (not median) household income in 2016:

• https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/1994/94B09_66_englp2.pdf
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-you-get-by-on-the-average-americans-retirement-income/

GDP took off after socialism was established and then collapsed with the reintroduction of capitalism:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_GDP_per_capita.gif

The Soviet Union had the highest physician/patient ratio in the world. USSR had 42 doctors per 10,000 population compared to 24 in Denmark and Sweden, and 19 in US:

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0735675784900482 (use sci-hub for access)

• USSR defeated a smallpox epidemic in a matter of 19 days https://www.rbth.com/history/331857-how-ussr-defeated-black-smallpox

• The Social Consequences of Soviet Immunization Policies https://web.archive.org/web/20240218132709/https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1997-812-03g-Hoch.pdf

USSR produced many firsts in the realm of science and technology:

• 1957: First intercontinental ballistic missile R-7 Semyorka
• 1957: First orbiting satellite, Sputnik 1
• 1957: First living in orbit, the dog Laika on Sputnik 2
• 1957: First nuclear powered icebreaker "Lenin" weighing in at 19,240 tons of steel
• 1958: First Tokamak thermonuclear experimental system
• 1959: First man-made object to leave the Earth's orbit, Luna 1
• 1959: First communication to and from Luna 1 with Earth
• 1959: First object to pass near the moon, and the first object in orbit around the Moon, Luna 1
• 1959: First satellite hit the moon, Luna 2
• 1959: First images of the dark side of the moon, Luna 3
• 1960: First satellite to be launched to Mars, the Marsnik 1
• 1961: First satellite to Venus, Venera 1
• 1961: First person to enter orbit around the Earth, Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1
• 1961: First person to spend a day in orbit, Gherman Titov – Vostok 2
• 1962: First flight of two astronauts, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4
• 1963: First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok 6
• 1964: First flight of several astronauts, Voskhod 1
• 1965: First spacewalk, Aleksei Leonov, Voskhod 2
• 1965: First probe to another planet Venus, Venera 3
• 1966: First probe to descend on the moon and send from there, Luna 9
• 1966: First probe in lunar orbit, Luna 10
• 1967: First meeting of unmanned Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188, this aws not achieved by US until 2006
• 1969: First docking and crew exchange in orbit, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5
• 1970: First signals sent to the moon by Luna 16
• 1970: First mobile robot, Lunokhod 1
• 1970: First data sent by a probe from another planet (Venus), Venera 7
• 1971: First space station, Salyut 1
• 1971: First satellite in orbit around Mars and landing on Mars 2
• 1975: First satellite in orbit around Venus and sending data to earth, Venera 9
• 1984: First woman to walk in space, Svetlana Savitskaja on Salyut 7
• 1986: First team to visit two space stations Salyut and Mir
• 1986: First permanent space station in Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, MIR
• 1987: First team to spend more than a year aboard Mir, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov

These are just some of the biggest technological and social achievements of the Soviet Union.

academic studies on USSR

Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possible:

• https://web.archive.org/web/20200119044114/https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/2672986?seq=1

A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf

This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/

This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.

• https://academic.oup.com/cje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cje/beac072/7081084?guestAccessKey=01c8dd9f-af1c-48b3-b271-eb5d3a45017c&login=false

So, how do people who lived under communism feel now that they got a taste of capitalism?

• A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country's economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country's switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary's integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.

• The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.

• Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an "illegitimate state." In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

• A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -"during the time of socialism". The survey focused on the respondents' views on the transition "from socialism to capitalism", and a clear majority said they trusted social institutions the most during the rule of Yugoslav communist president Josip Broz Tito. The standard of living during Tito's rule from the Second World War to the 1980s was also assessed as best, whereas the Milosevic decade of the 1990s, and the subsequent decade since the fall of his regime are seen as "more or less the same". 45 percent said they trusted social institutions most under communism with 23 percent choosing the 2001-2003 period when Zoran Djinđic was prime minister. Only 19 per cent selected present-day institutions.

• 75% of Russians have expressed increasingly positive opinions about the Soviet Union over the years. Only a small portion of those surveyed said they had negative associations with the Soviet Union. The economic deficit, long lines and coupons were named by 4% of respondents each, while the Iron Curtain, economic stagnation and political repressions were named by 1% each, the Levada Center said.

• Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. https://archive.ph/9Z12u

• Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx

The Free market paradise goes East chapters in Blackshirts and Reds details some more results of the transition to capitalism.

By Fernando Navarro Robuschi:

Among the many breath-taking achievements of the USSR (thanks to socialist policies) I think the most important (by virtue of being directly related to life), is the achievement of "Food Security" in all the republics.

The concept of "Food security" has more than one definition, but essentially means:

"When all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to affordable, nutritious food in sufficient quantity"

"Sufficient" as in "enough to grow up/develop in a healthy way"

This was the case in the USSR. Thanks, among other things (such as centrally managing the country's resources and the use of administrative prices), to the collectivization of the countryside.

After the extremely bad harvest of 1932-1933 (which caused a famine in the Ukrainian SSR and was in turn caused not only by bad weather but also by the Kulaks killing/eating their own cattle and burning their crops in protest to the collectivization drive) famine never returned to any republic of the USSR (WW2 excepted, of course).

Historian Vladimir Shlapenkoth, clearly no pro-soviet, wrote the following regarding the Soviet diet in "A Normal Totalitarian Society":

"Compared to the 1930's and 1950's, the Soviet diet in the 1970's and 1980's was quite tolerable. Meat, sugar, and milk, which were scarce in the past, became staples for the average citizen [...] the elderly in the countryside probably suffered from the worst diet, but no one in the country went hungry or died of malnutrition" ("A Normal Totalitarian Society")

That cite alone implies that even in the worst cases the people were far from going hungry or being malnourished.

Historian Serguei Kara-Murza, who lived in the USSR, wrote regarding the Soviet diet:

"What was the food situation in the USSR? In 1983-85, a Soviet consumed 98,3 grams of protein per day, precisely the optimal norm" ("¿Qué le pasó a la Unión Soviética?")

Even the CIA concluded in its 1982 "CIA Briefing of the Soviet Economy" report that:

"The Soviet Union remains basically self sufficient with respect to food [...] At 3,300 calories [...] average daily food intake is equivalent to that in developed western countries. The grain production in the Soviet Union is more than sufficient to meet consumer demand for bread and other cereal products" (CIA Briefing of the Soviet Economy, p. 17).

Michael Parentti readily debunks the myth of the "inefficient" Soviet agriculture:

"In trying to convince the American public that the Soviet economic system is not working, the US press has pointed to the alleged "failure" of the agricultural sector. Time announced in 1982 that Soviet "farms cannot feed the people". And a year later the Washington Post reported "Soviet agriculture [is] simply not able to feed the country" [...] Writing in Parade magazine, Robert Moss designated "the collective farms" as "the prime reason for Russia's inability to feed herself". None of these assertions were accompanied by any supporting documentation [...] The reality is something else. Today the Soviets produce more than enough grain to feed their people [...] per capita meat consumption has doubled in the last two decades and exceeds such countries as Norway, Italy, Greece, Spain, Japan and Israel.

Milk production has jumped almost 60 per cent in the last twenty years so that today the USSR is by far the largest milk producing country in the world [...] These are the accomplishments of an agrarian labor force that decreased from 42 percent in 1960 to 20 percent in 1980, working in a country where over 90 percent of the land is either too arid or too frozen to be farmed" ("Inventing Reality")

Lastly, the "Economic Development, Political-Economic System, and the Physical Quality of life" study published in 1986 shows that the population of the USSR (ranked as an "upper middle-income country" in the study) had a caloric intake 37 percent above the minimum level of requirement (that is, people ate 37% more than the calorie supply needed to develop in a healthy way).

Food security was the reality for the Soviet people from 1935 (when Stalin ended rationing) to 1987 (when Gorbachov market reforms led to shortage of basic goods, among them food) with the obvious interruption of the period 1941-47 (the Great Patriotic War and the 2 years of hunger that followed because of it). That sums almost 50 years of uninterrupted food supply for everyone. And the Soviet diet was consistently getting better and better over time. This was truly one of those unparalleled achievements in human history, and it was socialism which made it possible.

Sources and further reading:

-"A Normal Totalitarian Society" by Vladimir Shlapentokh.

-"¿Qué le pasó a la Unión Soviética?" by Serguei Kara-Murza.

-"CIA Briefing of the Soviet Economy (Decemeber 1982)" by the Central Intelligence Agency (of the US).

-"Inventing Reality" by Michael Parentti.

-"Economic Development, Political-Economic System, and the Physical Quality of Life" by Shirley Cereceto and Howard Waitzkin.

-"Soviet Farming: more Success than Failure?" by Harry G. Shaffer.

https://www.csmonitor.com/1982/1213/121323.html

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3765355

Harsh winter is coming, if you can, please help.

https://www.instagram.com/taghread__family/

Two weeks ago the Human Development Report 2023/24 was published. As I did last year, here's a comparison of current and past socialist and capitalist economies' HDI (not weighed), along with the standard error of the latter group and a p-value computed via Mann-Whitney U-test.

Looks like socialist countries are now (in 2022) fully on par with their capitalist counterparts. All of them except Cuba saw a sharp increase in their HDI, while capitalist countries are yet to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1735517

You can read this masterpiece here.

People swear by this work by Liu Shaoqi and I have yet to read it myself, but plan to start soon.

Methods

I downloaded and used HDI values from the 2022 report, which contains data up to 1990, and values for 1975-1985 from the 2009. Then successively added any missing data from reports starting from 2008 to 1990, since some values (specifically from some socialist nations) are deleted in the latter reports. Note that data before 1990 uses a different methodology, which explains the jagged line. Finally, I used linear regression to complete any countries that only missed a single data point.

Then, I computed the average of all capitalist and socialist countries that existed at the end of each year, and plotted it. For capitalist countries, I also plotted the standard error (it's too large to represent for socialist countries).

The dashed line is the p-value computed via the Mann–Whitney U test, which is the probability (out of 1) that comparing random countries from both groups would not show any difference. That is, the closer to 0, the more likely it is that there is an actual difference between the groups.

Limitations

• The HDI reports are missing lots of data, especially from the first decades. This could have been subject to selective reporting.
• Means and p-value are computed without weighting by population. Either doing or not doing it may introduce different biases.
• A mean might not be the best way to quantify the behavior of a wildly varied set of countries.
• While the HDI is computed in such a way that taking means makes sense, there may be biases in its calculation.