Granted communism isn't perfect but you do need to look at its possitives. Compare Russia pre and post revolution. Standards of living rose greatly, the Czars only abandoned slavery a decade or so before, and famines and droughts occured just as much. The Russian people were exploited and down trodden which is what causes revolutions in the first place, the rosy world of capitalism didn't keep them happy. Yes there were mistakes along the way but which country in the world hasn't made any?
When you look at what the USSR achieved from standards of living to putting men into space and then think what restriction were against them their achievments are fantastic. Don't forget they couldn't import tectnology and had a non negotiable currency and had the west working against them at every turn. Oh and lets not forget they won a world war at the same time at a cost of 20 million of their people.
The real achilles heal of the communist system is its low wealth growth and lack of inflation. E.g. train fares and rents hadn't gone up since 1923, and some commodities were actually marked with the cost i.e. cast into a product. In the west the finanical system can just invent money out of thin air which is what the banks did and is why so much brown smelly stuff has hit so many big whirry things.
Communism is I think a very moral system that ultimatly I feel should, will or must be adopted worldwide, it just can't stand alone in a capitalist world.
Oh and as to the British Communist Party (yes there is still one), despite my beliefs I couldn't vote for them. Look at their website, they're more interested in having solidarity with "our brothers in palestien"
lol ive never read so much romantic crap written about the USSR in my life!! Communism was an unmitigated disaster. Millions of people starved to death due to the incompetence and corruption of the collectivisation of the farms. The Space program forged ahead regardless of safety, hundreds of russians died trying to keep up with the US. 60 million of there citizens were sent to forced labour camps as Stalin indulged his paranoia about the inteliigensia and the Army and purged so called enemies of the state, at one stage he had almost stripped the USSR of every scientists orf any use. Ditto the armed forces, if you were any good, you were marked. Heroes returned home from WW2 only to be hauled away to the Gulag. Anyone who had been captured was immediately labelled as a western agent and also sent to the gulag.
Russian technology has always developed at a human cost that would be unacceptable in the west - look at there nuclear power programme, there still admitting to accidents that have killed people. Chernobyl happened because the russians insisted on using a reactor design that the west had abandoned as inherently unsafe. The Kursk sinking occurred because the russians used a torpedo design also abandoned by the west as inherently unstable. Time and time again russians killed there own people through sheer negligence and incompetence.
Furthermore, they didn't win WW2 on there own, as you imply. They had the Russian Winter, which was the only thing that stopped the germans, who were within sight of the domes of the Kremlin in 1942. The USSR also conducted genocide and ethnic cleansing in various countries in Europe, especially during and after World War II.Estimates of the death toll during the leadership of Stalin alone are estimated at 20 million people.
For some amusing reading, google these:
2006 North Ossetia pipeline explosions
Arkhangelsk tower block explosion of 2004
Basmanny market roof collapse
Droughts and famines in Russia and the Soviet Union
2008 Kazan tower block gas explosion
Luzhniki Foorball Stadium Disaster
Mayak Nuclear fire
Lame Horse nightclub fire
2009 Sayano-Shushenskaya hydro accident
Sverdlovsk anthrax leak
Techa River nuclear contamination disaster
Transvaal Park Sauna Roof collapse
nd there at least 15 men died in the Space program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_cosmonauts[/QUOTE]
and lets not forget the Nedelin launch pad disaster where 150 ground crew died
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe