I have to disagree with the Soviet union being a poor backwards pit , there was that black guy who sang the SU anthem in english and he stated that when he visited the SU in the 30's russians used to shake his hand in the street and that it was the first time in his life that he was treated with respect and felt like he was a human being instead of a sub-human ,
When Paul Robeson was in the Soviet Union in 1949, he wanted to see two Soviets he had befriended in 1943 - Solomon Mikhoels and Itzik Feffer. Because Stalin saw Robeson as a useful propaganda tool, he didn't want to refuse him so he released Itzik Feffer from prison. Feffer told Robeson that Stalin had already murdered Mikhoels (in 1948) and that he himself would soon be murdered. Itzik told Robeson, "They're going to kill us. When you return to America, you must speak out and save us." Robeson refused in order to protect the reputation of Stalin and the Soviet Union. He told him that to his face. Itzik was finally murdered in 1952. What a great friend.
Because Robeson was (understandably) upset with the treatment of blacks in America, he had no problems with Stalin murdering 20 million of his own people, imprisoning 14 million in the gulag, and the other crimes of Stalin which far exceeded the discrimination and lynching (which peaked from 1890 to 1930, and was not a common occurrence by this time) done to blacks in America. That does not make Robeson a moral hero. It makes him scum.
there is Muhhamed Ali too ,
Muhammed Ali visited the Soviet Union in 1978. Like many other famous guests in the period, he was given a Potemkin tour of the Soviet Union for propaganda purposes. When he returned to New York he said in a press conference:
“I was a little nervous when I landed in Russia. I thought I’d see the country in ruins, with a crowd of gloomy people who think like robots, and intelligence agents, who would follow my every step. Instead, I saw a country populated by a hundred nationalities, who are living together in harmony. I saw only one policeman, who was carrying no weapons. There is no crime, no prostitutes and no homosexuals.”
Ten years later the country whose people lived "together in harmony" was on its way to no longer exist. The Armenians and Azeris would begin killing each other, and the Baltics were in revolt. If Muhammed Ali only saw one policeman with no weapons, it was because he didn't know who the secret police were who did. There were
plenty of crime and prostitutes (and I assume homosexuals as well). Most of the criminals though, alas, were not on the streets but in the government.
Unlike Robeson, Muhammad Ali meant well. He was just a dupe. In 1980, Muhammad Ali went on a tour in Africa to try to convince countries to boycott the Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
and personnaly my cousin used to study in Soviet Ukraine and he tood that the ppl there were very close to each other and that life was so peaceful and you never see ppl sleeping in the street , homeless , people used to help each other .
Of course your cousin didn't see people sleeping in the street. That would be embarrassing. That is what
prison is for, and the slave labor camps. "Vagrants" and "parasites" were eliminated or hidden one way or the other.
It was one of the big lies that despite all the political repression, at least the
Soviets provided economic security to its citizens
unlike the United States. Wrong. On every measure of poverty, the Soviet Union was far worse.