A communist society is a stateless, classless, moneyless society where the means of production are owned by the workers, the basic needs of all people are met, and all people give what they are able. Considering the fact that the means of production were owned by the state, the state maintained currency, and that they were a state, I don't think they met the criteria. This can be said even if an informed leftist has a different definition of communism. Lenin was experimenting with methods of implementing a socialist economy. As the first country to have a proletarian democracy with a communist party, they didn't exactly have a lot of historical examples to try and model.

[–] Candelestine@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fair. Thank you for the reasonable response. My point is that strides were being made, before Stalin was in charge. Then serious attempts largely stopped. Would you describe that as inaccurate?

[–] purahna@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I acknowledge that this isn't a question towards me, but I'm gonna take a stab regardless, so compared with Lenin, Stalin:

didn't have the advantage of "noob gains", or the period where all of the low hanging fruit fixes to what was basically feudalism could be made
had to amass nearly the whole productive output of the union to defending against and defeating the Nazis, as well as drafting nearly every man in the country in a highly self-defensive war
had to start from rubble at the end of the war
was the target of much deeper and more frequent propaganda, as the USSR under Lenin was an alarming proletarian experiment to capital, but the USSR under Stalin was a global superpower that threatened hegemony on a daily basis
faced famines and sanctions of a much higher magnitude at much worse times than Lenin
and yes, fumbled a couple things very badly which lead to a non-negligible amount of death (although, and I recognize that this is impossible to prove, handled most things far better than any bourgeoise head of state handled their similar crises)

He was decent. He isn't a god, he didn't do perfect, but when you count how shitty the hand he was dealt was and how much better things were going by the time he walked from the table, he did pretty damn decent.

[–] Candelestine@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Russia has more arable land than any other polity on our planet. I find it awfully suspicious that famines were somewhat frequent, and so conveniently not his doing. China had a long history of famines, but they're often weather-related. A famine requires a good excuse, you can't just be like "oops". Otherwise you should be fixing it before the humans all starve, which takes weeks at a minimum, usually much longer since there are some things to eat.

Thank you for your reasonable response btw. I'm enjoying this conversation with the people that are willing to actually have a serious one. I know I probably look like a troll, but I'm really not trolling.