Which Russia was better?

[LAKISYLVANIA]

The USSR was obviously worse both for the people who lived in it and for the rest of the world given they were way more powerful

Life conditions for Russians vastly improved compared to the Russian Imperial State. Given how the elderly still have communist sympathies in Russia, i tend to see this as "untrue". But your perception is of course influenced by the Cold War messaging and that USSR was the prime enemy for decades for the USA, but what is states is simply untrue. That being said, sure it was in a lot of ways and especially at certain times an evil state.

There has never been a state in human history more depraved and evil than the USSR.

Oh come on. I get what you're trying to communicate here, but come on. It wasn't even the most depraved and evil Marxist-Leninist state.

The one thing that I will say about the USSR is that it’s imperialism makes it a unique force of evil. For example, Nazi Germany may have have been more evil with what it did within its borders, but it’s carnage was intended to be limited to the confines of Europe. The USSR had clear intentions to export its ideology and practices to every corner of the globe.

'Nazi Germany wasn't imperialist'

Truly the best take.

Nazi Germany’s imperialism extended only to about half of Europe. The Soviet Union desired every square inch to be under its control, either directly on indirectly. These two scenarios are not comparable.

It's the other way around.

Soviets wanted a buffer zone to insulate Moscow, that's it.

Lebensraum is quite different.

The Soviet Union did not want a “buffer zone,” they wanted the entire domination of the whole world. There’s a reason why pretty much every single Marxist-Leninist political party got such intense funding from the Soviet Union, and why they invaded countries such as Afghanistan whenever any sort of rebellion against that order happened.

Meanwhile, Lebensraum was about half of Europe.

If The USSR wanted world domination through military means, the cold war would've been known as a warm war (not named as such), but there would be no cold war.

The USSR tried just like the US to dominate the world through diplomatic & economic means (& proxy-wars), but that's no different from the US.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

The standard for today's era is higher.

One could say nazi germany was better than spain during the 16th century. And yes if you were a white german that certainly would have been true.

Say what you want, but in many other nations like in the 1960s and 1970s life wasn't great either. When the Russian revolution happened, segregation was still a thing in the USA and that is a morally repulsive thing that a lot of people just pass when judging on "the goodness" of empires. It wasn't like colonialist and imperialist Europe and USA were much better, and let's do not forget the mess we've created in the Middle East after WW1. Or the many dictatorships we supported to protect from left wing ideologies taking over, even if they would/were democratic.

Russia's evilness is more pronounced today than Sovjet Russia back in the day compared to the standards of the time.

We all like to sh**t on others, but segregation isn't nearly as controversial as it should have been. I mean South Africa is being condemned more than USA for segregation and slavery. Since it still is the greatest empire of almost everyone here, to many, while it had slavery & segregation for 80% of its existence, and been in a state of war for 95% of its existence. Very peaceful nation. Sure, it might be natural for a hegemon or world power to be like that, and it is natural, but my point is our history is biased and we don't judge empires and nations equally. We still look at things from a lens like: west = good, ussr and others = evil, kill them all!

The way we exploited every non-western nation, and even Japan before they became evil, is an evilness that to this day has not been replicated. And it was everyone, Belgium, Portugal, USA, France, UK, Netherlands, Spain. Literally everyone.

And non-western powers shouldn't say like they were much better, because i can talk about the Arabs purging Persians or Russian atrocities during tsarist empire if you want me too.

The thing is what different is, we all know what happened during WW2. Let's learn from it. We have the benefit that all information and most of history is freely readable with a few clicks on the internet. That wasn't the case sometimes centuries ago, and globalism has one of the advantages of raising awareness and ensuring that no one is isolated and unaware of what happens elsewhere on the globe (or has happened) and that most things today aren't top secret.