You broke the site guidelines here by posting aggressively. Please don't do that.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note this one:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

I reckon OP means quotes like these: Manhoff captures the scarcity of consumer goods, the omnipresent surveillance, and the ever-present fear of being monitored by the Soviet security apparatus.

A lot of socialist commentators push back on such portrayals, dismissing them as capitalist propaganda. Michael Parenti was one such. He argued that life in the USSR was in stark contrast to what the world were made to believe by the US State Machinery/Hollywood.

Here is a longish talk on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FNOm8hY1QU (It is an interesting listen, even if you do not believe in the ideal.)

Then there is Angela Merkle's "almost comfortable" statement: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/life-in-communist-east... A point she expands in her memoir about growing up in East Germany. There were bad things. There were good things.

Considering the basket case that Russia has become, maybe the USSR wasn't so bad after all.

Sorry if you did not read the comments here. Lots of folks were pushing back on the probably AI generated footnotes and story are in the original link. I was simply sharing the source material which I think has much better background on the photos and diary.