>

Russia was already an economic powerhouse, fastest growing economy after the abolition of serfdom, and while they did get richer by exploiting and looting their neighbors with the help of the Nazis (what happened to the eastern part of Poland; and who drove tanks into Hungary to keep them their puppet?), they were much poorer than all their European counterparts; and even Japan, a country with less than a third of its population, no natural resources, that had been ravaged by the war, and had not one but two atomic bombs dropped in them, as well as intense napalm strikes over its country, had a greater economy than the USSR (in absolute terms, per Capita it wasn’t even close). The USSR was a total failure, only second to Mao’s China, or Pol Pots Cambodia.
70 years later it collapsed >

69 years actually if we wanna be precise. 
Very nice! >

I like you, you are nice >

...and then it got worse. >

Ah a fellow Russian History buff >

A remarkable period of history it can be said. >

I've been reading Midnight in Chernobyl by Michael Higginbotham and its really incredible how the USSR operated vs what the people believed. While there was genuine support of the idea of a Utopia, the higher ups especially after Stalin didn't seem to think so, which is what brought the decline that would ultimately lead to the disaster and the fall of the union. 
Do I support the USSR? Not really but I do feel bad for the people  who achieved incredible things for nothing. >

It partially boils down to Hobbes's idea of the social contract. 
Communism had a social contract with the population. You surrender individual sovereignty and we deliver improvement in material conditions to a point where we reach Utopia as described by Marx and Engels.
Once the cynicism sets in and the inevitability of utopia through Marxism gets replaced with Brezhnev's eternity of the same (the stagnation of the 1970s), the social contract fails. 
That is why Communism was gone by 1989 and 1991. It failed to uphold its own end of the social contract while the population gave up everything.  
I heard this comment before. Majority of the people believed till Chernobyl. Not after. >

That's a really good summary and its a shame really because based on what was created during that time who knows what would've happened. >

Lenin ordered the violent annexation of Ukraine into the USSR in order to steal their grain and energy resources to help pay for his New Economic Policy. This time the terrorist invaders will be crushed. >

Yeah Lenin was incredible at his job as a revolutionary leader. He was however horribly ruthless in his methods (which is why he was effective) and after he was able to take power that ruthlessness didn’t tone down enough and he was a tyrant - tho not nearly as bad of one as Stalin. >

This is very easy for modern liberals to moralize about from the position of incredibly cossetted and, frankly, delusional modern attitudes that don't have to stand up to the rigors of reality. This all happened IMMEDIATELY after WW1. Any mask or veil of civility or high minded political sophistry was ripped entirely off a long time ago, and the reality was very apparent for every political actor of the time: The only thing that matters is power. And if you don't use it, your enemies will, at your violent expense. Churchill literally immediately gave all the help he could to the Whites in the civil war to 'strangle Bolshevism in it's cradle', this was the USSR's welcome party to global politics and their relationship with the West only got worse from then on.
I'd like to see any modern liberal lead the nascent USSR under all these threats while maintaining these fanciful modern attitudes that are essentially just performances of personal virtue projected onto politics. >

Eh, I mean this is just overreaching the other way. Even Lenin’s contemporaries outside of hardcore Bolsheviks thought he was extreme. He had to be, I will grant that but he did take it too far at times like the Cheka. 
Also, the whites never got much western support so to say anyone threw all the help they could’ve behind them it would’ve probably stopped the Revolution. The thing was that coming out of WW1 no one really wanted to get tangled into what looked like it could easily be a part 2. The Bolsheviks thought it would happen (which is why hindsight does admittedly look worse, since they truly believed the entire west would back and aid the whites). 
I’m fairly socialist (I don’t think anyone can be really into learning early modern period history like I am and not end up that way) so I’m not attacking the ideas. It’s just that it’s naive to say it wasn’t carried out by a ruthless guy then overtaken by one of the most ruthless and paranoid dictators ever, resulting in something even more oppressive and worse than what came before. If for no other reason than the Cheka/KGB was WAY better at their job than the Okhrana which was often underfunded and undermotivated to truly shut down the left opposition the way the Soviets were able to shut down any dissenters. >

15-20 years into Russofascism now though. >

I couldn't care less about Stalin and Lenin rolling in their graves, but it sure does suck to see the deaths of 20+ million Soviet citizens in WW2 being spat on so thoroughly in the name of nationalism. >

People don’t spit on the Soviet contribution to WWII. They spit on every other aspect of the Soviet government >

Talking about Russian fascists invading their neighbors in a genocidal war, fam. >

The current Ukrainian war?  The one that mirrors Lenin’s invasion of Ukraine? >

It certainly has some parallels, but that war was far more complex than this one, and Lenin never went around advocating killing Ukrainians for being Ukrainian, as far as I'm aware.
While he lived he even supported Ukrainian identity... And then he weakened, and died, and Stalin seized the reins.
But whatever you think about whether either was a true believer in communist ideals, I think we can both agree Putin doesn't believe for one second this invasion is an anti-fascist war.
And, of course, there's the simple fact that WW2 came after their invasion of Ukraine and had a whole different generation of troops. >

And what has it actually done, other than impoverish a nation and create so many sociopaths to run it in to the ground >

It took a feudal backwater through industrialization and into space. It did the opposite of impoverishing the nation, and it’s a shame it was the disaster it ended up being.