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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

> USA is an advocate of very specific stability. "Free world" is a hyperbolic but US is still a huge global power.

> In cold war it was obvious there were two sides, and the other was obviously more free than the other. Go ask for example Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians who they enjoyed the yoke of the USSR.

You could also ask a Guatemalan how they enjoyed living under the US installed military dictatorships (which came out of a US supported coup after democratic elections resulted in a win for the left). Things are by far not as clear cut. Both blocks supported atrocious regimes if it was in their economic interests and worked against "the other side". That we largely only hear about one side shows how well the propaganda was/is working.

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Not only Guatemala, but essentially all Latin America. I don't think a country can honestly claim to lead the "free world" while exporting brutal dictatorships to a entire continent.

My country went through this and we've been far more free than Cuba throughout the whole ordeal and thereafter. People love imagining this was never a possibility, but the threat of falling under communist chaos was very real, I simply cannot dislike those who helped preventing it no matter how hip and cool it's become.

the middle east agrees

Yes, that is absolutely right. Even Greece had it's anti-communist junta which massacred students. It's never clear cut, but on the _average_ I do think the pro-USSR side was less-free.

I would agree that for the (majority parts of) populations of the main countries that is likely the case. I certainly am happy to have grown up in Western not Eastern Germany. That said things get murkier beyond that quite quickly. I'm not sure I would have preferred to grow up as a black teenager in e.g. Baltimore over being a teenager in Eastern Germany and I certainly would have preferred to grow up in Estonia in the USSR over Guatemala.

And you would almost certainly prefer to be a black teenager in Baltimore or a Guatemalan over a Ukrainian under the USSR.

I think this would depend on time period. 1930s sure, later I'm not convinced (to be honest I don't know enough about the period after the 30s in Ukraine). For example during the Guatemalan "Civil War" between 150 000 and 200 000 people were killed and disappeared (~25% of that number). That is a lot of people for a population of 17 M.

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