In 1980, the average life expectancy of a man in Russia was 62.5 years. Women about 10 years longer. In other words, less than the average life expectancy of each gender in the US. According to the journal "Alcohol and Alcoholism", the life expectancy improved by a couple of years in the 90s but subsequently fell back to Soviet Union levels. The aggregate life expectancy bottomed out in 2003 (UN Statistics) and has since improved to about 73 (average of men & women). That's #35 on the list of similar countries, trailing countries like Mexico and Iran. The aggregate life expectancy in the US is above 79. These are all from the UN Population Prospects 2022 Report. You can check them yourselves. Finally, are we supposed to trust the CIA?

lol Stalin killed 20 million people through direct executions, the Gulag, and famine, but how bout those yummy nutrients?!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...

I'm sure the millions of Ukrainians who were forcibly starved during the Holodomor really appreciated the low calorie diets supplied by the USSR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Characterizing the forcible starvation of millions as "a period of food insecurity" is peak techie-communism for me. Thanks for the laugh! :)

lol right, because China and the Soviet Union are wonderful examples of environmentally friendly economic systems /s

> Coal supplied about 55% of China’s total energy consumption in 2021

https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/CHN

> It was one of the fastest decimations of an animal population in world history—and it had happened almost entirely in secret. The Soviet Union was a party to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, a 1946 treaty that limited countries to a set quota of whales each year. By the time a ban on commercial whaling went into effect, in 1986, the Soviets had reported killing a total of 2,710 humpback whales in the Southern Hemisphere. In fact, the country’s fleets had killed nearly 18 times that many, along with thousands of unreported whales of other species.

> The Soviet whale slaughter followed no such logic. Unlike Norway and Japan, the other major whaling nations of the era, the Soviet Union had little real demand for whale products. Once the blubber was cut away for conversion into oil, the rest of the animal, as often as not, was left in the sea to rot or was thrown into a furnace.

https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-senseless-environment-c...