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> Serving students like Georgios is one of the things the Soviet Union did very well

Philosophers? I think not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_in_the_Soviet_Union

By that I meant the gifted and advanced (Georgios surely had very advanced language skills), not philosophers specifically. I doubt he’d have been restricted from learning about the philosophical material he was interested in either, though depending on the year, definitely restricted from officially espousing some of that personally.

Ok, but Georgios himself would have been repressed in the Soviet Union. Likewise, anyone who had original, creative thoughts. You could only "excel" within the ruthless confines of ideological conformance.

It's not clear that the Soviet system "served" anyone except the party leaders.

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