Quote Originally Posted by z80
What would a system that has the economic purity of a socialist state, and the individual freedoms that democracy claims to have? hmmm.
Ahh yes, the same freedom that gets you killed for speaking against your leader. The same freedom that forbids you from selling your own products. The same economic purity that led Russians to buy illegally imported bubble gum and jeans for hundreds of dollars.

What benefits were there to the average man in the USSR? Sure they had jobs but those jobs payed them chicken feed. Why did Lenin have to revert back to capitalism to let the economy recover? Why did people have to be forced in to prevent mass emigration? What is this economic purity you talk about?

And besides, I don't recall that much freedom under Stalin, Brezhnev, Kruschev, Lenin or even Gorbachev. The whole thing was a sham. I don't recall protesters getting shot in the streets and their families mysteriously disappearing here in the West.

Just because Russia is in a terrible state with capitalism doesn't mean that capitalism is bad. Its because the economic infrastructure left by Communism was so inefficient and crippled and useless that sooner or later, it had to bite back.