Follow-up on the last post: looking back with an eye of a Socratic exile, the achievements and accomplishments of the USSR were many and many of them were truly great and breath-taking, and, in the light of the much photoshopped leaders of today seemingly utterly incomprehensible; however, the carefully decades-long planning and preparation of the destruction and debasement of all this was an effort of Titanic Machiavellianism and scope that has not been yet properly realized and understood either

The USSR Was Then When People

Did What You Wouldn’t Now Believe

The USSR was in fact 3S & R,

and for Russia the R wasn’t meant.

But it was when laundry hanged outside,

And no one ever thought it yet

to steal it or soil it out of spite.

For there was less of vileness

& refuse on people’s minds.

It was when all knew all

on their street and in their bloc,

and anyone would give you,

if asked, their thought, time or salt.

It was when you saw a veteran,

whether a woman or a man,

from the Great and Sacred War

everyone with you on the bus

would get up and give her or him

respect with smile and a seat.

Looking at the chess games below who, in your view (abstracting for a moment from our supposed hindsight 20/20) was bound to win and who was bound to lose?
The US in the 1950s:

 The USSR in the 1960s:

I wonder: had Gogol came back to life one hundred years after his death, what would he think about these dead souls, zombifiers and gravediggers of a country and a nation today?