I think that any defense of communism is weird but there are really egregious attempts to defend this horrible, inhuman system of beliefs. I encountered one of them in this discussion. To spare you the pain of reading so much utter ridiculousness, here is a pertinent quote:

Yes they were ultimately failures because they aren’t around anymore (Russia free-marketized totally, China is state capitalist, etc.), but that still does not mean these weren’t the greatest moments of human freedom the world has seen: first places where women had equal rights, access to birth control, for example, first place [Soviet Union] where same sex relationships were legal [then removed when it degenerated, but still we’re talking about decades and decades ahead of everything else], not to mention so many other social/economic egalitarian programs that made the capitalist world look utterly backwards.

Women had access to birth control in the Soviet Union? As one of those women, I’m very surprised to hear this piece of news. After abortion stopped being punished by death in the USSR, there was absolutely no access to any means of birth control. Except abortion. I know women who had over 30 (THIRTY!) abortions because there was no other means of contraception available. Instead of birth control, we had forced gynecological exams. We also had no access to any hygienic means that would allow us to preserve some dignity during menstruation.

Oh, it was amazing to be a woman in the USSR. Especially if you were a victim of rape and were subjected to so much shaming and persecution for this horrible failing on your part that you’d try to kill yourself or, at best, choose to keep quite about the crime.

Same sex relationships were legal? Tell that to all those people who were put in jail for practicing gay sex. Homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1993.

Social/economic egalitarian programs? Like what, for example? Paying a pittance that was barely enough to survive to everybody except the party apparatchiks? I can’t come up with any other “egalitarian” social program in the USSR.

Do people even understand how offensive they are being when they spread such egregious lies about other countries? Countries that they never even visited, let alone lived in? A horrifying reality that so many people were trapped in should not be used by some bored pseudo-intellectual who is too lazy to read at least a couple of articles about the Soviet Union.