This is a great question. Thank you for asking it! I love these excellent questions I get in the Q&A.
In order to start a nuclear war, you need to be a fanatic. You need to believe in your cause to the extent where you’d make huge sacrifices for it, possibly even die.
By the time nuclear weapons were invented, there were no such fanatics in the USSR. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, there were fewer believers in communism in the USSR than there are Trump supporters at the meeting of specialists in “gender-affirming medicine.” Not among the regular people and most certainly not among the leadership of the country would you be able to find anybody who believed in the victory of international proletariat.
It was World War II that killed communist idealism. Soviet soldiers saw Europe. They saw that even the devastated, bombed out Europe had a standard of living nobody in the USSR could imagine. People who were evacuated deep into the country discovered such depths of materialism and corruption that they got cured of any communist belief forever.
In the 1970s and 1980s, there were many, and I mean MANY, more sincere communist believers in the US than in the USSR. Soviet people were plunged into extreme materialism. Materialistic people don’t want a nuclear holocaust. They want TVs, washers, and furniture.
The West suffered back then from the exact same incapacity to comprehend people in the region as it does now. Westerners imagined hordes of commie fanatics ready to erase civilization in service of an idea. But the Soviet problem was the exact opposite of a powerful ideology. It was the incapacity to take any idea seriously that was the real issue. It was the extreme cynicism of people who have soured on the very concept of an idea and a belief. You can imagine what the arrival of capitalism did to such people. One can be very happy in capitalism as long as one has an organizing idea beyond wanting to acquire material objects. But if you don’t, it destroys you.
Clarissa's Blog 
When did the Soviets stop believing in their own ideology?
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WWII was the end of it. The few last naive believers were finished off by Khruschev’s denunciations of Stalin.
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Somewhat related: Qatar is not letting USA use their air bases to attack Iran, so USA had to move those forces to Israel:
https://x.com/AmitSegal/status/2027377400485417456?s=20
So, basically nobody other than Israel is supporting USA strikes against Iran. This is so bad. Let Iranians take care of their own issues, their neighbors are certainly not getting involved in that mess.
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I’m very worried what this might do to the economy.
This is seriously the worst foreign policy in forever. And I despised the foreign policy of Bush and Obama.
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I looked at the news, and yes, it feels inevitable now.
What a pig-assed decision, my God. What an absolutely pig-assed move this is on every level.
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It’s flabbergasting the change in tune from the Trump administration from their 2024 campaign to now. Trump literally channeled frustrations with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to win and build his base, and now he’s looking to start another war in the middle east? Totally crazy.
I think he believes this can be a quick and easy war. But I’m pretty sure that’s what these warmongers always think. Bush and company even made a big deal about “Mission accomplished.”
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What are we doing wrong that, no matter who we vote for, the result is always the same?
On what planet could Trump have possibly concluded that his electorate wanted more war in the Middle East?
I’m just so upset right now.
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“no matter who we vote for, the result is always the same?”
And the attack has begun…. bye bye midterms…
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In SA communism was most popular with the white academic left.
I suspect for black people it was popular not just because it was anti apartheid but because it was an elite ideology.
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Soviets also made great villains ready to start WW3 like this kid of thing.
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