Derleth

Putin famously claimed that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. He could not be more wrong. The fall of the USSR was actually the greatest geopolitical miracle of modern history, freeing tens of millions of people from a brutal, blood-soaked empire. The Soviet Union was a human disaster, a totalitarian crime against humanity, and a system that put war and imperialism ahead of feeding its own people. For decades, the world was forced to endure the myth of the USSR as a superpower dedicated to human progress. In reality, it was nothing more than an advanced, totalitarian iteration of the Russian Empire. It was an illegitimate project built on lies, paranoia, and catastrophic human suffering. It was a war-hungry, paranoid mistake of a country that sacrificed tens of millions of lives across its republics. The Soviet ideology was fundamentally flawed because it placed a rigid, totalizing dogma above human dignity and basic freedom. It substituted human enterprise with central planning, creating an unsustainable economy that could build nuclear missiles but failed to put bread on the tables of its citizens. From a historical perspective, the USSR was an aggressive, imperialistic state. It helped unleash the horrors of World War II by signing a pact with Nazi Germany in 1939, agreeing to carve up Eastern Europe. The alliance only ended because Hitler turned on Stalin in 1941. Throughout its existence, Moscow treated member republics as colonies, extracting their wealth and enforcing cultural dominance while silencing any form of dissent through the Gulag system and police state surveillance. When the Soviet Union finally imploded, tens of millions of colonized people were freed from Moscow's grip. Look at the Baltic states today. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania transformed into flourishing European democracies with living standards that far exceed anything Russia has ever produced. They stand as living proof that Russian control was the single greatest obstacle to human flourishing in the region. Modern Russia's brutal attempt to eradicate Ukraine is proof that Moscow never accepted the death of its empire. Driven by corrupt, paranoid leadership, Russia is committing genocide because it has no ideology or attractive model left to sell. It can only sell imperialism and death. Defeating this imperial machine in Ukraine is a global imperative. If the Russian empire is not shattered in Ukraine, it will remain a permanent threat to peace and force us to confront it elsewhere later