Stop justifying your own evils by arguing that other people were worse. This forgives nothing.
None of us wants somebody to
forgive us for it. We (at least, the overwhelming majority) are proud of our past, we are absolutely cool with it, and have nothing to be ashamed of.
A country who romanticizes its brutal and terrible past and attempts to justify what was done as being not-so-bad, is a country that will have great difficulty ever moving on, and who are far more likely to try and justify evils being done in the present. There were terrible evils committed by the soviet government, and arguments about "well you can't criticize because it didn't effect you directly" are just... pathetic.
Actually, if the Russian folks in this thread have convinced me of anything, it's just how alike they are with the southern confederate stalwarts.
Our "brutal and terrible past" has brought us might and prosperity. It definitely is "not-so-bad' in my book, for it is due to it we are where we are and who we are - even after USSR collapse we are still a considerable force to be reckoned with, not some third world country.
What future could your southern confederates possibly have offered and now southerners regret of not having it? Plantations, slavery, agriculture. It was a road to nowhere, stagnation being a banana republic.
And what did
we achieve under Soviet regime? Nuclear power, space program, heavy industrialization. Even if you say there were crimes committed, it was damn
worth it. No regrets, no remorse.
Unwilling to admit defeat. Constant apologists for the evils their people did. Stuck in the past. Constant persecution complex. Incredibly powerful Us vs. Them mentality. Strong internal narrative casting themselves as the righteous standing up against the pervasive encroaching forces of immorality. A need for strong ideological leaders and a willingness to look the other way when those leaders break the law. An entire historical view built around "Fuck you, got mine".
It really seems like the same exact sort of mentality. No wonder some hard-line conservatives are such big fans of Putin and Russia.
We admitted, that the fall of the Soviet Union was a great geopolitical catastrophe. Yes, we suffered defeat. But do you really think, we would be content with the current configuration? USA, being the only superpower in the world, invading any country it wants and bossing everyone around? The fact that
we also have imperial ambitions, should serve as a sobering revelation and a counterbalancing factor, making the world realize again, that the West can no longer just enforce its will on the rest of the world. Not in our sphere of interest.
Our actions seem righteous enough to me. If the law is not effective in the slightest, then it is a bad law. If one side inconsequentially breaks it numerous times for decades, we would be fools to just sit humbly by.