Learning about the USSR is so damn depressing 
Try not to cry challenge (impossible) Excerpts from letters to the future from Soviet school children, from time capsules sealed in 1967 and opened in 2017.
“The youth of our region is gifting you, the young ones of the 21st century, with Koryazhma that has been turned from a small village into a modern town within ten years, Severdodvinsk that we built on land that used to be swamps, and the colossal wood industry of the North: Kotlass, Solombal and Arkhangelsk factories. We know that you will have better lives than us,” the letter continues. “You will do great things in our galaxy, will make our planet great. We are a little jealous of all you who are celebrating the centenary of our Soviet motherland. But we also know that you will be a little jealous of our restless young generation. We have a clear aim, a great future ahead of us and lots of things to accomplish. We have things that we can invest out hearts, brains, energy and labour in, and this is the source of our happiness.”
“Dear descendants, today you are celebrating a unique day: a hundred years of Soviet rule. […] We know our time is interesting, but yours is much more so. We are building communism and you live it. We believe that you have perfectly equipped our blue planet, colonised the Moon, landed on Mars; that you are continuing the exploration of outer space that we, people of the first 50 years, have begun, and that your ships are sailing across the galaxy. We believe you are holding talks about scientific and cultural collaboration with representatives of other galaxies, alien civilisations. We believe that the work that our fathers and grandfathers started 50 years ago and which we share, you will finish and bring to victory.”
“You’ve never had to chant: ‘Shame on the Israeli aggressors!’, you’ve never had to protest the criminal war in Vietnam, read news about provocations in revolutionary Cuba. How far away these events are from you! […] Young crowd of 2017! We are sure that you have justified the trust your heroic predecessors have invested in you, that you have created a new world.”
https://thesanghakommune.org/2017/05/16/ussr-forgive-us-class-of-1967-soviet-time-capsule-opened/
“You’ve never had to chant: ‘Shame on the Israeli aggressors!’, you’ve never had to protest the criminal war in Vietnam, read news about provocations in revolutionary Cuba. How far away these events are from you!"
they were so full of hope and optimism, and so fucking wrong
It feels like an ancient civilization got so advanced and suddenly disappeared like in sci-fi movies.
modern Russia is basically the aftermath of the Mad Max bandit leaders carving out their kingdoms and each takes over their own piece of well built but decaying Soviet infrastructure and manufacturing.
nobody knows how to further develop or repair it but the shit just starts right up
It’s so hard to swallow…
i go back and forth between working on some alt-history fic where the SU survives and thrives, getting warm fuzzies from it, then lamenting the world we are doomed to inhabit.
Sometimes I legit have to stop reading about the USSR knowing how it ends
May everybody that contributed to that tragedy burn in hell.
