That's an incredibly complex question, and if you aren't well-versed in economics, politics, sociology, etc then I promise you, you aren't going to be able to walk away satisfied from a Lemmy conversation. The best answer is that the USSR came with a ton of good, and a lot of difficulty in being the first Socialist state, including a great deal of bad, unfortunately. Additionally, there aren't really any states currently in the same conditions and predicaments with the same limited access to modern technology as 1917 Russia, so we can't make a 1 to 1 comparison even if we tried. The USSR was planned almost entirely by hand using good old pen and paper for its entire existence, and never fully embraced computers, which contributed to struggles as the economy got more complex, as an example.

I recommend you check out my reading list, and read the two books in section 1. Well, the essay and the book in section 1. Principles of Communism is very short and can help with terminology, and Blackshirts and Reds is a historical analysis of both fascism and Communism as they have existed, and their adversarial relationship.

Alternatively, I recommend the "Yellow Parenti" lecture in section 1 from the same author as Blackshirts, though I won't stop you from reading and listening to all 3. I invite you to read them with a critical eye and question whatever seems off.

I apologize if this is unsatisfactory for you, but analyzing AES properly takes a great deal of myth dispelling and contextualization in a world dominated by the US, which has material interests in slandering AES states at every single opportunity. That does not mean AES states are perfect, but that they are real, and come with real problems and real victories.

Hope that answers your question in a semi-satisfactory way, at least! You can also ask questions in the linked thread, which would selfishly be beneficial because common questions can be answered in one space that I plan on linking whenever it's relevant, and having readers capable of seeing questions answered in the comments I think would be a good thing for my list 😉

I really did put a lot of thought and effort into picking works that answer questions just like yours right off the bat, this is like iteration 5 or 6 of the same initial list, finally ready for release after a lot of feedback from comrades around the world, designed to be accessible as possible with the inclusion of audiobooks for every work (except 1 for now) and a focus on intersectionality, decolonialism, LGBTQ+ rights, history, and more.

You'll find that some of your questions are likely already answered there (among the jokes and jests from fellow comrades).

WWI complicated things, eg Ukraine was given up as part of the deal to get the Leninists out of the war. WWII probably didn't help, at least in some ways. It did help with unity but a lot of Soviets died, either directly in combat or as part of the Nazi purge (Slavs/Russians weren't seen as much better than Jews by the Nazis).

There were several factions in a civil war (Leninists, other communists, anarchists, capitalists) and all the alliances and betrayals that goes along with that. Plus outside capitalists didn't want to see socialism or communism succeed and played interference, though I don't think that ramped up that much until after WWII, where wars were fought to stop the spread.

Stalin had a bias for "communist-like" scientific theories, and there was one about how to grow food that came up just as a lot of farm land was being reallocated from long time landowners to people who didn't have much experience farming. These theories weren't very successful but those involved had a personal vestment in making others think it was working rather than failing (because gulag vs living nicely). So reports said there was tons of food being produced while there wasn't, leading to famine, which makes it harder to bring up a brand new economy.

China also fell for those false reports and adopted the fake science themselves, which contributed to their own famine.

I don't recall a lot of the details of that fake science, but a couple of the ideas I do remember: fit as many seeds/plants as possible into any given area because the plants will work together to strengthen their comrades. If you store seeds in the cold, it will make them more cold resistant, allowing crops that wouldn't normally grow in some areas to thrive there.

Just those two things plus the land redistribution resulted in people who didn't know how to farm trying to grow more crops than the land would support, sometimes picking a crop that wouldn't even grow in that area over less desirable ones that would.

And of course it didn't help that the Kremlin still feasted while (false) reports said there were tons of crops being produced, which were also taxed as if the production numbers were valid, so those farmers were also starving, which killed the public support momentum and they had to deal with Stalin's brutality on top of that.