Well I’d at least state that the countries absorbed into the Soviet union where not free to do so

While what you say is partly true (although the reality is more complicated for many countries such as Ukraine or Belarus or Armenia or most of Central Asia), when you say “the countries” were not free to do so, what do you mean exactly? Because I don’t think anyone is really free to belong to a country or to other for the most part. I’m Spanish and I didn’t choose to be so, and there are plenty of people in my country who don’t feel Spanish but are forced to be so, especially in Basque areas and Catalonia. I’ve never been asked what nationality I want to belong to, or what country I wish to be born in.

This is especially true for regimes in the 1920s (countries that annexed during the Russian Civil war) and the 1940s (countries that annexed during and after WW2). Polish citizens themselves, or Ukrainian, or Finnish, when in 1917 the first Bolshevik constitution declared the unilateral right of self-determination and secession for all peoples of the former Russian Empire, didn’t get to choose democratically whether they wanted to become independent. The local powerful authorities simply declared so, and afaik there was never any referendum about the topic in these countries. In some places this was very short-lasting, as for example in Ukraine when they were immediately invaded by Poland because of nationalist expansionism in the Polish-Ukrainian war. So, can you argue that these peoples of Ukraine were incorporated into the USSR against their will after the expulsion of the Polish forces from Ukraine by the Soviets, any more than they became independent against their will since there was no referendum?

I didn’t get to vote the constitution of my country since I was born too late for that. I didn’t get to choose the parliamentary form of it, I didn’t get to choose to have a fucking king, I didn’t get to choose whether I wanted to join the EU and abandon our previous currency. If my decision power is consistently ignored, can you argue that my national identity and my belonging to a state is good just because it’s by default? Second-generation Latvians, Uzbeks, or Georgians, didn’t get to choose what country they were born in and belonged to, any less than I do currently. In fact, most citizens of the USSR got to vote in 1991 in a referendum whether they wanted to maintain the USSR, and the overwhelming majority of citizens voted affirmatively… which was promptly ignored as the state was dissolved from the top-down, and plunged into the worst humanitarian crisis in Eastern Europe since WW2 with the application of Neoliberal shock therapy.

I had the privilege to discuss old vs new with my east German grandparents in law. And they had a lot of good to say about their communist days. Especially the labor market, equal rights, and access to goods. It took time but everything was available. But when asked if they preferred then or now they said now… when asked why. The answer got to me. “Because now if someone rings your doorbell unexpectedly you don’t have to worry about dissapearing”. They told me they knew multiple families that where all arrested and never heard from again.

As for this, I’m not familiar with the history of repression in Eastern Germany. I’d dare to say that your grandparents in law were “lucky”, in the sense that they got to have an employment for the most part after the dissolution of the country and the reunification with western Germany (which forced the deindustrialization of Eastern Germany in favour of western one, big part of the reason why there are so many inequality differences between the two afaik). Is the risk of unemployment and misery less serious than the risk of political oppression? We tend to think so, but for many people who don’t enjoy the most basic material rights, the answer isn’t that simple. I agree that oppression to those levels is something inherently negative, but it’s the common response of systems when there are sectors of the population that go against the system itself. In my country, Spain, cases of lawfare manufactured by the state and police apparatus and coordinated with mass media, destroyed the leftist party Podemos which used to be the 3rd biggest force in the parliament after the 2008 crisis. In the USA, the Black Panthers movement was eliminated by the CIA despite committing no real crime.

My point isn’t anything other than “let’s question the metrics that we use to compare one country to another”. To me, as a young person who may never be able to afford a house, who’s only seen the welfare state eroded further and further in his lifetime and maybe won’t have a public pension like my grandparents and parents enjoy/will enjoy, who’s seen the political oppression through lawfare and manufactured consent of progressive politicians, who doesn’t have a right to decide whether to eliminate the literal monarchy from his country, and who has seen Catalonian politicians jailed for wanting to make a referendum on the HUMAN RIGHT of self-determination, it’s hard for me to see the innumerable advantages of the capitalism that ravages the third world and destroys the climate of the planet I inhabit. Young people don’t unionize because they’re afraid that the hidden profiles that companies make of them and share with each other thanks to the internet will brand them as undesirable to be employed. If they’re unionized, they’re liable of getting arrested and getting a sentence to jail as happened to “las seis de la suiza”. How the fuck is this more democratic and less oppressive?