Russia: purges, torture then murder of 'kulaks', Holodomor, Virgin Lands campaign, etc. Total deaths, estimate at least 30 million; Solzhenitsyn said 66 million.
None of those combined 70 million+ made it out of poverty.
Or was it the other way around?
Both the USSR and China both went through (at different times!) great famines due to their collectivization of agriculture. Further, their agricultural practices in general were learned from the capitalist countries and neither produced / produce enough. Both the USSR and China did / currently rely heavily on food imports.
Arguably, they only escaped feudalism because capitalistic countries provided enough cheap food to the global market to transition their economies off of mass labor in fields (the basis of feudalism).
didn't the ussr squeeze those farmers so tight to get industral equipment out of the capitalists by trading grain? yes, the capitalists graciously supported the ussr, the cold war was actually a big hug!
because they traded with capitalist nations they couldn't have existed without capitalism. sure, actually that was the theory at the time, that industrialized germany would join them in a mutually beneficial relationship. that didn't happen for some reason.
but what if we flip it? because capitalist nations traded with slave states and feudal nations, they couldn't have existed without slavery and feudalsim. because capitalist nations trade with violently repressive plutocracies, they can't exist without violently repressive plutocracy. seem fair?
how were china and the ussr organized is the actual question.
maybe you assume technological development was caused by capitalism. personally i think that's putting the cart before the horse.
It was probably because they had to build a wall to keep the citizens of the territory they were occupying from escaping communism.
