Collapse of the USSR: Loss Or Profit?

That's a great question, what did the world gain of the disintegration of the USSR, and what did it lost.

In no case the answer is that simple as "communism was an absolue evil".

I will definitely come back to this question from time to time; anyhow, I spent in the USSR 21 years of my life, so I have something to say and I do remember lots of things. I've been to some other countries of the world — Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, the UK, the USA. As for Ukraine and Latvia, I visited them both as republics of the Soviet Union and independent states post mortem of the USSR.

But to start I'd like to share a good article I've just come across, written by Emile Scheppers: "1917 Russian Revolution: What the world has lost".

Not that it answers all questions, but it takes some major points right.

... I can state with sad confidence that the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European socialism was a disaster for humanity.

Ideologically, it opened the door for a prolific growth of aggressive and selfish individualism. Numerous political and ideological leaders in the "West" used the demise of socialism to "prove" that human beings are incorrigible. The idea of social solidarity was, and continues to be, ridiculed. Discredited reactionary ideas of people like Ayn Rand took on a new life. "Look out for number one" replaced "look out for your comrades and neighbors." The goal became, not to create a better community for all, but to get more stuff.

I'll talk about these theses later. What I'd like to say now, it's never late to start thinking different and go out of those tight frames of anti-Soviet propaganda the world was constantly fed since the very October Revolution.