i tend to view the USSR, imperfect as it was, in light of the following:

• in contrast with what came before it, i.e. antisemitic reactionary patriarchal semi-feudal tsarist autocracy, to which it was superior in every way
• in the light of it being the 1st country to have a successful proletarian revolution that lasted longer than a year (1871’s Paris Commune did not last a year)
• in the light of it happening against the backdrop of WW1
• in the light of it being born out of a brutal civil war that immediately followed WW1
• in the light of it happening in a country that was mostly peasant, and not proletarian
• in the light of it happening in a country that had not yet even fully industrialized, and a country where much of means of production were destroyed in the two largest wars in human history
• in the light of it being attacked by the international bourgeoisie for the entirety of its existence, from the coalition of 14 nations that invaded it immediately after the october revolution, to the attempted genocide against the soviet peoples carried out by the Nazi fascists in operation barbarossa (with the nudging and winking of the bourgeoisie in what would later become NATO countries), to the arms race that claimed much of their GDP during the cold war years, to the couping of their allies in the global south, to the arming training and funding of reactionaries against their allies in bordering nations (like operation cyclone) to the massive support of the Yeltsinite reactionary privatizations carried out immediately after it was illegally dissolved in a bourgeois coup in 1991

Marxism is, among other things, the ruthless criticism of all that exists, so I welcome constructive criticism of the USSR, but I also defend it as ultimately a positive thing. It made the bourgeoisie of the world seethe for a reason, and they plotted every single day for its undermining or eventual destruction between 1917 and 1991, including when they were ostensibly allies against Hitler.