In the sense that you wake up, go to school, have a job, etc....sure.
A black man in 1932 did not face the Holodomor.
Besides, I don't think comparing extremes while ignoring the life of the "average" citizen is really the way to go here. In that respect, the American middle-class comes out ahead.
The other side doesn't exist anymore.
No, indeed not. The Holodomor was horrible, and Stalin a monster. No one would ever dream to claim he wasn't. But there's this tendency in the States to believe, somehow, incredibly, that Stalin represented the entirety of our nation. He didn't. He died in 1953, after which he was denounced and dethroned, and life got better. Just around the time the middle class in America started appearing, as well.
But that's the thing. We're comparing the two Cold War nations, are we not? The Cold War only started around that time -- the horrors of the 1930's, while terrible, were not and are not considered part of the Cold War. An arbitrary definition? I don't think so. The Second World War changed the face of the world, but no country was changed more than the Soviet Union, the battered victor over Nazism, who lost tens of millions of citizens defending the world against Hitler, only to be shunned by the rest of her allies afterwards. It's at that point you can start the 'competition', so to speak -- not in the 1920's when revolutionary fire still burnt through the steppes, not in the 1930's when a monster seized power and nearly drove the nation into the ground, and not in the 1940's when the Soviet Union was busy winning the largest war in the history of mankind.
Now, in a comparison of the American middle class of, say, 1965, and the Soviet 'middle' class of, say, 1965, it's true enough that the Americans will come out with a few more amenities. The Soviets had an apartment, a car, a tv, some food and some vodka, a job and a vacation. The Americans probably had all that plus a refrigerator and a microwave.
In return, the crime rate in the Soviet Union was less than the crime rate of that in America. In America you got denounced for being a commie, in the Soviet Union you get denounced for being a capitalist spy. In both countries millions suffered, millions prospered, and most people just went on with their average lives.
It's the truth, I assure you.
One last point, though -- the other side isn't gone.
That one always tickles me -- we're right here. Russia's got a different name now, and a different flag, and perhaps a different way of making people beg for oil and gas, true enough, but the Russians never change, and so the heart of the country will never change.
