How do you respond to this? It’s not something I’ve done a lot of research into, but it seems like one of the few critiques where you just say “critical support for the USSR, we need to learn from the past mistakes the soviets made and do better the next time around.”
This is a topic that seemingly no one here, you, and probably not even your anarchist friend really know anything about. If your friend’s approach us combative then I would ask them for reading recommendations and do some supplemental reading. I would expect there are good, bad, and gray area aspects here, as well as a cartoonification of motivations. Only after achieving understanding is it valid to have an opinion and your anarchist friend is probably guilty of jumping to conclusions without enough understanding. Respectful invitations to mutually investigate are a good way forward.
Yeah, I essentially told them I’d have to look into it more