I wonder how things might have turned out differently had we not immediately betrayed them after WWII.
Without constant threat of annihilation, they could have diverted funds away from military spending and towards productive uses, possibly also loosening their grip on power. It didn't help that non-authoritarian left governments, sometimes as mild as Bernie Sanders, were easily overthrown by the CIA.
You seem to misunderstand who controlled USSR then.
Stalin coopertaed with Hitler a lot. Stalin bought a lot of military technology and outright weapons from Germany (such as cannons). Stalin and Hitler collectively destroyed Poland in 1939, divided the territory, and had a parade where Wermacht and Red Army troops marched together.
At the same time Hitler planned to attack USSR, while USSR secretly planned to attack Hitler.
Before that, Stalin robbed Soviet peasants of the wheat they produced, and sold it all for gold, to buy weapons factories, mostly from the US. In 1933, this resulted in famine in Ukraine and some other parts of USSR (google Holodomor).
No way one could expect Stalin's regime to soften down and become nicer.
Certainly, Soviet soldiers who fought against Hitler, along with other Allied soldiers, fought for good, or at least for a better world. But these same soldiers, who liberated countries like Poland, or Hungary, or half of Germany from Hitler put these lands under control of USSR, not direct, but pretty stifling. They suppresses attempts to get out of Soviet control in Hungary and Checho-Slovakia with tanks soon after.
I was thinking about a longer time horizon, after Stalin. Eventually reformers start piping up, as they did in USSR and China. I compare and contrast the effect of the US relationship had on China and the Soviet Union.
I hear you on Stalin's crimes. However, we took a very different approach to our colonial power allies. Like Stalin, Churchill too oversaw mass famine in the colonies.
Thanks for illustrating my point by assuming that there must necessarily be a Good Guy (who is of course the victor).
And for that matter yes: The Soviets were just as much of a Good Guy as the other Allies. As for the Cold War? They were the lesser evil of the two super powers. But not a Good Guy.
I wonder how things might have turned out differently had we not immediately betrayed them after WWII.
Without constant threat of annihilation, they could have diverted funds away from military spending and towards productive uses, possibly also loosening their grip on power. It didn't help that non-authoritarian left governments, sometimes as mild as Bernie Sanders, were easily overthrown by the CIA.