How many Soviet republics were there?

Listen, but this is demagoguery! Imagine if Alexander II had said: "The point is not how to fight serfdom, but why our bad predecessors established serfdom! Let's discuss this...let's criticize them, those scoundrels! And then we'll leave."
We are not talking about the ideal nature of the USSR, but about the fact that the current state is an order of magnitude worse than the USSR. And therefore, the collapse of the USSR was a wrong step. One can only break the old order if one builds a better one on its ruins. Do you see the difference between a child building a sand castle instead of making little mounds, and a child who simply runs up and kicks those mounds over?...

I just can't understand who here is engaging in demagoguery, besides, perhaps, you, Slonysh. The fact that I sincerely sympathize with my great-grandfather, who was deprived of everything he earned through his labor by the communists through the creation of collective farms, is anything but demagoguery.
Demagoguery (from Greek: Demos - people + Ago - I lead) is a form of manipulating the masses through appeals, promises, and slogans that lack real substance.
If anyone engaged in demagoguery, it was the communists, saying that they would build communism, and with it, paradise on Earth. Communism is unreal not because humanity is so bad and does not strive for "spiritual purity and idealism," but because it is unreal as an economic formation, and the communist slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is also populist. Because the main property of needs is their unlimited nature; as one set of needs, of a lower level, is satisfied, others, of a higher level, appear. Resources to satisfy needs are limited, regardless of what system is in place and what the level of morality is in society. And only the communists "set" themselves the goal of satisfying all needs.
Therefore, today's system is definitely better than the previous one, because it does not set itself the delusional goal of eliminating money and the effect of alternative costs in conditions of limited resources. The main goal of most modern democracies is to create a society with equal STARTING opportunities, i.e., a society where everyone can become a janitor or a president. The state should only take care of (in the sense of providing benefits) those who, for example, are disabled and limited in their ability to realize their potential. Or, simply put, today's system is better, perhaps only because it introduced the concept of "freedom to," instead of the Soviet "freedom from."