Most historians recognize the regime as totalitarian. There are hundreds of facts demonstrating irreparable damage, and you and Alexey are talking about paradise. That's rose-tinted glasses. And don't forget about the USSR before the 60s; otherwise, people only remember the last years when the USSR was already falling apart before our eyes, and order was collapsing.

Read some Soviet historians and the facts they present about Tsarist Russia. Do you really doubt that any state that destroyed its "predecessor" would try to prove that before it, there was an Empire of Evil? The USSR was not an ideal state, but now a lot of nonsense is written about it. And as for the repressions, yes, there were bad things, who argues, but now no one remembers Bloody Sunday or Khodynka... and if they do, it turns out that the poor, saintly Tsar was not to blame for anything; he was misled, and so on...
No, I don't want a return to the USSR at all; it's so unrealistic that I never even thought about it. And I know about its shortcomings, but it irritates me when, based on the words of today's "saviors and benefactors," people start fantasizing about the horrors of the totalitarian regime.
Here's an interesting fact: my grandmother was a perfectly loyal citizen in the USSR. Not fanatically, but loyal. During perestroika, she suddenly bought icons, put on a cross around her neck (note that when my father was born, her mother baptized her in secret, against her will - that is, my grandmother was against baptism), and began to say that she always knew what horrors Stalin committed, that he was a monster and a villain! A few years passed, and my grandmother saw her and her grandfather's pension, tasted the delights of medicine "for the poor" (before, the district clinic was medicine for everyone, and now, you must agree, it's for the poor, because no good specialist will go to work there for such a salary, and that's why mostly not the best people work there), calculated the cost of utilities, admired the rise in prices... and said: "But Stalin lowered prices... and we ate black caviar every holiday back then..."
Oh well, what do we, who are so knowledgeable, care about the opinion of an old woman? She doesn't understand anything about democracy.