Best time of the USSR

I'm quiet surprised with the results. I expected to see Stalin's era in first place and Khrushchev's era in second since i believe that USSR reached its peak in 50's and early 60's. During this period USSR developed the nuclear bomb, sent a man to space, established itself as a world superpower, its territory was larger than ever before, the sphere of influence was a consolidated reality, the relations with China were still good, Communism was more popular than ever in the West and the third world was starting to emancipate itself from the european colonialism through the marxists theories. I also think that this period corresponds to the time in which the USA more feared the USSR during the entire Cold War.

Lenin's time: war,famine,disease and so on.
Perhaps only 1923 and 1924 was a normal year,all the rest were horrible.

I imagine we all support but Lenin but a wartorn, typhus infested ruin isn't good times. Just being practical

Shigalyov wrote:

All I meant is that there were some terrible hardships during the Stalin era too, but that hasn't discouraged people from picking that period.

It depends on the criteria of each one. Best time seems to me very vague. I've chosen Stalin because it was the period in which the USSR and the modern Russia were molded, the economic growth was unparalleled in world history and the soviets won a world war against the nazis. All of this combine with the explosive rise of the literacy in Russia, the emergence of social services and free healthcare, the equalization of genders, technological superiority, better living conditions, among other things, turns this period the most important of USSR's history. Of course, the standard of living kept rising until the fall of the Soviet Union and the material conditions were much better in the 70's than the 50's, but it's just a normal evolution of the economic development. Certainly, we couldn't expect the material conditions in USA in the 50's to be better than in the 70's for instance.