> I think with coercion pvg refers to the use of 'perks' (such as education for your kids and the privilege of being able to buy in the hard currency stores)

I think that relatively to other professions, engineering was actually prestigious. I was on awe of my uncle and father who were engineers and wanted to be like them. American kids today want to either play professional sports, be lawyers, CEO, or doctors. In ex USSR engineering was a relatively good profession to have without having to necessarily be involved too much into the party politics.

The perks were no more coercieve than having health insurance tied to the job + mortgage payments in America.

> As for the oppression bit, the satellite states of the USSR were fairly ruthlessly kept in check, lots of very bad things happened there, more than we will probably ever know about and there are definitely examples of scientists that were forced to work on projects that they did not want to work on, such as Theremin.

That is true and that is a serious problem. We are yet to have the equivalent of Nuremberg trials for ex Soviet Union apartchiks and those who co-operated with them.

I am not excusing them on a absolute moral ground. On a relative moral ground, I would like Americans to stop thinking their empire is less coersive and repressive. It treated many countries around the world very brutally, it installed ruthless fascist dictators all through South America and Asia. They are still fighting wars in the Middle East and "brave" drone pilots in Langley, VA are risking their lives daily driving to work so they can play video-games and with a push of a joystick putton assasinate individual we'll never know or hear about in a country we are not even at war with...

So yes, I am for critisizing imperialism and oppression, but I am for doing so for all the imperialism and oppression not just the ones that the popular propaganda machine wants to critisize.