These were not "colonial possessions". For example, Britain had colonies.
And in the USSR, national republics were financed at the expense of the core of the country, where Russians lived. You can look up (which you certainly won't do) data on the standard of living and level of freedom in different republics of the USSR. For example, in Georgia, small business was allowed, in the RSFSR they put people in jail for it, but in Georgia, for example, you could grow tangerines, transport them on subsidized planes to the north, to all sorts of Norilsk, sell them, and receive in two weeks approximately the annual salary of a Soviet engineer who developed those very missiles, planes, etc. Of course, when the lights went out in the Union in 1991, all this Caucasian prosperity reached a civil war within a year.
By the way, I think that something similar exists in the modern USA, but the locals are blind, just like the Soviet citizens of Russian ethnicity were blind (you may not be aware, but not every successful person of smoked appearance from Russia is Russian), and do not see what is happening. When your Red-Haired Atlas completes his "perestroika and acceleration" in the USA, there will also be changes there, and perhaps people will also begin to see what they did not notice before. Well, that is, if there will be someone to do so.
> These were not "colonial possessions". For example, Britain had colonies.
Would you define Ireland as a colony? It preceded all other British colonies and they used very similar methods to those that the USSR did in its “colonies”, confiscation of land, population replacement, (indirect or direct ) genocide etc. etc.
> which you certainly won't do
If you actually did that would you mind sharing that data?
Of course there is very little accurate data available (due to obvious reasons) and we have to use proxy indicators but still.. can you actually provide any meaningful statistics besides anecdotal claims about a single Soviet state?
> you may not be aware
A lot of projection going on here..
Also I really can’t understand at all what are you trying to say in your last paragraph.
> completely ignore who funded this work, when, and why.
Well yes, because it’s tangential.
Also who funded it? Are you implying that the USSR’s colonial possessions didn’t contribute anything economically?