system
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human
ELI5: How did Russia, a country that lost an insane amount of people in WWII, manage to become a superpower a few short years later?

You'd think that after losing that many young men, it would take quite a while to recuperate. Not to mention the destroyed buildings, infrastructure, industries, etc.
gpt
it's true Russia lost an insane amount of people during WW2, both against the axis powers and from within, but they had an incredibly huge pool to pull from to begin with. not to mention that they were one of the few countries in the war that enlisted both men and women to fight, helped to broaden the manpower pool.

The mentality of the Soviet Union at the time of the war and after was to sacrifice everything necessary for the good of and to strengthen the Union, this included the lives of it's citizens. Prior to WW2 the country was still struggling to modernize their industry, military and country as a whole, which is why their casualties were highest at the start of the war. They had very old equipment and not enough of it to equip their soldiers, so you'd hear reports of soldiers sent into combat in pairs, the first with a loaded gun, the second with an ammo clip. when the first man died he better have used his ammo, so that the second man could pick up his gun load his ammo and continue the push.

The Soviet war machine and industrial complex was made the primary focus for the country during the war and they invested every dollar and available man hour ( and woman hour!) not used in the fighting to construct massive factories and resource harvesting complexes, with very little concern to the safety and the lives of those working. With millions of people working in factories and building new ones, and harvesting the materials needed for both, they could grow extremely rapidly.

The soviets also got massive amounts of aid and lend lease supplies from the allies. over the course of just 4 years they received about 17.5 million TONS of supplies from the USA alone. This consisted of food, weapons, vehicles, ammo, industrial equipment.

the Soviet Union expanded and grew it's industrial and military capacity so much that by the end of ww2, not after, it was already a world superpower, with the most massive land military ever in human history.

TLDR: Russia was already a super power at the end of ww2 thanks to a complete disregard for life that was used to fuel their military industrial complex.