Central Asia in particular was massively developed and invested in by Moscow, not just in terms of building infrastructure, schools, hospitals, housing, factories etc. but culturally too. There were programs of promoting national culture and languages all throughout the non-Russian republics (including Ukraine by the way: Soviet Ukrainization policies of the 1920s actively promoted the spread of Ukrainian language and culture - sometimes even to the point of backfiring on the Soviets by giving cover to reactionary nationalists to spread counter-revolutionary messaging - contrary to the repression and “genocide” claims of the Banderite Nazi propaganda in the 1930s and today, not to mention that Ukraine received the most industrial development and had one of the highest standards of living of all republics because it got such preferential treatment).

Central Asia experienced an enormous increase in literacy, and many ethnic groups that had never even had a way to write their own language before were helped to develop alphabets and written language by these cultural programs. Millions of people went from barely scraping by an existence at the edge of the subsistence minimum as nomads in very inhospitable regions to living in modern housing and having all the amenities of industrial society. The Soviets developed Central Asian agriculture and irrigation systems massively and enabled these regions to finally be able to escape perpetual famine. Again, the opposite of what colonialism does: US imperialist policy deliberately suppresses the developmemt of food agriculture in developing nations in order to keep them dependent on exporting raw material and cash crops in exchange for food.