The weight of conquering Russifying big brother Russia in the USSR was certainly exponentially larger than California's in the USA. This comparison is completely "imprecise". Example: In 1970 the USSR banned the submission of PhD theses in Ukrainian and made submission in Russian compulsory. Try to imagine California alone imposing submission of PhD theses in Spanish on the rest of the USA.
Actually Lend Lease won WWII's eastern front; Stalin and Khrushchev said the USSR would not have survived the initial German onslaught without British tanks and planes financed through Lend Lease.