The Soviet Union was, if not a traditional dictatorship, absolutely a totalitarian autocracy. Stalin was a brutal dictator and his successors were chosen by the communist party. Elections in the USSR were for show.
Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people. The USSR’s implementation of communism was so bad, it’s become cliche.
The Soviet Union wasn’t a dictatorship. Read Soviet Democracy. It lasted as long as it did because it had tremendous GDP growth while lowering wealth disparity, free and high quality education and healthcare, doubled health expectancies, full employment, and over tripled literacy rates to 99.9%.
Yep. Democracy doesn’t mean “choose between parties,” it’s about the actual impact you can have on policy. More people in China feel that they have a voice in politics than people in the US, despite the US having 2 parties.
Choosing between parties is arguably less democratic because in many countries with such a system, like the USA, you basically just have corporations/corporate media choosing the candidates, so your “choice” is between corporate candidates, so corporations always win. There is no option to reject the nominee entirely, while in China’s system you can reject the nominee. you can just straight up veto candidates.
Westerners often also look at the very end of the process and ignore everything leading up to it. They will say “there’s only one candidate on the ballot!” as proof it’s undemocratic (even though this happens all the time in the US too…). But this ignores the entire democratic process leading up to how the candidate gets on the ballot in the first place. In Cuba for example, candidates getting on the ballot is a two-year long process resulting from local elections and meetings with mass organizations, but they ignore this entire process and just focus on the final election at the very end.
Regarding the impact you make, ppl you vote for can be undemocratically removed from the party by party leadership at any time and therefore must comply fully with the will of the party.
Btw, Kalinin’s (the head of the state) wife was held hostage in prison camp by Stalin (party leader). I guess that says as much about great Soviet democracy.
You can feel free to read the sources I listed, rather than posting unsourced anecdotes as “gotchas.” Further, the ability of the party to purge Nazis ended up being important.
The Soviet Union was, if not a traditional dictatorship, absolutely a totalitarian autocracy. Stalin was a brutal dictator and his successors were chosen by the communist party. Elections in the USSR were for show.
Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people. The USSR’s implementation of communism was so bad, it’s become cliche.
People like you should be forced to live under conditions like Tsarist Russia.
“Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people”, said the romanovs.
Were they wrong?
Allow me to repeat myself:
It was one party democracy lol.
Yep. Democracy doesn’t mean “choose between parties,” it’s about the actual impact you can have on policy. More people in China feel that they have a voice in politics than people in the US, despite the US having 2 parties.
Choosing between parties is arguably less democratic because in many countries with such a system, like the USA, you basically just have corporations/corporate media choosing the candidates, so your “choice” is between corporate candidates, so corporations always win. There is no option to reject the nominee entirely, while in China’s system you can reject the nominee. you can just straight up veto candidates.
Westerners often also look at the very end of the process and ignore everything leading up to it. They will say “there’s only one candidate on the ballot!” as proof it’s undemocratic (even though this happens all the time in the US too…). But this ignores the entire democratic process leading up to how the candidate gets on the ballot in the first place. In Cuba for example, candidates getting on the ballot is a two-year long process resulting from local elections and meetings with mass organizations, but they ignore this entire process and just focus on the final election at the very end.
100% agreed, excellent comment.
Regarding the impact you make, ppl you vote for can be undemocratically removed from the party by party leadership at any time and therefore must comply fully with the will of the party.
Btw, Kalinin’s (the head of the state) wife was held hostage in prison camp by Stalin (party leader). I guess that says as much about great Soviet democracy.
You can feel free to read the sources I listed, rather than posting unsourced anecdotes as “gotchas.” Further, the ability of the party to purge Nazis ended up being important.