• Antiproton@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    5 hours ago

    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.

    • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      5 hours ago

      The USSR’s implementation of communism was so bad, it’s become cliche.

      So bad that after the fall of the Soviet Union, its former republics all had an immediate, sustained downturn in their quality of life, and a corresponding uptick in mortality.

    • vfreire85@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      5 hours ago

      “Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people”, said the romanovs.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      5 hours ago

      Allow me to repeat myself:

      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%.

      Read Blackshirts and Reds.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          2 hours ago

          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.

          • pcalau12i@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 hour ago

            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.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              6
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              2 hours ago

              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.