this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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The reforms didn't just allow for "political dissent," they worked against the Socialist system, that was based on central planning. Rather than running in a more efficient manner, it ran against itself.
Further, nobody says the Soviet Union was a "worker's paradise." It had tremendous strides for workers, but it wasn't perfect by any means.
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.
That's what dissent is.
Nothing you said disputes it being a dictatorship. The people could not choose their leaders, there were no limits on the power of their leaders, er go it was a dictatorship. None of your "pros" matter. And that's before we get into the lack of freedom of speech and press and total absence of transparency, meaning that I have no reason to trust those supposed accomplishments.
Healthcare? Doesn't matter.
Education? Literacy? Reading is how the communist get you, remain illiterate.
Full employment? You don't need to feed your family.
Life expectancy? Why prolong the suffering?
We weren't debating the quality of the Soviet Union. We were debating whether or not it was a dictatorship.
Declassified CIA report:
A lot of the cold war propaganda about the USSR turned out to be bullshit, now that US & Soviet archives have been released, as contemporary Western academic historians will tell you, like Domenico Losurdo and Grover Furr.