this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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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.
No, that isn't what dissent is, it was a fundamental liberalization of the economy that favored private property over public.
Secondly, they absolutely chose their leaders.
Finally, you say life expectancy, literacy rates, and worker rights "don't matter?" That strong, sustained economic growth doesn't matter? You must be trolling.
As for distrusting the sources, you can look into them yourselves, they are well-respected.
So, you're denying that glasnost allowed for political dissent?
Second, no they didn't.
Finally, it does not matter because we were debating whether or not the Soviet Union was a dictatorship, which the literacy rate has nothing to do with.
Well-respected by Tankies, not by actual historians.
Glasnost allowed for liberalism to expand as an ideology, sure, alongside other reforms that weakened the economy and erased its foundations. You can't cherry-pick the reforms to make it seem like the system worked poorly and only was dissolved because the "people had a choice." In fact, most post-Soviet citizens regret the fall of Socialism and prefer it over Capitalism.
Read Soviet Democracy.
We were debating a great many things, one of which being the economy and the well-being of the people, because that helps explain why it was democratic.
Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan is quite literally used as a reference on the Wikipedia article for Soviet Democracy. You are incapable of being honest or looking at facts that disprove you because you care more about appearing morally righteous than being correct.
"Expand as an ideology" is a strange way to say, "they weren't shot for disagreeing with the Party."
The reforms didn't weaken the economy. The economy was weak, therefore there were reforms. And it's not cherrypicking, the Soviet system worked poorly, objectively.
Nostalgia doesn't prove anything. What they feel now has nothing to do with what the people felt at the time.
Read Robert Conquest.
No, you denied that the Soviet Union was a dictatorship. The GDP does not effect that.
And books describing the Soviet Union as a totalitarian dictatorship are used as reference. Wikipedia is providing a variety of opinions of the Soviet government. It's not declaring Pat Sloan the sole source of truth on the question of human rights in the Soviet Union.
You clearly don't care about being righteous or correct.
Liberals usually weren't shot even pre-Glasnost unless they were terrorist cells, like the White Army or Nazi sympathizers.
The reforms did weaken the economy. This is factual. The Soviet Union was one of the fastest growing and most impressive economies of the 20th century, this slowed with reforms.
Read Robert Conquest? Seriously? The crank that made wild estimates before the opening of the Soviet Archives disproved him, whose coworkers denounced their own work with him on the Black Book of Communism, which included Nazis killed by the Soviets in the "death toll of Communism?* That's your trump card, a long-debunked anticommunist myth from the Red Scare no historian, even anticommunist historians, supports these days? The Black Book has long been debunked as false.
It didn't declare Pat Sloan the only source of truth, but included it as a respected resource. It isn't only Communists that reference Pat Sloans works, but liberals as well.
Considering you unironically recommend propagandist Robert Conquest as a source that even liberals disagree with, you're only proving me right.
Right. Beria was well known for his trigger discipline.
It wasn't that impressive for the people living there. Otherwise they wouldn't have rejected it.
Debunked, according to a genocide denying Russian propaganda asset.
To portray the opinion of Stalinists. Which they contrast with actual data and the opinions of actual historians.
How about you cite some of those liberals, instead of a tankie rag?
You have no data, lmao. You just make assertions.
The people of the USSR voted to dissolve it after liberal reforms had slowed the economy, and political instability in the government had eroded faith in the system. Most people regret that choice and wish it retained.
Here's yet another debunk of the Black Book. Every time you repeat this conspiracy theory nonsense that was debunked without a shadow of a doubt after the anticommunists opened the Soviet Archives and revealed the real figures that were far below the numbers Conquest pulled out of his ass, you prove me correct.
Seriously, you have nothing other than a propagandist and you double down.
Glasnost occured for a reason, yes. It also hurt the economy. Democracy doesn't mean "everything is perfect, actually, and what people vote for is perfect too."
Widespread and consistent polling data showing that most people believed Socialism was a better system than Capitalism proves quite a lot.
The famine in the 1930s was real, the racial motivations were likely not. Calling me "scum" for calling out your acceptance of debunked propagandists like Robert Conquest when you can't actually contest the facts doesn't make you correct.
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.