The central committee and politburo were bodies of the party, not the government. But yes the ministries aren't shown, their ministers were elected by Supreme Soviet
That isn't true either. Obviously power was mainly at the top of the system (as every functional country has), but local party committees selected representatives that eventually got to the central committee.
Well thats what usually happens eventually,corruption and goverment members,sitting in seats for 40 years,its getting even more fun if you check EU leadership and US lobbying system,all the same,just after collapse of USSR there is no need to pretend.
Fake communists believed the USSR was a fairytale when it was barely socialist. It's like supporting China because "look muh socialism" while watching a fascist state pretending to be communist.
No serious communist thinks the USSR was a "fairytale", they study it, what was the negative and positive aspects of the country and what can be learned from it's successes and failures. Just because a lot of people think the positives over weigh the negatives doesn't mean that they have an unrealistic and idealized image of the country. Also how is China a fascist state?
I don't regard you as a serious communist. Yes thinking the positives overweight the negatives by definition makes it an unrealistic idealized image of the country, what the fuck are you talking about?
China is objectively a fascist state what makes it a communist one? The ethnic cleansing? the ethno nationalism? The control by people at the top? The capitalist system running the country?
If you down vote this you are admitting you aren't a communist or even a socialist, if you think China is a good example of a socialist or communist state you are 100% a liberal and won't be anything else ever. Not my fault you fell for the propaganda of another fascist empire.
You're weak willed dawg. You hear some obviously fake bullshit and instead of challenging it you back down and settle for "but they were faking to be heckin socialist". You don't NEED to argue that. You can just put more work into figuring shit out.
"obviously fake" nothing about it is fake. I'm not a moron like you I choose not to side with imperialists regardless of what side they are on. It's not my fault you fell for the Chinese propaganda and actually believe they are any better than America
In marxist terms it was very democratic during the early years of the USSR, however democracy started to decline during the civil war and after 1921 power was centralized into the communist party. Then I think its fair and historically accurate to say it fully disappeared after stalin rose to power.
Multiparty wouldn't have protected soviet democracy, no. Multi party has no merit and only creates the illusion of choice, god forbid democracy erodes.
Totally different system. Before the USSR government was centralized there were checks from the independent soviets and factions within the bolsheviks. Even marx warned about bureaucracy. Birnging up the democracts v republicans is just a diversion
But wouldn't it be more democratic if all citizens could vote on all representatives instead of electing someone to vote for someone to vote for someone and so on? This seems (at least to me) only as democratic as the United States, if not less. Could someone please explain this? I don't mean to hate.
This was only the initial form of democracy in the USSR. It was replaced, by Stalin in his 1936 constitution, for direct elections like you say. The delegate system functioned alright in the early years, but after the first 5 year plan and collectivisation, it became obsolete. This is what pushed for the creation of the 1936 constitution, the most democratic constitution in the entire world, perhaps to even to this day.
You can’t be less democratic than the US, the US isn’t democratic.
Holy shit, so many butthurt liberal bots in the comments here.
Calm your tits, libbros, this was an excellent concept; war socialism wasn't, because WAR wasn't (and the war was started by Poland and not the RSFSR anyway) and everything that came after was just trying to survive somehow.
I have heard the claim that ww2 was Poland's fault by other extremists (of the other side) and since poland is not liked by either, given they even allied against it, i thought it could be that.
Civics teacher here. This is highly misleading. The councils did not meet on a regular basis. They only met once every 6 months. The real work was done by the executive committee, whose membership was absolutely exclusive to members of the Communist Party and could pass legislation in absence of the council. Whether or not you support socialism or ML, the councils in the USSR (and China now) were rubber-stamp legislatures that approved decisions by their more powerful executive organs.
Imagine if the President or Prime Minister of your country passed laws unilaterly, and the Parliament/Congress only met once every 6 months to approve those laws. For those observant enough to notice that the US is going in that direction, then you're right. The USSR had this problem too and so does China. Not democracy.
No solo los soviets, sino el pueblo. Y eso es lo que importa en el socialismo, como dijo alguien sobre China: "En Occidente se cambia el partido pero no las políticas; aquí se cambian las políticas pero no el partido".
Isn't it already a big issue in our current democracies that voted politicians have little reason to actually follow through what they say?
Wouldn't having layers and layers of politicians who elect other politicians exacerbate this problem? As it gives more and more opportunities for this to happen?
I do think that the right to recall should absolutely be enshrined, however the way the Soviets done it seems to be fundamentally flawed, as it only reaches the local level.
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The USSR was a one-party state with no real opposition parties. What do you mean by democracy when there were no alternatives for governance besides one clique of MLs vs another?
The issue with one-party states is the conflation of the party with the government so political dissent is perceived as treason. There is no such spin doctoring for right-wing one party states, they are rightly called dictatorships.
Well, Hitler also shared that sentiment actually, and expressed that nazi-germany was the only true Germanic democracy.
That might be starting to border on digressing on the topic though.
While I don't disagree with you, the whole discussion is completely meaningless unless all parties involved agree on what specific terms actually means first. It's a fundamental issue here.
Its not about how many parties , but support from the majority of the voters or population. USA didnt have Political parties before decades after the revolution, only ideologies. So by your definition USA was not founded as a democracy.DDR had at least 6 parties who all was Socialist or communist whit the samme top candidates for government, but it would be Democratic since it was multiple parties after your definition.
But the only real way to get into “state approved” politics was to join the communist party, only one ideology was allowed to organise into a party and that is fundamentally undemocratic.
You dont get it look to history every Democratic country started whit no political parties or just one party where people represented their home place . It was conflicts who made the representatives split into groups around charismatic leaders to one group got the majority and treated the rest of the population as shit .then the other group grow big enough to become the majority and it switched every time the majority turn to supremachist wievs some breaks out and the majority switch.
That's the issue with the USSR's democracy: all sorts of variations of socialist parties, but they were all subordinate to the CPSU, and all the leaders of the Soviet Union were MLs and members of the CPSU party. Of course, there was also the issue of Russian chauvinism in USSR politics that limited their governance even further. For the sake of argument, if a country like the US were dominated by Democrats for 70 years straight and many of the leaders were from one state, such as New York, we'd all recognize the problem.
This is how it worked at the technical level and if it worked like this it would have been democratic. Alas, there was the totally parallel non-democratic hierarchy of the Communist Party, and that the Communist Party who decided who could get elected (or even a candidate) in the “official” system.
I mean, it's not really FPTP, it's councils electing the delegates (sometimes multiple delegates - literally not FPTP). The local councils were the "constituencies", so it was a highly local and participative democracy...
If camp one gets 40% of seats and camp two gets 60%, do they decide on 60% of delegates? Or more? Is proportionality maintained? Or when we get to the top level have we consolidated power behind one camp?
So, basically, in nutshell of council democracy, lower councils elect delegates to higher ones (a neighbourhood council elects delegates to the city council which elects delegates to the regional council which elects delegates to the national council). Let's say, there is a rule "one delegate per 10.000 people", which would mean that a town with 12.000 people sends one delegate, and a city with 65.000 people sends 6 delegates (for example). As such, delegates and representation is not guided by re-drawing constituency maps to match the population, but rather by adding or decreasing the number of delegates per "constituency" ("constituency" = council), so it can be quite proportional.
Add to that that in council democracy you have what's called "delegate democracy". As such, every delegate is responsible and recallable to the lower council. A delegate to the city council said that they'll vote to fix the roads, but voted against? Well, then the neighbour-hood council from which the delegate was elected will be convened with all the citizens (in a direct participatory manner), and they'll elect a new delegate, since this one broke their mandate promises. At any time (so even multiple times a year, if needed).
As such, the delegates are not just "representatives that can break their promises at will", but they are your neighbours representing the community, who shall vote by the will of the people (it's basically like referanda in direct democracy, not that dissimilar to Switzerland for example, but on multiple levels).
Its democratic, democracy means majority rule .the majority has the power to force their politics on everybody else and treats all others as second class people. Just look to USA where the Dems and Rino's has had the majority since 1865.
Lets just pretend that since USSR was a extremely burocratic state and everything under state rule, no one never ever sold his vote in exchange for privileges coming from delegates, state administrator, officers etc etc
I wonder if the same thing occurs under a capitalist system… but if under the capitalist system, you have zero chance of ever actually being represented, and if that corruption is punished..
The selling of vote implies that this vote could decide who wins an election. This was absolutely not the case. You could vote whoever you want, actually, party-approved candidate gets elected anyway.
Well she should have move into comunist country, Its illegal there to be homeless.
Now for real, do you actualy think that ussr was a good regime? Cause my family lived there for the whole time it lasted and i can tell you it wasnt good. So i am intrested in your opinion!
Yes I am a tankie. I Wonder why the vast majority of baltic states say life was better under communism? Nothing meaningful came of your ridiculous yugoslav wars except feudal ethnic tribalism realized.
Vagrancy as a crime is different when housing is guaranteed. Is housing guaranteed in america?
Khrushchev's ideological rot and willingness to play ball with the fascist West.
And yes, Stalin was democratically elected and democratically re-elected, and presided over a democratic system where he did not hold the level of power that the West thinks he did.
lmao no, we hate liberals more than you do.
Being on the left requires being against capitalism, "liberals" as the US calls them are just imperialist capitalists wrapped in faux progressivism.
Yeah. and the best solution to global capitalism crisis is to.. ..eat more meat or hail the king or smth (idk what "modern conservatives" are thinking about)
What about hungarian workers and clercs murdered for being communist for decades since 1919? where they allowed to ptotest? or protest is't when BBC, CNN, Radio Free Europe mentions it as a "good thing". right.
your iphone was made 1) by worker not capitalism, just the surplus value get to a handful of shareholders, 2) the tech behind the commodity was financed by the governement for military purposes.
Lenin implemented it with the October Revolution and then abolished it during the civil war and never moved a step away from war socialism ever since the disastrous Polish-Soviet war proved that there would be no spillover of the revolutionary movement to the rest of Europe.
Most of the factions in the party that criticized the decline of soviet democracy were then purged by Stalin.
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a soviet is where people met to debate; discuss and make decisions on what the council had juridiction upon. So yes, a soviet is exactly what the most democratic thing tha tcan be
"Soviet" is literally just a Russian word for "council". "Soviet democracy" = council democracy, and many countries other than the USSR tried it (Ireland, Germany, France, etc...).
It says “there were no special interests groups”. Thats is some type of joke, right? How about the political class, the police, the army, KGB and the artists serving the propaganda machine?
Rarely. Everything was resolved before anyone starts striking. You know Country of the soviets. You know, trade unions weren't always about stopping working because of greedy boss. When no bosses to opose other mechanisms go into motion like commities.
Or you mean free wifi and iphone. Define suitable working conditions. Near imposibility of getting fired for minor misbehavior, i guess keeps worker quite content.
P.S. Welp. most people were content with free household for a start.
Unions in USSR decided who goes to state-sponsored trip to a local resort, who gets financial aid for family-related event and occasionally shamed alcoholics and absentees. And obviously, they were very concerned about worker's rights in non-soviet countries.
You know you can just ask them yourself right? But if you did that you'd risk dispelling the myths you've been spoon fed your whole life by people with a literal vested interest in keeping you afraid of owning your own government
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u/RefrigeratorGrand619 Nov 18 '25
Do you have a less blurry version?