You can read up on Soviet Democracy on Wikipedia. I believe counter-revolutionary parties were outlawed, but given that they still liberalized, it can be seen that it wasn’t an inflexible, unchanging monolith.
How much do you actually know about how life in the soviet union worked? Have you talked to people who lived there, have you read dissertations about soviet life originating from post-soviet countries? Because I can tell you that what the wiki writes is correct on a theoretical level, but that’s not how it worked in practice. I’d like to link you the document but it hasn’t been digitized, and it wouldn’t be in English, but for instance did you know that in Estonian the soviet election procedure there’s stated that vote verification comes from the voting station committee, not from the person casting the vote. That means the committee at the voting station said when you voted. That left the door open to easily cast whatever votes the party wanted into voting box. All the voting slips where soon destroyed after the voting making it impossible to verify who you actually voted for.
While on a superficial level the “democracy” worked from bottom up, the reality is that unless you toed the party line (much like it is right now in the US) you couldn’t get into politics. The harsh truth is that at a certain level the party dictated who is a part of the party and who isn’t, there was no democratic discourse. I don’t even know who our elected officials were during the soviet era because everyone knew it was a farce and nobody cared about those puppets.
And finally, in case you just ignore what I’ve said let’s look at history. If there really was soviet democracy in the soviet union, why was perestroika and more specifically glasnost necessary? Why did Gorbachev run a slogan of democratization? Why is it that when people were given actual democratic elections the previously unopposed communist candidates didn’t make the cut? Why did Perestroika lead to the dissolution of the union?
I certainly know much less than I want to! I enjoy learning about history. I do know that there was corruption, especially at the Politburo level. I don’t believe every election was a sham though, just like I don’t believe every US election is a sham.
As for Perestroika and Gorbachev, the majority of the USSR, 77% I believe, voted to retain the USSR. It was the aforementioned Politburo that dissolved it. Gorbachev in general wanted to cool relations with the US, as the public was growing weary of the Cold War and constant fear, just like Reagan did in America. Additionally, there was a lack of luxury commodities that Soviet citizens were wanting from the western countries, so there was an internal, public push for international trade.
What democratic measures USSR had in place?
And what would’ve prevented USSR from creating a second party, similarly to the US, to make it seem like the communist party was what people wanted?
You can read up on Soviet Democracy on Wikipedia. I believe counter-revolutionary parties were outlawed, but given that they still liberalized, it can be seen that it wasn’t an inflexible, unchanging monolith.
How much do you actually know about how life in the soviet union worked? Have you talked to people who lived there, have you read dissertations about soviet life originating from post-soviet countries? Because I can tell you that what the wiki writes is correct on a theoretical level, but that’s not how it worked in practice. I’d like to link you the document but it hasn’t been digitized, and it wouldn’t be in English, but for instance did you know that in Estonian the soviet election procedure there’s stated that vote verification comes from the voting station committee, not from the person casting the vote. That means the committee at the voting station said when you voted. That left the door open to easily cast whatever votes the party wanted into voting box. All the voting slips where soon destroyed after the voting making it impossible to verify who you actually voted for.
While on a superficial level the “democracy” worked from bottom up, the reality is that unless you toed the party line (much like it is right now in the US) you couldn’t get into politics. The harsh truth is that at a certain level the party dictated who is a part of the party and who isn’t, there was no democratic discourse. I don’t even know who our elected officials were during the soviet era because everyone knew it was a farce and nobody cared about those puppets.
And finally, in case you just ignore what I’ve said let’s look at history. If there really was soviet democracy in the soviet union, why was perestroika and more specifically glasnost necessary? Why did Gorbachev run a slogan of democratization? Why is it that when people were given actual democratic elections the previously unopposed communist candidates didn’t make the cut? Why did Perestroika lead to the dissolution of the union?
I certainly know much less than I want to! I enjoy learning about history. I do know that there was corruption, especially at the Politburo level. I don’t believe every election was a sham though, just like I don’t believe every US election is a sham.
As for Perestroika and Gorbachev, the majority of the USSR, 77% I believe, voted to retain the USSR. It was the aforementioned Politburo that dissolved it. Gorbachev in general wanted to cool relations with the US, as the public was growing weary of the Cold War and constant fear, just like Reagan did in America. Additionally, there was a lack of luxury commodities that Soviet citizens were wanting from the western countries, so there was an internal, public push for international trade.
It’s a bit of a complicated issue.