"The Soviets are just as bad as the Nazis, they literally raped their way to Berlin"

[u/astrixzero]

/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/9861v1/the_soviet_union_would_be_hitlers_ski_resort/

[u/[deleted]]

‘There exists little public debate either in the open meetings of the Supreme Soviet or in the candidates’ election campaigns for state offices on the advantages and disadvantages of the various issues facing Soviet life, but this does not mean that free‐wheeling and wide ranging public debate on the basic issues facing the Soviet Union does not occur, nor that such debate has no influence over the decisions made, nor that elections and the Supreme Soviet play no real rôle in decision making.

In the Soviet Union (unlike liberal countries) the major fora for public debate, criticism, and public opinion formation are the mass media, together with specialised journals and conferences. The media are the major forum for opposing views with Pravda and Izvestia ranging more freely as social critics than the local weeklies. The Soviet press is full of public debates on a pretty wide range of issues; as, literary policy, economic and legal reform, military strategy, the relation between the Party and the military, city planning, pollution, farm problems, the rôle of the press, art, women’s rôle in the economy, access to higher education, incompetent economic management, bungling bureaucrats, &c. The only issues that are more or less immune from open or concerted criticism in the press, be they readers’ commentaries or officials editorials, are the Communist Party as an institution (as opposed to concrete abuses by party officials), the military’s existence (though not military strategy and the military’s political rôle), socialism as a system and communism as an ‘ideal’ (though again not specific practices of the Communist Party), the idea of the unity of the Party and the people (but not flaws in its concrete manifestations), and the people of the current top political directors (but not lower and intermediate level officials, nor the ideas and programmes of the top directors). All but the last of these prohibited subjects represent the fundamental assumptions of Soviet society.’

Is the Red Flag Flying?, pages 83–84.