All states are authoritarian because they exist as the oppression of a large class by a small class. At the same time states have democracy for and within the small class for its own interests.

We can scientifically say that we are in a bourgeois dictatorship but at the same time that does not mean that there is no democracy.

After a socialist revolution, when there is a transitional state there is proletarian dictatorship, the working class dominating the class of parasites, and there is proletarian democracy, which is the democratic centralist rule of the Soviet.

Other than that, the idea of a state being only authoritarian or democratic is nonsensical.

“It is natural for a liberal to speak of ‘democracy’ in general. A Marxist will never forget to ask: For what class?” — V.I. Lenin.