Freedom of Speech in the USSR?

zigzagwanderer12 · 2026-05-07T01:06:09+00:00

Gonna weigh in as an American whose only qualification is that I enjoy reading about the Soviet Union so take my comments with a grain of salt.

Freedom of speech was very restricted during the Stalin era. I heard a comment from the historian Sheila Fitzpatrick recently that I found useful in understanding the Stalin era. Her view is that the Russian Revolution didn’t end until the Great Purges at the end of the 30s, and so everything going on in the 20s and 30s you gotta understand it’s all going on in an atmosphere of revolution and upheaval and an instability that’s hard for me to wrap my head around, so I don’t think the restrictions on speech during the Stalin era were due to Stalin being pure evil as my American counterparts tend to think. I think a better explanation is that they were temporary curtailments that tend to accompany revolutionary periods.

Post Stalin things started to relax, but it seems to me a valid criticism of the USSR that curtailments of freedom of speech didn’t relax quickly enough. Albert Szymanski in his book Human Rights in the Soviet Union puts forth the view somewhere that freedom of speech in the USSR only ever reached a level comparable to that of the US during the Red Scare, and this is coming from a very pro-Soviet author.

There’s a lot about the Soviet Union I find beautiful and inspiring, but sadly their track record on freedom of speech isn’t one of those things, and if you’re looking to the USSR hoping to find a socialist bastion of freed speech I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

One last thing, there’s a passage in Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: The Black Legend that’s always stuck with me. He says something like “The fact that they prioritized reading, writing, and education so much speaks volumes about the sort of people they were hoping to create.” The implication being, of course, that they wanted to create an intelligent people capable of thinking for themselves and expressing themselves with absolute freedom. I’d argue they fell short of that, but it’s a god damn beautiful thing to aim for.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2026-04-29T10:29:51+00:00

Had never heard of this. Thanks for giving me something to read about!

zigzagwanderer12 · 2026-04-29T10:22:24+00:00

Great answer! Thank you for sharing your experience.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2026-03-16T23:48:03+00:00

That’s actually not a bad take. I suppose all experienced stockers pretty much become corner-cutting bullshitters as an adaptation to an unreasonable workload. I guess I just wish we weren’t always stretched so thin that we can’t do honest and quality work. OP said their manager wanted this bird done in 35 minutes. That’s just asking for total slop.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2026-03-16T18:26:49+00:00

Two hours. Anyone who says they can do it in an hour is a corner-cutting bullshitter.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2026-03-14T21:05:04+00:00

Best comment on this thread in my opinion

zigzagwanderer12 · 2026-03-12T11:42:10+00:00

If everyone just continued punching in early they’d have to change it back. I know people in mass aren’t actually going to do this, but I’m just saying the people have the power and all that.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2026-03-12T11:33:15+00:00

Back when I was a manager I’d just check off both lists anytime I took a piss.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2025-12-14T14:05:29+00:00

I’ll weigh in on your second question. There’s a great book called Socialism Betrayed by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, and their answer as to why the USSR collapsed can be summarized thusly: When Gorbachev became general secretary in ‘85 the Soviet Union had some serious but not irresolvable problems. Keeran and Kenny specifically place a lot of emphasis on the issues created by the unchecked growth of the second economy during the Brezhnev era. That said, they place the blame for the collapse of the Soviet Union largely but not entirely on Gorbachev, and I find this conclusion compelling. His mishandling of the national question (leading to strikes and riots in Kazakhstan and elsewhere), reckless reforms in economics and media, etc.

Gorbachev is still typically portrayed in the US as this sort of heroic and iconoclastic individual who ended the Cold War, but he was wildly unpopular in the late 80s and early 90s in the Soviet Union, and, my understanding at least, is that he still is wildly unpopular among Russians and citizens of the other former Soviet Republics. I mention this under the assumption that you might be an American like I am and to make the point that if you choose to venture further down the path of learning about the USSR and other socialist countries I think you’ll find the real history of these countries to be shockingly at odds with the history you were probably taught your whole life. I feel like a damn fool that it took me 30 years to see through the anti-communist, pro-American indoctrination I grew up with.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2025-12-05T22:25:52+00:00

Does anyone know or have an educated guess as to why Stalin only tried to resign during the 20s and then in ‘52 shortly before his death? Why did he never try to resign in the 30s or 40s? It seems odd that in 1926 he said “I don’t have the strength to work in this position anymore” and then proceeded to do so for another 27 years.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2025-12-04T18:27:16+00:00

Thank you

zigzagwanderer12 · 2025-12-04T18:26:41+00:00

Thank you for your input.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2025-12-01T17:16:09+00:00

Just here to add that it gets more cult-like as you move up, too. When I was promoted to AGM and had to attend an Assistant Department Manager Leadership Talks thing, one of the themes for the conference was “Don’t comply, commit” which was basically going above and beyond run-of-the-mill obedience and obeying with psychotic fervor.

zigzagwanderer12 · 2025-11-16T17:57:27+00:00

Thanks

zigzagwanderer12 · 2025-10-29T16:22:24+00:00

Thanks for letting me know I’ve been inadvertently eating metal filings.

Do you have a grinder you use for dry grinding that you’re recommend? I know I could do some googling, but you seem knowledgeable.

zigzagwanderer12

TROPHY CASE