Just how much democracy was there in the USSR?

[AK]

As part of my plan to rethink my extreme anti-Stalin/anti-post-Lenin Soviet Union stance I've decided to find out more about the conditions in the USSR - especially under Stalin - and not just take what is readily presented to me. So could some of you tell me just how much democracy existed in the Soviet Union?

[Rjevan]

A basic read for Marxist-Leninists on this subject: Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform (http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html)
If you have questions on a particular point, just ask.

[Aesop]

As for political democracy, you could only vote for one party in the soviet union, but in the big scheme of things I guess its only one less party you could vote for than the elections of the USA(democrats and republicans) so meh.

[Искра]

Stalinist user: there was great democracy...
Trotskyist user: there was no democracy, but If Trotsky replaced Stalin there would be democracy....
Anarchist user: there was no democracy after 1918th when you filthy Bolsheviks made coup d'etat

You wont get answer you wish for.
I suggest you to write down what's democracy for you, what social (or state :rolleyes:) institutions represent democracy for you and then you could maybe get better answer or at least you could get some "homework" (aka. books, sources...)

[Aesop]

Stalinist user: there was great democracy...
Trotskyist user: there was no democracy, but If Trotsky replaced Stalin there would be democracy....
Anarchist user: there was no democracy after 1918th when you filthy Bolsheviks made coup d'etat

You wont get answer you wish for.
I suggest you to write down what's democracy for you, what social (or state :rolleyes:) institutions represent democracy for you and then you could maybe get better answer or at least you could get some "homework" (aka. books, sources...)

Surely it would it not be better if anarchists state that 'there was never democracy' because prior to 1918 there wasn't democracy (just unelected PG and the tsar)

[Искра]

:rolleyes:
I'm talking about from the Revolution until the 1918th

[Aesop]

Well if your talking about before 1918, then surely that statement is wrong because prior to that the USSR did not exist.

[Искра]

Well if your talking about before 1918, then surely that statement is wrong because prior to that the USSR did not exist.
???
Do you know anarchist critics of Russian revolution and USSR?
Statement is not wrong revolution started in 1917 and in anarchist critics it ended in 1918 when Bolsheviks grasped power and started to interfere in working of soviets. With closing soviets there was end of democracy in USSR (or what was it called between the revolution and USSR) which cumulate in butchering Kronstadt rebels and Ukrainian Black Army.

So, from the anarchist point of view democracy stared to fade away in 1918 and it totally dissapered in 1921.

There's nothing wrong in that statement. It's what would anarchist say like that other two were what other tendencies would say. I wrote that because I don't believe that this thread will lead anywhere.

[Aesop]

Yes, I am aware of the anarchist critique of the Soviet Union.
All that I was doing was stating that the anarchist criticism surely will not apply in this thread seeing as the OP was talking democracy within the USSR which by default meant when the Bolsheviks were ‘running the show’. So the anarchist user statement which you gave, I thought it would not apply here.

So ok you can accuse for of me pedantic that’s fair enough (I admit myself), but I think that it is unfair to give off the idea that I don’t know anything about the anarchist criticisms about the Soviet Union

[LeninBalls]

Stalinist user: there was great democracy...


I'm nearly positive zero Marxist Leninists say there was great democracy in Stalin-era USSR.

[mykittyhasaboner]

The 1936 constitution (http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.html) is relevant if you want to learn about the Soviet government during Stalin's leadership.

There are some other documents on the subject, one is by Grover Furr which has already been posted. Sam Darcy, who was a member of the Comintern and made several trips to the Soviet Union wrote this (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n2/darcy.htm). Another good work which can surprisingly be found on the Trotskyist MIA is "Soviet Main Street (http://marxists.org/subject/women/authors/page/1933/mainstreet/index.htm)" by Myra Page, which chronicles her experiences in the town of Podolsk.

[Kayser_Soso]

The 1936 constitution (http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.html) is relevant if you want to learn about the Soviet government during Stalin's leadership.

There are some other documents on the subject, one is by Grover Furr which has already been posted. Sam Darcy, who was a member of the Comintern and made several trips to the Soviet Union wrote this (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n2/darcy.htm). Another good work which can surprisingly be found on the Trotskyist MIA is "Soviet Main Street (http://marxists.org/subject/women/authors/page/1933/mainstreet/index.htm)" by Myra Page, which chronicles her experiences in the town of Podolsk.

What a coincidence, I used to live in Podolsk.

The problem with people raised in a liberal democratic society is that they tend to associate democracy with voting for different parties. People within a party disagree, and members of the same party can have different ideas.

[Kayser_Soso]

Who elected Nestor Makhno?

[Искра]

Gulaj polje soviet.

[mykittyhasaboner]

What a coincidence, I used to live in Podolsk.


Whats it like nowadays in contrast to 1933? Aside from the predictable ills of unemployment, fascists, and unbearable cost of living.

[Lyev]

You might want to look at "the Russian Revolution", a pamphlet by Rosa Luxemburg. While I've only had the chance to skim through it, the last chapter, "Democracy and Dictatorship" deals directly with your question. I don't think democracy and dictatorship (as in the Marxist sense of dictatorship of the proletariat) are two polar opposites separate from each other; it's not a question of democracy or dictatorship. Here's the link: http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/

[mykittyhasaboner]

You might want to look at "the Russian Revolution", a pamphlet by Rosa Luxemburg. While I've only had the chance to skim through it, the last chapter, "Democracy and Dictatorship" deals directly with your question. I don't think democracy and dictatorship (as in the Marxist sense of dictatorship of the proletariat) are two polar opposites separate from each other; it's not a question of democracy or dictatorship. Here's the link: http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/

I think the OP wanted to know about democratic practice in the Soviet Union (specifically from the late 20's till 1953), rather than the theoretical concepts of democracy and the DOTP.

[AK]

I think the OP wanted to know about democratic practice in the Soviet Union (specifically from the late 20's till 1953), rather than the theoretical concepts of democracy and the DOTP.
Yeah, I'm talking about practice, not the theory. In theory I see no problem. I don't know much about the practice so that's why I asked.

[Kayser_Soso]

Whats it like nowadays in contrast to 1933? Aside from the predictable ills of unemployment, fascists, and unbearable cost of living.

It's like any small town outside of Moscow, dirty, falling apart, etc. Still, in some ways I would rather live in a small town like that.

[mykittyhasaboner]

It's like any small town outside of Moscow, dirty, falling apart, etc. Still, in some ways I would rather live in a small town like that.

Is it easier to find jobs there than in Moscow? Is it perhaps safer as well?

I know the gap between Moscow and the rest of Russia is pathetically huge but just how big is it for a town right outside of the capital?

[khad]

It's like any small town outside of Moscow, dirty, falling apart, etc. Still, in some ways I would rather live in a small town like that.
Because Muscovites are disgusting scum. According to one statistic I heard, that city has more millionaires than any other city in the world. For a country as poor as Russia, that says a lot.

And like any metropolitan European city, many of its inhabitants have completely arrogant attitudes towards people from smaller towns.

[Kayser_Soso]

Because Muscovites are disgusting scum. According to one statistic I heard, that city has more millionaires than any other city in the world. For a country as poor as Russia, that says a lot.

And like any metropolitan European city, many of its inhabitants have completely arrogant attitudes towards people from smaller towns.

Indeed they are. There is also the second largest population of billionaires here. They have established a god-like rule in this city. How I would love to see them humiliated as they did to the rest of this country.

[Robocommie]

Generally anytime a country has an extraordinary number of idle rich, something particularly offensive is happening in that country. Capitalists talk about the large numbers of billionaires in Russia like that's a sign of it's economic recovery from the Soviet era - what utter morons.

[Kayser_Soso]

Generally anytime a country has an extraordinary number of idle rich, something particularly offensive is happening in that country. Capitalists talk about the large numbers of billionaires in Russia like that's a sign of it's economic recovery from the Soviet era - what utter morons.

The more billionaires, and the more wealth concentrated in one city, the worse off the country is as a whole. I remind people that the money had to come from somewhere. These Russians are billionaires because they stole more money from the people than capitalists in other countries.

[bailey_187]

“The regime regularly urged people to criticise local conditions as well as leaders....... For example, in March 1937 Stalin emphasized the importance of the party’s “ties to the masses”. To maintain them it was necessary to “listen carefully to the voice of the masses, to the voice of rank and file members of the party, to the voice of the so-called ‘little people,’ to the voice of the ordinary folk”. Pravda even went as far as to indentify lack of criticism with enemies of the people “Only an enemy is interested in seeing that we, the Bolsheviks....do not notice actual reality....Only and enemy....strives to put rose-coloured glasses of self-satisfaction over the eyes of our people”. As the Zawodny materials and a mass of over evidence show, these calls were by no means merely a vicious sham that permiated ony carfully chosen, reliable individuals to make safe criticisms” - Robert Thurston – Life and Terror pg 185-6

Walter Reuther, later the anti-Communist president of the United Auto Workers, who worked in a Soviet auto factory in the 1930s said, "Here are no bosses to drive fear into the workers. No one to drive them in mad speed-ups. Here the workers are in control. Even the shop superintendent had no more right in these meetings than any other worker. I have witnessed many times already when the superintendent spoke too long. The workers in the hall decided he had already consumed enough time and the floor was given to a lathe hand who told of his problems and offered suggestions. Imagine this at Ford or Briggs. This is what the outside world calls the 'ruthless dictatorship in Russia'. I tell you ... in all countries we have thus far been in we have never found such genuine proletarian democracy"... (quoted from Phillip Bonosky, Brother Bill McKie: Building the Union at Ford [New York: International Publishers, 1953]).

[btpound]

The USSR was definitely more democratic than say America or England, but was definitely lacking in a lot of ways. A lot of these problems though I feel stemmed from the ways in which they did it. Like there was things like one man management in the factories, and a sort of militaristic ethic began to develop in the country since they were constantly under the threat of military invasion. Some practices were more shady than others though. The one-party system and elections in general were kinda undemocratic. They didn't have a secret ballot until the 1936 constitution. The official reasoning behind this is that the majority of the population was illiterate. But even in 1936 it was still shady. They would have a booth with a curtain. When you would go up to vote they would give you a card. But it was a one party system, so there is only one candidate on the card. And if you DON'T want to vote for him, you would have to go into the booth and scratch his name out. But this means that the only reason you would go into the booth is if you didn't want to vote for him. :confused: So not that secret. The percentage of candidates NOT elected is ridiculously low too. it was sort like a sense of national duty to blindly accept the candidate the party had chosen.

That being said the workers still had a great degree of democratic control in the workplace, and everyone had guaranteed food, shelter, education, healthcare, and paid vacations. I was really surprised to read the 1973 constitution and see things like "People have the right to work" and "People should respect nature" actually institutionalized in a constitution. It really opened my eyes about what kind of things can be acheved under socialism. The problem is getting the government to uphold the laws. That can get tricky.

[ReggaeCat]

some1 said about kronstadt and 1918 ...what do stalin has to do with this???:confused:

if you want to judge stalin please judge from 1925 to 1953....since before russia was in a civil war and after russia started an antistalinist campaign and america took it to another level.
About the one party democracy..when you say multi party what do you mean??having an nazi party in a communist society?or a capitalist party???because whoeer wants to be a politician can join the one party...also you voted the person and not the party wich is more far more democratic....and don't forget about buharin zinoviev and kamenev TROTSKY!!!who were in the same party and started talking about capitalism and open (free) market or smth like that ...cant say it in english...so stalin deleted them from the party..after 2-3 years i think they apologized and stalin took em back (who was talking about un democratic tyrant stalin?) anyways...
ruusia was an 100 million people country...and with that time technology ws very very hard to get that massive athenian-like direct democracy....even with that...wrkers discussed about their soviet about were they worked you know...why do people expect to have moneless classless society in a few years when not even the half of the countries in the world are socialist??:S

[the last donut of the night]

I don't know enough about the history and conditions of the USSR, but from reading all these accounts, I am finally learning that the Soviet Union wasn't the hellhole capitalist textbooks would have us think.

Yes, there were various political restrictions that impeded workers to full democratic control of the state. However, the USSR contained a great deal of economic democracy which far outweighs all the supposed 'democracy' we have over here in the US. People had decent lives and for the most part, did not have to worry about food or jobs.

[ReggaeCat]

I don't know enough about the history and conditions of the USSR, but from reading all these accounts, I am finally learning that the Soviet Union wasn't the hellhole capitalist textbooks would have us think.

Yes, there were various political restrictions that impeded workers to full democratic control of the state. However, the USSR contained a great deal of economic democracy which far outweighs all the supposed 'democracy' we have over here in the US. People had decent lives and for the most part, did not have to worry about food or jobs.


Hellyeah brother, look..many people diasgree with all that tough measures for the agents and the enemies of the proletariat..but one thing i can assure you...it was real the threat.political restricions of course they were...what freedoms should i leave to nazis,capitalists or anything like that...if you mean about those political hunt...they were defeated politically in public by comrade stalin and they went undergournd to overthrow him(buharin,zinovief-kamenef,tokayef,trotsky) so it wasnt the paradise everyone expected because of this...and for sure it wasnt the slaughterhouse that bbc tells you about...damn i can talk about ussr all day long..:laugh:

[ls]

..and the more wealth concentrated in one city

It's true. The whole concept of a 'capital city' should obviously to everyone be.. utterly capitalist, we are supposed to focus on spreading wealth out to the many and not the few, some people on here seem to forget that.

I don't see why there should be a 'capital city' in any socialist territory.

[Kayser_Soso]

It's true. The whole concept of a 'capital city' should obviously to everyone be.. utterly capitalist, we are supposed to focus on spreading wealth out to the many and not the few, some people on here seem to forget that.

I don't see why there should be a 'capital city' in any socialist territory.

But in industrialized countries the wealth is not so concentrated, for example in the capital. Take the US for example. I'm willing to bet there is more money in New York than in DC, and the wealth is more evenly distributed. In more backward countries, with more corruption, a handful of billionaires or millionaires cloister in one major city. Remember that the more billionaires there are, the poorer the country tends to be, as they make their fortunes off the backs of their countrymen.

[ls]

But in industrialized countries the wealth is not so concentrated, for example in the capital. Take the US for example. I'm willing to bet there is more money in New York than in DC, and the wealth is more evenly distributed. In more backward countries, with more corruption, a handful of billionaires or millionaires cloister in one major city. Remember that the more billionaires there are, the poorer the country tends to be, as they make their fortunes off the backs of their countrymen.

I see your point, indeed a lot of countries' official 'capital' is not the city with the bulk of wealth concentrated in it, another example might be New Delhi being the official capital but the real 'capital' city being Mumbai. I don't think that having an NY/London/Moscow/Mumbai is at all conducive though, whether in a less developed country or not.

[scarletghoul]

The USSR was pretty democratic under Lenin and Stalin and the early Soviet democracy was awesome. Workers had genuine direct control not just of the workplace but also of the state itself. But it degenerated into a corrupted bureaucracy. This degeneration started under Lenin, continued under Stalin (against both of their wishes), and achieved full control under Khrushchev, eventually leading to the triumph of capitalism in Eastern Europe decades later. Many communists including Lenin and Stalin* attempted to stop this trend (for example Stalins 'struggle for democratic reform') but it did not work.

Bhattarai talks a bit about the development of the state and democracy in the USSR as part of his awesome essay on building a new type of revolutonary state http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/where-do-they-stand-the-question-of-building-new-type-of-state/

The concept of a new type of proletarian state put forward by Lenin on the eve of the October Revolution was like this: “The proletariat… if it wants to uphold the gains of present revolution and proceed further, to win peace, bread and freedom, must “smash”, to use Marx’s expression, this “ready-made” state machine and substitute a new one for it by merging the police force, the army and the bureaucracy with the entire armed people. Following the path indicated by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1905, the proletariat must organize and arm all the poor, exploited sections of the population in order that they themselves should take the organs of state power directly into their own hands, in order that they themselves should constitute these organs of state power”. (Lenin 1917a: 326)
The question of ’smashing’ the old state and merging of the army and bureaucracy with ‘the entire armed people’, and that of ‘organizing and arming’ the masses and taking the organs of new state power ‘directly’ into their own hands by the masses, is definitely the most significant aspect of the concept of new type of state advanced by Lenin. This was sought to be implemented in the new state built in the form of ‘Soviets of workers, soldiers and peasants’ after the October Revolution.
Similarly, Lenin had envisaged to build a new type of state devoid of a ‘standing army’ and an ‘officialdom placed above the people’, and vowed thus:
“…I advocate not the usual parliamentary bourgeois state, but a state without a standing army, without a police opposed to the people, without an officialdom placed above the people.” (Lenin 1917c: 49)
However, Kautsky and other Right revisionists of the Second International had sought to discard the very class concept of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat and to spread the illusion of bourgeois parliamentarism in the form of so-called “pure democracy” within the proletarian movement, against which Lenin had launched a severe polemics. In his famous work “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” (1918), Lenin had amply clarified that in a class divided society ‘democracy’, too, would have a class character and bourgeois democracy and constituent assembly were mere concrete forms of bourgeois state.
While replying to the critics of the Soviet system, Lenin had enumerated the specificities of the Soviet democracy thus:
“In Russia … the bureaucratic machine has been completely smashed, razed to the ground; the old judges have all been sent packing, the bourgeois parliament has been dispersed-and far more accessible representation has been given to the workers and peasants; their Soviets have replaced the bureaucrats, and their Soviets have been authorized to elect the judges. This fact alone is enough for all the oppressed classes to recognize that Soviet power, i.e., the present form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.” (Lenin 1918:33-34)
Thus, an extensive network of local to central Soviets of workers, peasants, soldiers and other revolutionary classes developed in the model of the Paris Commune was the practical expression of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and a new type of socialist state after the October revolution. When there arose a contradiction between the bourgeois representative organ, the constituent assembly, and the socialist representative organ, the Soviet, immediately after the revolution, the constituent assembly was dissolved as a historically retrograde organ, and the forward-looking Soviet democracy was institutionalized. Even when a vicious imperialist aggression and internal civic war ensued in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the congress and meetings of the elected Soviets were held in short and regular intervals and all-important decisions of the state were taken through the Soviets. However, when the civil war got stretched and a ‘New Economic Policy’ (NEP) with features of state-capitalism was introduce to tide over the problems of the economic construction after the end of the civil war, there was gradual erosion in the dynamism and liveliness of the initial Soviet system. The higher-level executive committees started getting more active and powerful at the cost of the Soviet Congress and local organs. The organs of the state, Party and army (which was getting transformed into a standing army from the initial ‘Red Guards’) were getting intertwined inseparably. A bureaucratic apparatus in the old Czarist mould, cut-off from and placed over the people, started rising up gradually. Similar other bureaucratic deviations were cropping up menacingly in the new Soviet state system. As Lenin was a rare genius of revolutionary firmness and dynamism and a past master in applying revolutionary science in the concrete time and place, he made concerted efforts till the end to curb the rising bureaucratic tendencies in the Soviet state system and to ensure the initiative, supervision and participation of the revolutionary masses in the new state power through ‘Worker’s and Peasants Inspection’, ‘non-Party Worker’s and Peasant’s Conferences’, etc.
A glimpse of the problem of bureaucracy in the Soviet state and the Party can be had from the following comment by Lenin towards the end of his life in 1923:
“Let us hope that our new Worker’s and Peasants’ Inspection will abandon what the French call pruderies, which we may call ridiculous primness, or ridiculous swank, and which plays entirely into the hands of our Soviet and Party bureaucracy. Let it be said in parentheses that we have bureaucrats in our Party offices as well as in Soviet offices.” (Lenin 1923:419)
In this context it would be worthwhile to note the warnings of Rosa Luxemburg made from a left revolutionary angle, despite her certain idealist and voluntarist limitations, on the future of the Soviet state:
“Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously-at bottom, then, a clique affair- a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, but only the dictatorship of the handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense…”. (Luxemburg 1918:118)
After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin made efforts to continue and develop the Soviet state in a socialist direction. However, firstly due to a type of economic deterministic thinking that envisaged the development of the productive forces per se would lead the society towards communism, an one-sided stress was laid on economic development through central planning. Secondly, in the particularity of heightened contradictions with imperialism in and around the World War II, the ‘external’ cause was accorded primacy and the policy of applying force of state power to settle internal contradictions within the state and the Party was followed. Consequently, by the time of Stalin’s death in 1953 the Soviet state was caught in a vicious bureaucratic quagmire, and with Khrushchev’s advent it assumed an open bureaucratic capitalist and totalitarian character, which was ultimately transformed into naked capitalism in 1989.


*This may seem strange as it's Stalin's face which is stamped all over the most dictatorial bureaucratic elements of the USSR, however you gotta keep in mind that he was also a kind of figurehead, a unifying leader. Stalin once said to his son "You are not Stalin ! I am not Stalin ! Stalin is Soviet Power !". So it's important to recognise that the official Stalin figurehead and the individual Stalin were not exactly the same, tho there is a lot of overlap.

[Drace]

Scarlet, do you have any other reads for me concerning the subject?

[Kayser_Soso]

Scarlet, do you have any other reads for me concerning the subject?

If you haven't already, read the paper he referenced by Grover Furr, "Stalin and the Struggle for Democracy"(the title is something to that effect, it has been years since I read it to be honest). Stalin's efforts dealt a huge blow to bureaucracy in 1936-37, but the careerists and particularly the first secretaries were able to recover(no doubt helped by the war which took priority over political matters for better or worse). The end result is that to his death, and then after, political struggles and power that arose from them remained in the CC of the CPSU, as opposed to the democratic organ that Stalin had advanced via the constitution, namely the Supreme Soviet. The end result being that the Supreme Soviet and its organs ended up being more of a rubber stamp for the CC decisions, despite the fact that the former was a democratically elected body.

This brings up the other problem with the constitution, that it was in fact a good constitution providing for many rights that are on par with that of the US bill of rights. The problem was enforcing these rights. When we look at the US constitution, we see it took over 100 years before the rights it provided carried any weight, indeed before they even applied to all people in the country. The USSR did not have such a long period of experimentation and implementation of these rights, largely as a result of WWII.

[Kayser_Soso]

Scarlet, do you have any other reads for me concerning the subject?

If you haven't already, read the paper he referenced by Grover Furr, "Stalin and the Struggle for Democracy"(the title is something to that effect, it has been years since I read it to be honest). Stalin's efforts dealt a huge blow to bureaucracy in 1936-37, but the careerists and particularly the first secretaries were able to recover(no doubt helped by the war which took priority over political matters for better or worse). The end result is that to his death, and then after, political struggles and power that arose from them remained in the CC of the CPSU, as opposed to the democratic organ that Stalin had advanced via the constitution, namely the Supreme Soviet. The end result being that the Supreme Soviet and its organs ended up being more of a rubber stamp for the CC decisions, despite the fact that the former was a democratically elected body.

This brings up the other problem with the constitution, that it was in fact a good constitution providing for many rights that are on par with that of the US bill of rights. The problem was enforcing these rights. When we look at the US constitution, we see it took over 100 years before the rights it provided carried any weight, indeed before they even applied to all people in the country. The USSR did not have such a long period of experimentation and implementation of these rights, largely as a result of WWII.

[FSL]

This brings up the other problem with the constitution, that it was in fact a good constitution providing for many rights that are on par with that of the US bill of rights. The problem was enforcing these rights. When we look at the US constitution, we see it took over 100 years before the rights it provided carried any weight, indeed before they even applied to all people in the country. The USSR did not have such a long period of experimentation and implementation of these rights, largely as a result of WWII.


The expansion of rights is inversely proportional to the intensity of class struggle. Saying that it was a good constitution providing lots of rights doesn't make so much sense by itself. There is freedom of speech in the US not because rights are respected but because there are no threats to the rulling class. All that was needed was a Socialist Party at 6% or a Communist Party somewhat expanding to start "purging".

For example, a secret vote in capitalist states can protect workers from state retribution. The point of not having a secret ballot in the 1918 constitution was exactly to have everyone voice their opinions clearly. This meant a genuine exchange of those ideas that pushed the revolution forward but also made it harder for people to work "underground".
You can't just say that more rights in 1936 was a good thing without looking at the general situation. In retrospect, it might be right to assume that it was a premature decision.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

The expansion of rights is inversely proportional to the intensity of class struggle.
I agree. In general, the protection of a large number of human rights is a sign that the ruling class is stable and secure. If there is not much class struggle, then the ruling class can afford to tolerate many rights.

This applies not only to capitalism, but also to socialism, where the proletariat is the ruling class. When the proletariat has overcome the resistance of the bourgeoisie, we should see a great expansion of rights in socialist society.