The crux of my issue with the soviet system is that the highest echelons of the government had no oversight and were in no way beholden to the people at the lowest echelons. You’re right that democracy is a sliding scale, and I think a good form of government will allow dissenting opinions to take hold if they reflect the will of the people. I think it is very telling that you can have a communist party in the Kaiser’s germany, but not have a liberal/democratic party in Lenin’s Russia.

After some more digging, I conscede that you’re right on this point. I misremember that. they were not forced to participate.

I think political systems affect development, although geography plays a big role in that as well. How a country uses its available resources is predominantly determined by its economic and political system.

They gave you a ballet with only a party member candidate on it which you’d simply drop in the ballet box in front of everyone, and if you wanted to vote for an independent, you had to go behind a curtain and write it in.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Soviet_Union

“However, in practice, before 1989, voters could vote against candidates preselected by the Communist Party only by spoiling their ballots, whereas votes for the party candidates could be cast simply by submitting a blank ballot.”

I wouldn’t call that democratic in nature.

I’m comparing political systems, not nations. If we’re talking about the WW1 era, then I’d say the soviets still had it worse as they went through a war, invasion, then a civil war, and famine and consequent brutal dictatorship. But the germans made it out quite well off, given they basically started the war with their unequal treaties and rapid militarization. Despite this, the treaty of Versailles was relatively lenient compared to what happened Austria-hungry.

It was not democratic. It was a single party system in which the party selected a candidate, (after some research I learned this part is false), and the populace was forced to vote for said candidate under threat of imprisonment.

If the people wanted to oust a candidate they didn’t like, they’d have to coordinate with everyone in secret to cooperatively abstain from voting for the candidate so he would lose his job and the party would select a new candidate.

I think the germans working under codetermination have it a bit better than any soviet ever did under their workers’ unions. the missing ingredient being a democratic representative government in place of an authoritarian single party system.

Workers as the owners?

Apparently, not so in the soviet union: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_the_Soviet_Union

But there is a similar (but not identical) concept currently being implemented in Germany. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany