The 1936 USSR Constitution was immediately followed by The Great Purge and only lasted 40 years

The soviet union was indeed in a constant state of turmoil and siege. From aggression by imperialists on the outside, and sabateurs and fascists on the inside that sought to reinstate capitalism, the socialists were forced to take the very real threat of infiltration seriously. In the purges, the large majority of those found guilty were expelled from the party, with executions largely reserved for those guilty of extreme crimes. Even then, excess did occur, and when the Politburo learned that the NKVD was playing it more fast and loose, they were ordered to stop.

Do you believe that there wasn’t actually a serious threat of internal espionage and conspiracy? Do you believe that all of the ruling classes that were stripped from their Tsarist privledges simply gave up after the Russian Civil War? How do you suggest the soviets respond to such threats?

As for it only lasting 40 years, the 1977 constitution was more of an expansion on the 1936 constitution than a complete rewrite. It’s progressive social guarantees remained intact.

Oh I believe it without a doubt but I also believe that this fueled excessive paranoia and plenty of innocent people were screwed over, the cold war was fucking stupid, and the fact that capitalist countries still can’t stand any country being socialist is also fucking stupid but the paranoia that the siege creates can definitely have negative consequences for people living in socialist countries and IMO is a huge source of the authoritarian nature of socialist States more than there being any intrinsic authoritarian nature to socialism, I’ve seen the same thing happen in small socialist orgs.

Edit Exploiting this paranoid aspect was also a way the FBI used to wreck revolutionary groups, the black panthers come to mind.

That’s because capitalism guarantees a certain powerful dynamic by capitalists and socialism removes the power to a select few of the population. To put it simply the power given to capitalists by capitalism is threatened by socialism which is why capitalists hate livable wages or anything that allows the sheep workers from having peace. It makes you less reliant on capitalists for everything and they can’t accept that. To make workers simple to understand they want a dependent relationship between everyone and everything and capitalists or capitalism. Kind of like a parasite but you should already know that by now.

I do, but that won’t stop some one on the internet explaining it to me for the 100th time.

Let’s be honest at this point this needs to be a public announcement every 5 minutes.

No thanks I don’t need some one constantly explaining that to me. I’d rather have some one reminding people to wash their hands.