Ugh, how I hate this sort of relativization coming from people who never experienced an actual authoritarian system.

By the age of 6, I was required to carry a standard paper lantern on the November 7th celebration of the Great October* Socialist Revolution, with my parents fully aware that presence and absence lists were maintained by the teachers, who would forward them to the school cadre bureaucrats keeping dossiers on the kids, who could alert the secret police to take a closer look at the repeat offenders, and who would definitely play a big role in allowing you later to enter high school or not.

My grandpa was subject to hearings and threats because his son (my uncle) had bad marks in the compulsory Russian language lessons and the spooks were convinced that he was bad at it on purpose, by being secretly taught animosity against the Soviet Union at home.

I wonder if you ever experienced this sort of paranoia and coercion from your government. In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, this was the norm even during the late 1980s.

* Yeah, the October/November mismatch fits, because in 1917, then-Russia was following the Julian calendar and only later switched to Gregorian. Hence the difference of 18 days which was reflected in the timing of that parade.