In the USSR, nobody ever said we had censorship, although obviously we had extremely restrictive censorship. It wasn’t only that there were many, many things you weren’t allowed to say. There were also things everybody was obligated to say on very regular occasions.
However, it was never openly accepted that we had censorship. To the contrary, saying that there was censorship was censored. Meaning, punished. The official narrative was that we had the greatest freedom on the planet to speak openly about anything.
What was prohibited was “saying untruths” or “spreading disinformation”.
“It’s not censorship we support but fact-checking” is the standard narrative of many authoritarian regimes. Watching Americans replay these tired Soviet arguments with the enthusiasm of recent converts is boring.
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