Where's my lack of transparency? I linked my sources. If you mean preventing tourists from taking photos willy-nilly, the DPRK is still at war presently, and still has instances where the US millitary murders their civilians. The rest of your comment isn't even a point, it's like a bingo of tired tropes lacking in any investigation.

To the contrary of your claims of "totalitarianism," socialist states have brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have the aforementioned Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.

When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union.

On the whole, soviet prisons and the justice system itself were more progressive than their peers, Mary Stevenson Callcott documented it quite well in Russian Justice. The soviet union, despite having a progressive legal system, was in a state of constant turmoil caused by pressures both external and internal. They couldn't simply delete all previously existing ruling-class people and ideology, class struggle continues under socialism. Further, pressure from the imperialist west, invasion both in threat and in action, and intentional sabateurs meant that the prisons certainly weren't empty. The soviet union never had a single year of normal, stable growth, free from intense opposition on the outside and counter-revolutionary forces on the inside.

Do you have any real points?