Democracy per see...no, the official Soviet line is that they -were- a Democratic state.

However, the Soviet Union (or at least, the Communist party) was quite consumed by paranoia of capitalists, Kulaks (well to do farmers) and followers of Trotsky (Exiled Communist party leader) as the enemy within.

This paranoia manifested itself quite more bloodily than in America. The Stalinist purge of the 1930s were, for example, was justified by the assassination of Sergey Kirov (a prominent Communist politician) in 1934 as evidence of the enemy within being an existential threat to the state. The purges would eventually lead to millions death of both ordinary citizens and Communist party officials at the very top level.