I think the phrase in the English language that provides the strongest foundation for democracy that we know today is the one that says: I agree to disagree. With this phrase, you allow differences to exist. You don't necessarily agree with this thing that's different from yours but you are willing to let it exist instead of making it conform to yours. And this is very important in a democracy because democracy is about letting differences flourish instead of having them quashed. Gorbachev said in his Nobel Lecture that "Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences." And this is the essence of democracy and he understood it thoroughly and tried to convince his country to embrace it. This is not the thinking that is prevalent in Russia at least at the time nor in many cultures in the world today and not even in the countries that practice western-style democracy at one point in their history. If you look at the history of European countries especially western European countries where the majority of them practice democracy today, it is riddled with bloody wars sometimes lasting as long as a century where people didn't really tolerate differences and instead chose to use violence to convince others to conform to their thinking. So if Western European countries that once had dictatorial regimes under absolute monarchy and engaged in violence to settle differences can one day embrace democracy to learn to tolerate diverse ideas, can we hope the same will happen for all other countries and cultures? I mean is this really a cultural thing? I do not think so or at least I do not like to think so. No matter how long a country or a culture has practiced an autocratic political system, one day it will change; it will evolve to embrace a democratic political system where everybody has a voice and is able to use that voice without negative consequences, when the time is right.
yes the strong Father provides safety, safety to danger many times conjured up and exaggerated so the children fear the "danger" and choose to remain under the "protection" of the strong Father. Notice the rebellious and strong children are always the more adventurous ones who, despite what the Father says, would always want to go out and see things and experience things for themselves and would always "get into trouble" and the good children are the ones that always listened to the Father and believed him and never ventured outside, never read or listened to things that are forbidden by the Father. In this way, the children themselves give up the chance for independent thinking because they don't even know what's out there and can't even judge for themselves how things really are and instead choose to subject themselves to Father's ruling of their lives because the outside world is dangerous thus Father's rules and teaching is the best and only under the Father's "protection" is the safest. No for democracy to work, people need to be educated and enlightened and exposed to "dangerous" ideas and information uncensored and that means no things like the Great Firewall. At least people are able to use VPN and people are allowed to travel abroad so that's at least good. Hope that doesn't change.
USSR's fatal mistake was picking a fight with China for many decades. They spent a significant percentage of their GDP on defense against China. This led to bankruptcy and collapse from within when they ran out of money. Otherwise, USSR certainly would have survived and even be prosperous today if they don't pick a fight with China.
China was fairly meaningless back then. Afghanistan was the big mistake, Chernobyl another one. They lost the people.