You're using a prevalent concept - near total state control over persons in the former Soviet Union - and contrasting it with examples that were rare. That's why your retort is invalid. It's fundamentally why people aren't shocked at what the USSR did to people during its existence, and are shocked when they find out about some of the US military's experiments, such as the army's test of airborne dispersion of germs in St. Louis and other cities:

https://www.livescience.com/23795-large-area-coverage-danger...