Do you really believe in this or are you just saying this? Mass surveillance was a thing in the USSR decades 30-50 years earlier than in the US.
Also much more effective too... Say something inappropriate semi publicly and of you go to the gulag (they toned it down and switch to psich hospitial after the 60s).
> leadership because the state doesn't have to engage in lying too much
tanks go brr... amirite comrade ?
You're thinking Snowden and Assange. In the Soviet Union, they were sent to the gulags for spying for the enemy.
The only satisfied people would be the subsidized nomenklatura. Normal people do notice the aftereffects of de facto Kleptocracies aka the destruction of any organization, but who cares? so the common man developed apathy as a form of civil resistance (like laying flat in china today)
If one of them was a superpower though, it would be a different story. They would have to engage in a lot of deception and with modern technology, people would find out that their leaders are full of it. Not that it is a problem, the peasants do eventually cope with reality... but it's just that it doesn't work very smoothly all the time.