How can any system of government be defined as democratic when that system concentrated power into a single party system? All the while suppressing dissent and suppressing civil liberties.

Democracy means "rule by the majority," not "choose between political parties." Liberal democracy reduces participation in governance to choosing which party represents you, while soviet democracy integrated the public into the democratic process of governance itself. Capitalists, fascists, etc. were oppressed, of course, but this is necessary for maintaining socialism.

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.

Democracy is defined as power ultimately residing with the people, either directly or through freely elected representatives. None of which the USSR had. It was a totalitarian dictatorship with power concentrated centrally through the politburo and a dictator sitting at the top of it all.

This is not reality. The people both had direct participation in the democratic process, and elected representatives that laddered upward. It functioned like so:

(Not affiliated with PCUSA).

For evidence, I'll point you to exactly the comment you responded to:

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 Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.

Did you just brush past this paragraph?

Did I also spot an apologist for the acts of the great purge elsewhere in this thread?

Yes, kicking fascists and sabateurs out of the communist party was necessary. The USSR was in a state of prolonged class struggle, still grappling with vestiges of the prior tsarist system while also defending itself from imperialist aggression.

Also, your “meme” is based on the logical fallacy of false equivalency. Comparing a single aspect of two different systems of government, doesn’t equate that either of them are better than the other. You’ve selectively chosen a single frame of reference that doesn’t prove your argument in your “meme”. It is a misleading and fallacious method of debate.

"My" meme (stolen from r/marxism_memes) is about comparing a democratically constructed constitution with an undemocratically constructed constitution. I didn't equate anything, just pointed out how the soviet constitution was enormously progressive for its time and how the US Empire's still is not even to this day. There's no fallacy here, just a direct comparison, which is totally valid.