In contrast, people in countries like China and the old USSR are empowered only to learn of and share state-approved knowledge, in a state-approved manner. Stepping too far outside these boundaries often leads to imprisonment or worse.
The repercussions were social mostly, your boss would not promote you anymore, your neighbours would avoid you. Only in cases of high-treason, such as Assange from WikiLeaks, you would get "imprisonment or worse". Think to how PC culture works in the US. If you're misoginistic, your friends will start avoiding you, you might even get fired.
And no, people did not learn through state-approved knowledge, we had conspiracy theories, we had friends, uncles and friends having friends working inside the government.
So, "high-treason" must have included religious offenses, attempting to leave the USSR, independent journalism, cultural and literary nonconformism, activism of any almost any kind, and any other sort of activity deemed undesirable to the state. Is that right?
> And no, people did not learn through state-approved knowledge, we had conspiracy theories, we had friends, uncles and friends having friends working inside the government.
Conspiracy theories and rumors are not comparable to the robust freedom of expression we enjoy in the West -- a freedom that we take advantage of on this very forum, where we are free to share information and criticize our Western governments however we please, anonymously or not.
If you're interested in learning about the USSR's treatment of people who spoke against the state, the accounts of the dissidents themselves makes excellent reading. There are entire libraries dedicated to preserving the experience of people imprisoned and killed for crimes of expression in the USSR and its satellites, written in their own words.
I don't know if you really intended to compare the imprisonment and murder of people for crimes of expression, religion, or ethnicity under authoritarian states to the PC movement in the West, but if you are, I have to question whether you actually experienced the former.