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The USSR was a formidable power because of vassal states also known as good old imperialism, something Putin desperately tries to replicate. The mindset of Russia's leaders today isn't so different from Soviet times.
If that was the relationship, the USSR's constitution wouldn't have permitted SSRs to leave with a simple referendum, nor would they have suffered so much after breakup of the USSR. Instead we see their housing and public infrastructure has been left to rot without the cooperation and relative effectiveness of the USSR's economic system.
We know what imperialism looks like. When the UK built infrastructure in India and Africa, it consisted of railways from the mines to the ports. The literacy rate in India under Britain never got above 12%. The USSR built trains connecting even remote villages and subway systems in any city >1 million. Most of the former USSR countries still have some of the highest rates of educational attainment in the world.
The USSR blurred the line. There was decentralized industry and multiculturalism, but also Russian supremacy, genocide, and military conquest.
There was very much the threat of violence in 1990 and 1991, even if the original USSR framework was very liberal. Not to mention the USSR-led coups in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
It's also important to note that the Russian SFSR itself was an empire ruled from Moscow before the revolution. That did not change much after the revolution.
https://youtu.be/tVRUBs3T4ic
Do you honestly believe the USSR honored it's constitution? There were referendums because the dictator at the time decided to allow it. If Putin or Stalin were in charge at the time, this wouldn't have happened just like the decades of suppression and exploitation prior. It's very disrespectful and somewhat unhinged to claim all those vassal states had a choice all along and wanted to be part of the soviet union just because they were granted the privilege in the very end when the regime lost it's grip anyway. The truth is Moscow couldn't hold them together for much longer. Most of those states would just revolt even more so than they already did anyway.
Because yes, of course they tried to free themselves in the past but didn't have the means to do so previously. Similarly, Russia's vassal states today have no choice, as all elections and referendums are only for show and all leaders are installed by the Kreml.
Long story short: Constitutions in autocracies are worth as little as the paper they're written on.
They did absolutely not allow anyone to leave with simple referendum. They sent tanks against peaceful protesters who demanded independence
Hungary was never an SSR, Kruschev sent the tanks into the Hungarian People's Republic at the behest of their elected government to put down an uprising that had been coopted by fascists.
But yes they literally did secede, that was the legal mechanism which the SSRs broke off of the USSR in the 90s. It was enshrined in the soviet constitution.