Saying something very contrary to the establishment always had consequences (and still has, even in the US). Under Stalin, the consequences were lethal. At other times, plenty of people disagreed with the establishment and were just fine. My problem with your original statement was that it was very much a blanket statement. It applied to some parts of USSR's history and less to others.
In USSR, I recall propaganda that said that everyone in the US was racist and that blacks were uniformly mistreated. Of course, the reality is that there was slavery, there was the civil rights movement and that now things are different. Broad statements like that smack of propaganda.
