Re: Classy Viking. (Not personal, just a rebuttal of the topic.)
I visited the Soviet Union in 1982. I cannot describe what a grim, broken-spirited people I saw, and I fully came to understand the fatalistic / nihilistic thread underpinning classic "Russian Humor"
You know what grinds my gears? People who think state-enforced rule over what can and cannot be private property, grinding away under a state-planned command economy, being asked "Who are you and where are you going" by state police every 10 miles, or at anytime in the city - - - can somehow be a good or even a tolerable thing.
You have 0% unemployment, yes, but gov't picks your job and
you will be arrested if you quit, fail to show up, or don't work hard enough. See - we have no unemployment, if a factory cannot produce because of no demand, then they make you produce anyways, and store the stuff in out back in the field because one day someone will buy it, we hope. (The audacity of hope!) Then when you run out of materials the police make all of you show up anyway and sweep the floors twice a day - and you haven't gotten paid in weeks. (Neither have the police, btw.) This was known as "the workers' paradise!"
Or that living under
Article 58 (hyperlink) can somehow be a good thing.
Wikipedia summary
here.How about sending 20 million of your own citizens to die in gulags. Great fun.
1/4 of my wife's family (in Soviet Lithuania) were arrested and 'disappeared' in 1940 ~ 1944. This is no joke.
In other towns people who just happened to have that same last name were simply arrested.
Writing names down would be evidence of treason, so her elders would recite the names by memory every Christmas Eve dinner so they are not forgotten.
Family name lists can be found today in the archives of the Lithuanian Heritage Foundation in Chicago. We went there on our 5th anniversary.
If YOU ever get 'disappeared' by the government, know that it's not about
you**. Their purpose is to terrify (and maintain government fear and control over) all the people still on the outside who
knew you - family, classmates, club members, customers. What happened to the man who ran the little hobby train store in the strip mall? Don't ask, you might be
next - the person you ask would be afraid of being arrested for 'failure to report a collaborator.'
Arresting one person can keep 25 ~ 50 people silent, obedient to their government, and under control.
Leningrad: A city-full of people and not ONE with a smile. I saw it myself. And you want to live like THAT?!?
** You are 'dead' from that moment on. Completely pwned by The State. The sooner you realize that the easier the rest of your life can be - in prison, in 'citizen re-education work camps,' etc.