I asked a simple question of a former Soviet friend of mine:
"Why didn't people just leave the Soviet Union. Given its geographical size, wasn't it impossible to keep 150 million people in?"
The answer was amazing and tragic. Especially the bit about the maps.
It truly was an evil empire.
Posted by Captain at October 29, 2012 8:31 PMThe comments at Clarissa's site are interesting..
Sometimes I meet people that think it's no problem that those stuck in the east bloc / Cuba couldn't leave, after all that was provided to them.
It is then, that I see gun control working in their favor.
Parasites don't let their productive hosts escape.
Posted by: BillyHW at October 29, 2012 9:22 PMthe only thing "new" in that article was the bit about maps, that one had never crossed my mind, and I'd never heard that before, the rest, well, anyone my age who read at all would know this stuff
Every dictatorship must control the following to succeed,the public access to weapons IE:gun control,Government influence over the media especially electronic media,thank God for Sun News,thirdly freedom of movement of average citizens must be controlled and documented.If the NDP ever form our National Government look for number three to be implemented ASAP,most of the first two requirements are already in place if a motivated left wing Federal Government was elected.
Posted by: Frankemm at October 29, 2012 10:03 PMThis is disturbing:
http://rt.com/news/canada-police-spy-bill-c-30-455/
Posted by: Lucky Lori at October 29, 2012 10:04 PMThis is one of many examples to point to say that the people behind the curtain don't want to be there. If the state is such a workers paridise then why fear people traveling and seeing the world. They would see the folly of capitalism and return enmass. /s
North Korea threatened to shell the south if protesters sent balloons with messages across the boarder. If the great leader is so grand what do they fear from a dozen message balloons...
Posted by: Duff man at October 29, 2012 10:05 PMA reader may get the impression that the USSR was a law and order state. That's not quite accurate. The state was defied at times when people got a chance.
During the mobilization for the planned Polish invasion in 1981, draft evasion was so rampant as to be impossible to punish. People had been secretly listening to foreign radio broadcasts. Theft from military inventories (except weapons) happened off and on.
Food riots did break out in Novocherkassk in 1962, although they were brutally put down. East German troops would siphon off gas and sell it to western tourists. A handful of Muscovites would wear Los Angeles Olympics 1984 T-shirts. Examples abound.
(Interesting to learn of the ban on maps. Another everyday item that was banned was the telephone directory!)
Posted by: Rizwan at October 29, 2012 10:14 PMA reader may get the impression that the USSR was a law and order state. That's not quite accurate. The state was defied at times when people got a chance.
During the mobilization for the planned Polish invasion in 1981, draft evasion was so rampant as to be impossible to punish. People had been secretly listening to foreign radio broadcasts. Theft from military inventories (except weapons) happened off and on.
Food riots did break out in Novocherkassk in 1962, although they were brutally put down. East German troops would siphon off gas and sell it to western tourists. A handful of Muscovites would wear Los Angeles Olympics 1984 T-shirts. Examples abound.
(Interesting to learn of the ban on maps. Another everyday item that was banned was the telephone directory!)
Posted by: Rizwan at October 29, 2012 10:14 PMOne of my coworkers in the '80s had defected from Czechoslovakia in 1977 on a ski trip. His parents were fined and persecuted for years afterwards and when I met him he told me he would never see his family again. If he returned he would be jailed.
Happily communism fell some years later and he was able to return to visit.
Posted by: Al_in_Ottawa at October 29, 2012 10:21 PMDuffman, in North Korea, even your stomach knows that the government is lying.
The landscape of Russia made escape near impossible though it had been attempted.
Posted by: Osumashi Kinyobe at October 29, 2012 10:22 PMOne of the things I remembered well from my parents was needing an internal passport to travel in the former USSR. Thus, one of the things that annoyed me immensely was having to show identification before boarding a flight.
For a while I managed to get by with my hospital ID badge but then it seemed government issued identification was necessary and I could no longer convince people at the gate that it was government issued given that all medical care was state controlled. At one point, one of the people at the gate asked me for a passport and got an earful from me about travel restrictions in totalitarian countries. The same individual had absolutely no clue about requiring an internal passport in totalitarian states. So, now when I'm asked to show ID before getting on a plane, I show my FAC. I've had people at the gate visibly upset by this and not know what it was.
We're not as bad as the USSR - yet. I remember the days when I'd drive across the US border at the Pacific Border crossing and not have to show any identification whatever. The NRA sticker on my vehicle window probably helped. Unless people start to actively protest what is happening, it won't be long before we'll be thinking of the good old days of traveling in the USSR.
I worked with a Slovakian who had served in their military during the cold war. He said when they were doing border patrol they were once told to allow a person to break in.
Turns out they were letting back in an agent whose job it was to break out into Austria and test the iron curtain.
It was then they all realized their function was to keep people in.
Posted by: chris at October 29, 2012 10:55 PMShe certainly doesn't like Libertarians.
Apart from explaining how travel in the USSR worked, there was nothing interesting or useful there.
Thirty-five years ago I met a fellow who had left the USSR a few years previous with his parents. He had been somewhat reluctant to leave his wonderful homeland for the west with its rampant violent crime and poverty. He quickly changed his mind when he saw he had been duped by the state education system and media.
Posted by: WalterF at October 29, 2012 11:09 PMIt's impossible to control ones own liberty without attempting to control interactions with others.
WTF does 'control one's own liberty' mean? I'm guessing this is more dishonest duddle-fuddle from an angrycon.
Posted by: LAS at October 30, 2012 1:23 AMLibertarian is too WIDE of a label. I've talked to people who call themselves Libertarian, who want to be able to do almost anything that they WANT, which is LIBERTINE. I've talked to others who see NO DIFFERENCE in Democrat or Republican positions, who are APOLITICAL. I've talked to others who hold almost 100% Democrat positions, but say that they are Libertarian thru and thru. And then there are the PAUListinians, who seem to think that holding all 3 of those positions at the same time, plus thinking that RP is a genius make sense. Just my opinion, that I have formed over the years.
Posted by: bigmike at October 30, 2012 2:38 AMAs a comentator at the site suggests, a person only needs to read Solzhenitzyn's Gulags I, II, III to acquire an informed notion of how the Bolsheviks controlled the people of Russia. It began with gun/land confiscation combined with economic terrorism (if a person was not Red, he could not get a job or food cards; if a citizen did not work, he and his family did not eat.).
If a person is homeless , jobless, and broke; how could that person possibly leave?
Family was no asset as the KGB rewarded snitches and prosecuted those who did not snitch when they 'should' have (proof was never required).
Privacy was unknown; nothing belonged to any individual, hence nothing mattered in any real way. Women were brainwashed with the Amazon femi crap, children were raised and indoctrinated in daycare - most hated their parents if they were not 'bigshots'. The gument did not allow most people to live outside their cells in cities - worlds became very small. KGB were everywhere.
Black Marias (to take citizens down to the jail- house without other citizens seeing the prisoners inside) and the late night arrests were terrorist tactics that kept people terrified and docile. People 'disappeared' all the time and if anyone questioned the authorities, that person would be punished and/or also 'disappear'.
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson. Every Patriot's favorite Libertarian.
I know about the maps - when I visited Poland in 1983 no maps were sold anywhere. The people in Poland could not go for an overnight trip without a visa and visa's took at least a month to issue.
The spy bill peterj has linked to is spooky; soviet KGB - it must be stopped.
Al_in_Ottawa, 10:21p.m. --
While we're on the subject of ex-pat Soviet Bloc (Bloc Quebecois -- notice any similarities?) co-workers from the 1980s, I had the chance to work with a Ukrainian who told me this back in the day:
"All countries build fences, but there are only two types of countries. The difference is the purpose of the fence: one type of country builds fences to keep people out, while the other type of country builds fences to keep people in. You should learn the difference."
Posted by: David Southam at October 30, 2012 8:00 AMRecently we have been hearing news that the Homeland Security apparatchiki are expanding airport security theater to buses and trains.
The popular sentiment greeting this effort can be seen in the figures for firearms and ammunition.
Here in Canada the effort to lock us all down is less overt but still of concern. The Conservative Party has been going much slower than the Liberals in this area... but if Vic Toews and his spy bill are any indication they are still on the same track.
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." Gerald Ford said that, apparently.
Shrinking government and its influence is therefore the goal of any thinking individual at this time in history.
Posted by: The Phantom at October 30, 2012 8:04 AMIf a Soviet trawler arrives in a port with military facilities and you get in trouble for overtly keeping an eye on them?
You start to learn who the enemy is...
Posted by: Curious at October 30, 2012 8:48 AMTo enter Russia today requires an invitation from a Russian entity. Then one applies for a visa. The procedure only takes a few days, but all of the details
of one's entry point and time, internal travels, and exit point have to be specified. It is still not a good idea to lose one's exit paper.
In the Soviet Union internal passports were, I believe, required.
I have heard that in provincial universities even in the 1960s students of French were not told that it was a living language.
Posted by: John Lewis at October 30, 2012 10:53 AMAn associeate who was KGB, among other things pointed out that the wide Russian railway guage was not to hamper invaders.
Apparently, very soon after Russian rail began to be established in the 19th century....not just narrow guage was found impractical but standard guage as well. Poorly constructed road beds and weather...frost heaving/muskeg made the wide guage the only way to keep the trains on the tracks.
The bolsheviks politicized this to suppress their shody infrastructure.
Posted by: sasquatch at October 30, 2012 12:44 PMYou don't know what 'checkmate' means. Or much else for that matter.
Posted by: LAS at October 30, 2012 12:47 PMsasquatch said: "An associeate who was KGB, among other things pointed out that the wide Russian railway guage was not to hamper invaders."
Now that is very interesting. I had always thought they changed the gauge to screw up the Germans before WWI.
Canadian railways are English Standard are they not? We don't seem to have any problem with weather. That means the Soviet builders must have been very bad indeed.
44guy said: "Sorry for a rant, consider me a troll if you want."
Trolls are idiots who comment for the purpose of creating anger on threads like this. People like LAS for example. No point to make, just flinging poo.
You actually have a point, so therefore not a troll. And you're right, Americans tend to be extremely insulated from outside opinions. Canadians too.
I'm heard some of the Balkan issues before, what I hear always depends which side I'm talking to. Got any specifics about the Kosovar mafia, what type of crap they get up to and where? Because I hear the Russian mafia is impacting huge in and around New York City. Driving the Italians into New Jersey.
Posted by: The Phantom at October 30, 2012 1:22 PM