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In the Soviet Union, the "blasphemers" were actually tried in a show trial, which sent them to labor camps. All they did was to write satire that did not go wel

• gambiting 6y ago
  The point everyone seems to be missing here is that it's not like if you said something bad about the party then bam, off to the labour camps you went. The entire Soviet Union would be one huge labour camp if that was the case. That would happen to you if you somehow got published in a newspaper being critical of the government. Or if you were say a headmaster of a school or the director of a state owned company - then yeah, the punishment would be pretty severe. But your regular Joe making a bad comment at the wrong time? You'd definitely lose your job first, few phone calls to the right place and it would happen. Or maybe you got a mandatory re-assignment to a middle of bumfuck nowhere. Not a labour camp, just the same job you were doing already, but in a small town out thousands of km away from your family. Or maybe you were waiting in a queue to get a flat assigned to you - well, that's not happening anymore. Like, my point is, there were escalating punishments to criticizing the government. Some people here suggest that it was like "say something bad about the government = black volga picks you up and you disappear forever". It wasn't that unless you had certain amount of outreach.