Yes and no. If you get too popular or too annoying, a bullet one morning will greet you on your way to work, many cases like that. Or some fabricated case and 1

Yes and no. If you get too popular or too annoying, a bullet one morning will greet you on your way to work, many cases like that. Or some fabricated case and 10 years of hardcore ural prison. The borders are open all right, no reason to close them. People opposing the regime are going away, the best possible outcome for dictator. No need to waste a lot of time and manpower on finding dissent if it just disappears on their own. And so population becomes a bit more docile, ignorant or even cooperating. This was happening in former communist countries too - not everybody who spoke up against the regime went to jail. Some were just thrown to western Europe and forbidden to come back.