> This pervasive atmosphere is nowhere to be seen in the pictures, but of course they had to remind you that these are the ebil commies. My mother was an avid

> This pervasive atmosphere is nowhere to be seen in the pictures, but of course they had to remind you that these are the ebil commies. My mother was an avid polish communist born and raised in communist Poland and there isn't a communist country that she didn't travel from east Germany to Uzbekistan and Yugoslavia. Yes, as you point out, people living in the Soviet Union were just normal people with their everyday problems: the boss, the colleagues, groceries, buying some new tech (e.g. radio), family, health, etc. I think it is very false to depict secret police as having such a huge role in everyday's Russia life. What was slightly different in Soviet Russia compared to other countries members of the Warsaw Pact is that there was more control on movement. She and my father too recollect how going to some village 80 miles from Moscow had them stopped and controlled for documents and purpose of their trip like 4 times. That tended to fade the further you went and increase around major cities like Moscow. I wouldn't really say secret police had such a huge role in day by day, but the "police state" of control did. Other things that were quite heavily controlled were phone calls. People had all kinds of secret codes when communicating with people abroad because everyone assumed someone was listening and recording. But I really cannot stress how average Ivan didn't really care or felt all of that control nor cared unless he did something heavily (politically) risky. I often ask my family that lived in the Warsaw Pact countries, either in Russia, mostly Poland and Ukraine if they didn't feel there was a lack of freedom, etc, and they all said they didn't care nor think about it at all. They were thinking where to go to vacation, what to prepare for lunch or sporting activities, etc. It should also be noted that all of those countries never experienced a much "different" state of affairs. My grandmother was born in Nazi Germany, her mother under the Haubsburg's Austrian empire, her husband was born in Prussia. And they all were born in a 30 miles radius. There was always a ruler, repression and control. If anything, for those people, communist regimes brought the most freedom and best standard of lives they ever even dreamed of. It only got in the late 70s and early 80s that the system started tracking, people weren't blind and could see that people in western countries had it much better and kept growing while communist countries capped in their economic and social evolution. New generations didn't even remember the Tsarist or Prussian times, they looked at America, at West Germany at France and thought the situation was bad.