I have grown up in a country occupied by communists and of course everybody was trying to escape across the iron curtain. Nevertheless, the reasons were becaus

I have grown up in a country occupied by communists and of course everybody was trying to escape across the iron curtain. Nevertheless, the reasons were because people hated being forced to do and to say things that they did not want to do and to say, and because there were many categories of things that they were completely forbidden to own. On the other hand, among the few categories of things that they could have, many were quite nice things in comparison with what is available today everywhere. For instance the quality of clothes and of food has been lowered dramatically after the communists lost the power, the internal market was opened to global commerce and the local factories had been destroyed by their managers (who had stolen all their assets in order to transform themselves from communist bureaucrats into capitalist businessmen).