I remember what the USSR looked like. The lines for bread. The people afraid of their Government, their neighbors. The generation after me has no memory or knowledge of Communism.
I had four engineers-turned-programmer working for me and all were from former Soviet Republics; Rita from Belarus, Serge from Azerbaijan, Yuriy from Ukraine and Katerina from Russia. They had some stories to tell. The oppression was all pervasive, even to getting a driver’s license. I would take them all to lunch about once a month and just asked questions and listened to their stories and jokes. They couldn’t understand how people born here could be so gullible about what was coming.