Back in the 80’s, when I was manning the barricades against the Soviets, I used to wonder what it would be like to be a hapless Russian.
Like William Hurt and his detective workplace in the movie Gorky Park, it would be dreary, cold, dark and forlorn. Life would be like that for the vast masses. Like him, I would live with the knowledge that a single wrong move and the KGB could snatch me away... And the myth of the common man in charge would be destroyed with the knowledge of the life of leisure the politically privileged had. The ones I worked for, the ones I encountered along the way.
I couldn’t imagine a Russian having a normal life, and scoffed at Sting and the Police’s song, “Do the Russians Love Their Children, Too?” I would reply, “Not with all those nuclear missiles!”
But now, almost 40 years later...?
I don’t know what went wrong, but we’re living that dark, forlorn life, where with one wrong move, the FBI can snatch you away.
What a great post and so true now. One wrong word and your life is ruined by a combination of financial and physical attacks and soon we will just be taken away.