By Ilya Magid

About Dictatorship

I arrived from the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union collapsed. Right now instead of the Soviet Union there are 15 independent countries. They are free countries similar to the United States, but they have a lot of problems.

The Soviet Union was a dictatorship.

There are different types of dictatorships. Each one realized a different level of control over politics, economics and information (USSR, fascist Germany, present China, etc.)

I think the dictatorships are less effective than democracies because they limited options to a greater extent then democracies.

I think also that the Soviet dictatorship realized its own control the most fully.

Government controlled all newspapers and TV and all books, etc. All the journalists and writers had to show their articles and books to government censors, who decided whether to print them or not.

All plants and shops, including publishing houses, belonged to the Government. The Government fixed income for the worker and prices in the shops. There was a monopoly of foreign trade. (The government decided what to sell abroad and what to buy from abroad.)

One could not organize a protest against the government because he would be sent to prison. One could not travel to other countries because that was forbidden.

The education from kindergarten, secondary school, through college, advocated only communist ideology and atheism.

There were a lot of secret agents among the people who informed the KGB about people who had different opinions (told anecdotes against leaders of the communists, etc.) The court issued sentences for the people whose names were submitted by the KGB. The KGB controlled those courts and they were closed to the public.

A big paradox was that we knew about that after the collapse of the dictatorship. In the time of the dictatorship a majority of people knew nothing about that.

Some persons, such as journalists, writers, persons who had experience with protests, prisoners who were sentenced for such articles in prison, and some other people, certainly knew about that.

Communists explained to us that our life was the best in the world.
The Soviet People were living with a dream about the building of communism. Communist propaganda taught us that a principle of communism is, "To work according to one's ability, and to receive according to one's needs". We would not have any money during that period. The people understood that they would work where they wanted and do what they wanted. They could also refuse to work. Their lives didn't depend on their work. If they wanted, they could live as an American millionaire.

The Soviet people ate and dressed poorly and lived in bad dwellings. The communists called the Soviet people to work and to make many sacrifices so future generations could live under communism.

At last in the 60's Khruschev announced "Our generation will live under communism." Many papers were written on this subject.*
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* Khruschev, unfortunately, did not achieve life under communism. I achieved what communism had promised. I am a retired citizen in America.
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For a confirmation of their idealistic theory the Communists tested their theory on a hundred million people (not with dogs). Their testing continued for 70 years. During this period 20 to 60 million people were killed or perished in prisons or died from hunger. The experiment was a total disaster.

It was amazing that the experiments were even possible.

It was possible only under total dictatorship.

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