The soviet people, how they were enslaved, from their own words... Sounds familiar?

I was just re-reading the book The Gulag Archipelago from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Now with all the TSA BS and the violation of rights every day... we ask ourselves... how can this happen? How can people act like slaves like that and not fight back?

Here's why :

Universal innocence also gave rise to the universal failure to act. Maybe they won't take you? Maybe it will all blow over? A. I. Ladyzhensky was the chief teacher in a school in remote Kologriv. In 1937 a peasant approached him in an open market and passed him a message from a third person: "Aleksandr Ivanich, get out of town, you are on the list!" But he stayed: After all, the whole school rests on my shoulders, and their own children are pupils here. How can they arrest me? (Several days later he was arrested.) Not everyone was so fortunate as to understand at the age of fourteen, as did Vanya Levitsky: "Every honest man is sure to go to prison. Right now my papa is serving time, and when I grow up they'll put me in too." (They put him in when he was twenty-three years old.)

The majority sit quietly and dare to hope. Since you aren't guilty, then how can they arrest you? It's a mistake! They are already dragging you along by the collar, and you still keep on exclaiming to yourself: "It's a mistake! They'll set things straight and let me out!" Others are being arrested en masse, and that's a bothersome fact, but in those other cases there is always some dark area: "Maybe he was guilty . . . ?" But as for you, you are obviously innocent! You still believe that the Organs are humanly logical institutions: they will set things straight and let you out.

So why not flee?

Why, then, should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you'll only make your situation worse; you'll make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake. And it isn't just that you don't put up any resistance; you even walk down the stairs on tiptoe, as you are ordered to do, so your neighbors won't hear.

So what if you had fought back?

[And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur—what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

But no...

If ... if ... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more—we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure!

Same thing happening now.

I see we knew.

No, the situation in post-war Russia, was nothing like what is going on now.

If today was anything like Russia in the 30s-40s ATS wouldn't exist. The internet would be more locked down then China's. Think 1984.

Things could be a lot worse. Modern day America is nothing like the dictatorships that once existed.

Now enjoy your freedom of being allowed to be late to work without having to be interrogated by special forces as to why you were late.

Had an uncle who grew up in 1950's Russia. He broke a bus window to get arrested instead of being late to work. Because at least this way he had an alibi. If he showed up to work late with no alibi it was assumed that he was late because he was conspiring against the motherland.

reply to post by Dr. Strange


I'm not saying we're Soviet Russia. I'm just showing the mentally of the people, why they are bowing down, why they let themselves be enslaved.

How we have the same MENTALITY.

reply to post by Vitchilo


Same mentality?

Once again, No. Russian's didn't protest. They didn't vote. They didn't talk about it because they accepted that they couldn't change it. We can change things. We talk about change. We want change. Obama's whole rise to president was based on a promise of change.

Your basing everything you know about 20th century Russia on the journal entry of one person.

Thanks for letting me know about that book, I'll check it out.

I do agree that we in the USA are increasingly having similar views as those in the old USSR.

People here love the State, they worship it almost. People always defend the gov't from my accusations, suspicions, and statements about the gov't. Blindly too at that.

They can be 100% wrong factually, but will get Angry, Insulting, and even want to fight just because I dared to mention a conspiracy theory. I have heard people say that anyone talking bad on the gov't should be arrested, more than one occasion.

People on average, are so dependant and subserviant to the State, and so desparate for gratitude from it, that they will turn in their own family or friends. They will turn in their mother,father, children, etc.

A good example of this pointless snitching over totally irrelevant issues, is the "Drug War".

A typical American would turn in their own child to the police, if they found drugs in their kids room.

They are brainwashed into thinking "I am trying to HELP".
But in reality they are Helping the State enslave and shackle them.

Then that child is locked up, put before a kangaroo court and charged with crimes based on shoddy evidence and then faces all types of punishments. From forced labor ("community service"), jail time, rehab programs (which are basically like loony bins and they treat you like garbage). The list goes on.

On yeah and then the parent happily pays the 5000$ fine.

And they could have just been responsible parents, smacked their kids a bit, and avoided all of that bull crap.

So yea, the USA is definately getting closer and closer to the USSR every day. Slowly but surely.
Baby steps.

In 2050, we will almost certainly be going to prison for being late to work. "Work is for responsible people, being late to work is for irresponsible people, irresponsible people are an enemy of the state etc".

I wouldn't label the USSR as "Communist" either. They were clearly Fascist-Authoritarians.

Something we are increasingly becoming.

It's a simple solution. Everyone stop flying. Once they realize its bad business, they will adopt a new policy.