General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Remember the old Soviet Union? [View all]Igel
(35,404 posts)The infrastructure for electronic communication is there.
Not sure about phone calls and mail. There's not the manpower for that and voice recognition isn't able to process that many calls. Then again the USSR just had a lot of tape recorders (and before that, paid listeners).
But the USSR's security apparatus wasn't that kind of surveillance. And the round up of domestic enemies and their persecution preceded the surveillance system. It was the *reason* for the system to be built. It wasn't focused on outsiders; it was focused on enemies of the state, political enemies. Black Marias were common when phones were still fairly rare.
And the entire "listening to phone calls" or "reading the mail" wasn't the worst of it. That was minor. You had to know who to eavesdrop on first. For that they managed to have a large number of people who, out of fear, loyalty, pay, or gain informed on others. Then there wasn't anything like a reasonable trial. You'd be arrested, held, sentenced, and transported--and only then would your wife be told you'd been arrested. Eventually a letter would come. Perhaps.
If you were unlucky you'd go to a GULag. Most people survived there. The economy depended on it. Of course, the GULags weren't necessarily camps with barbed wire. Often they were administrative centers and the "prisoners" were distributed in surrounding areas but had to stay there and be monitored. They couldn't leave--if they left the local police wherever they went would find them. You needed to register with the police when you moved, and if you didn't have a residence permit you couldn't stay more than a certain length of time. This was still true in the '80s. It was hard to get a permit to move to a highly desirable place. But if you were politically marked the process still had to be vetted by a political authority.
In some cases relatives only found out what happened to their kin after the KGB archives were opened. And before Putin closed them because they were giving the country a bad rep.
Had Snowden lived in the USSR, he wouldn't have gotten away. He would have been monitored and picked up before he managed to do much harm. If he managed to get away from home, he wouldn't have been able to get out of the country without a visa and plane ticket. And if he did, he would have had no money--and if he accepted money from people abroad, that would be a crime in itself. Odds are he wouldn't have lived long enough to do much without the help of another government.
Hyperbole is only just so useful. Then it becomes self-parody.