Reply #8: My wife grew up in the Soviet Union

[Union Thug]

And cannot believe the BS propaganda spewed by the US regarding what her life was supposed to have been like.

Her mother and father both were factory workers. Dad had a motorcycle/sidecar rig, they had a garden, she has fond memories of summers spent there. They had health car, they had free access to university education (from which my wife received the equ. of two masters degrees), she had a year off paid when her child was born, her child had free health care, AND... this is something that shocked her when she came to the state... she said never, in her experience, did she ever see a homeless veteran in the Soviet Union. She was shocked to see vietnam vets on the streets or suffering to survive.

She says that there were obviously some problems... like having to keep any religious beliefs under wraps, for example (at risk of threats to your job), but to compare her life (which was apparently a very average one in terms of economics/class) to the propaganda machine spewed by the US gov is an exercise in caricatures.

For a good alternative read from a Lithuanian Soviet dissident, check out: Discovering America As It Is by Valdas Anelauskas

http://www.efn.org/~rolanda/discovering/america.html