The long wait list was because nobody would process the list. All the people that the regime considered needed phones already had them. All the rest were "waiting". Years later I found out that in my city there was plenty of capacity. I'm a telecommunications egineer.
I believe the coupled line didn't need any approval: the number was already allocated. If your neighbor wanted he could allow you to connect but he was on the hook if you did any "bad" stuff (like planning a Revolution). There was also a problem from where to buy the second phone...
As far as I know these were the rules. Like in any regime people could bend the rules or follow them to the letter. It all depended on the specific situation and the people involved.
There were amateur radio operators in the Eastern Bloc countries, with equipment capable of transmitting a signal to the opposite side of the Earth on a good day. But they were licensed by the government, and were aware that their activities were being watched.
The old regime really hated not having control over you. That was the most important thing. As long as they knew what you were doing, and approved, they were fine with almost anything.
I've built a few low-power FM transmitters back then, and I was aware of the possible dangers. It was more of a high-schooler's hobby. But teenagers like to push boundaries anyway.
On the other hand, it's misleading to draw too many inferences from extreme cases. I was arrested recently for having a bag of very ordinary picket signs while not being anywhere near a political demonstration in time or space, but the repression in question was local in scope.
What did you get for them?
I wore a red army belt buckle on my jeans for years afterwards. I think it's still sitting in my friend's attic in Amsterdam.
I believe a combination of digital exchanges coming in and the privatisation of British Telecom fixed it.
That was a thing indeed, but it was not "most likely", not even close.
They lived in the country, but not in an usually isolated area. 100% of the areas in rural areas had these in that region until the late 70s.
Some of the infrastructure was just retrofitted to provide private line service. I saw wood based mechanical switches in production (in very isolated areas in New York) circa 1997.
This was not a feature of a surveillance state, but an infrastructure cost/deployment issue.
Made BBS culture quite challenging for me. :-)
We call them party lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(telephony)
Mostly phased out by 90s.
An example of people trying to circumvent restrictions in Romania.
It's a shame that reality contradicts you then. See Allende's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn. In a much less positive vein, see China's rapidly developing communications infrastructure (hand in hand with massive surveillance and censorship)
I could imagine some kind of network developed by an Eastern Bloc nation before 1990, but it would have been extremely centralized, hierarchical, and very strictly controlled.
> see China's rapidly developing communications infrastructure
Things have changed meanwhile, even in China.
One of the reasons Cybersyn failed was because it was difficult to get private enterprises to cooperate with the central authority--either the Cybersyn group (which in the grand scheme of things was a relatively small affair), or any other government group. This was deeply frustrating to the government and to Allende. The pace of government takeovers was accelerating rapidly until Allende's assassination.
Of course, part of the reason private enterprise refused to cooperate was because of it's antagonistic relationship with Allende's government and the left generally. We could "blame" the capitalists for this failure. But that's sort of beside the point. The fact remains that for those and other reasons, Allende was on the path to something akin to communism (Venezuela if not Cuba) simply because that's where circumstances were leading him. He couldn't go around, under, or over the opposition; the only way to achieve his originally modest goals was to conquer the opposition--that is, nationalize the bulk of Chilean industry so he could directly pull the levers necessary to achieve his goals.
You're referencing the greatest historical demonstration of the positive, rapid results of abandoning Communism. Courtesy of Deng Xiaoping very publicly opening China to embracing market economics instead. To the extent China abandons Communism, is the extent to which they'll continue to develop.
They've even had to come up with a special name for it, because of how embarrassingly Communism failed in all regards compared to the post Xiaoping era.
Is this necessarily true? The rapid development is a because they opened up to other economies from a position of underdevelopment, but there has to be a set point somewhere considering they have a massive population and more or less the means of production.
That is the old thinking. Today many such countries are realizing that such information networks are great tools both for surveillance (China) and manipulation (Russia). Telephones were once seen a threat, until they realized that intercepting telephone calls is far easier than intercepting letters. North Korea is probably behind the curve on this front. Give everyone a smartphone. Get them to direct as much of their lives as possible through that phone. Now you can watch them better than ever before. That students will use the phones to organize protests pales in comparison to the intelligence streams they create.
How many people can send /receive such letters? You would have to be INSANE to put anything in writing, just as John Gotti didn't send memos on Gambino Family stationary. Merely complaining about brown veggies or lack of veggies would get you locked up for spreading dangerous propaganda.
The internet on the other hand...can spread those ideas in an instant. Not to mention planning
But most people were born into the regime eventually, they had no clue about alternatives. In fact they feared the alternatives. Dangerous ideas were nipped in the bud and entire families sent to each country's version of Siberia.
They didn't need to intercept much: Just as most US citizens in a "decent" neighborhood would report a shooting, quite a few would report even their family members for saying dangerous things. Then, a nice chunk were officially part of "KGB" network, informers. Maybe 10% of the population...
Asking the population to report on itself has limitations. They have to know what is to be reported. They need to know what is good and bad. But what if the dangerous idea is something that you don't want the population to know anything about? What if you want to supress an idea without anyone knowing what you are doing? That's the modern context: removing data and changing stories without anyone knowing that you are pulling strings.
Oh they did. Everything foreign, anything that is not the party line. Report to the local police and they sort it out, keep an eye on things. When you risk 20 years in a gulag AND your family sent away you keep your mouth shut. You learn from other people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny would have lasted 30 minutes under Stalin, give or take a few :)
Also North Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network)
Makes me think about a virtual Berlin Wall of sorts, which in the history of things is an obscure wall in that it was built no so much to keep things and people out but to keep people in.
Quoting a book I recently read that taught me this is in order...
"""Communist regimes have routinely refused their citizens the right to exit--that is, to escape--the misery and destruction they have implemented within their own borders. In some cases, they erected walls to lock the masses into their workers' paradise: cement barriers patrolled by secret police with guns aimed not outward at some perceived enemy seeking to enter, but inward upon the unarmed, immiserated populace. The ultimate symbols of that repression were the Berlin Wall, erected in August 1961 to keep the East Germans from fleeing to free West Berlin, and the fenced in people-zoo that was the Soviet Gulag, the prison system created by Lenin and Stalin.""" The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism – Paul Kengor
I have no belief that Trump wishes to keep people in! But once things are implemented, scope creep almost always follows. And US border "protection" is scrutinizing departing passengers as well as arriving ones.
Could think of it the other way. They would invest it in it so they can ensure people only transmit the right information.
Stasi or KGB would love to have access to something like Facebook.
They could only dream about making all people carry a device which can record and report precise location and all movements and allow listening and watching through the device remotely at any time.
Are you talking about landline telephones? Everybody had those, it was not a privilege.
> They invested some on PCs but only until it became clear that they allowed easy access to information. Then it was dead.
OTOH there was an industry that was making 8-bit personal computers, that were using cassette tapes as external memory - mostly Sinclair Spectrum clones, and at least one or two local designs that never quite caught up. Those tended to be owned by schools and other institutions.
> no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime
Right. That was the real crux of the issue.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://...
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://...
Being stopped by police with paint, roll of paper, or underground bulletin meant instant prison.
People who work in elite tiers in the U.S., e.g. finance, tend to have a similar mentality. Granted they get a bit more thrown at them in the way of trinkets (e.g. a nice condo or house, rather than a basket of oranges) in exchange for keeping their heads down and not rocking the boat. And they don't have to worry about getting shot or sent to a labor camp (or more commonly, banned from professional employment) specifically. But the basic mentality is basically the same.
the difference between capitalist societies and dictatorships, communist regimes, and the like is, the majority of that the powerful have access to the every man does as well. there is no restriction from buying as much as you can afford. there is no one saying you need to wait for your turn to buy food or what brands you can buy.
so, no we don't have anything in common with these people described. we just don't have the ability to really conceive how much of the world had to live and even today have to live. Oh sure we can say "I understand" but we really don't. if we did we would realize how much of what we rant about is so truly meaningless
But access to health care, or (in many neighborhoods) even reasonably nutritious food and safe drinking water - that's quite another matter.
> the difference between capitalist societies and dictatorships, communist regimes, and the like is, the majority of that the powerful have access to the every man does as well. there is no restriction from buying as much as you can afford. there is no one saying you need to wait for your turn to buy food or what brands you can buy.
No, that's the difference between a society with scarcity and one without. Rationing has existed in the West, too - outside of war time.
The difference between a communist society and a capitalist one is who owns the means of production, and how the economic profits from it are distributed.
The Communist Party of the USSR owned the means of production, but distributed the profits from it incredibly unequally. [1] (For decades, the party promised that communism would be reached Soon(tm). And we just need everyone to work hard for a few more years...)
Capitalists (And, to a smaller extent, people with 401Ks) of the USA own the means of production, and distribute the profits from it incredibly unequally. (While telling half the population that they too are going to be wealthy. Just work hard for a few more years... And vote Republican - because taxes and regulation and foreigners are the reason they are poor.)
The reason you can buy Coca-Cola at 7-11 is because the USA produces more then enough staples. Were there a serious, long-term food shortage, you'd see ration cards[2] being implemented before you could say 'But, markets!'
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz
> In a kolkhoz, a member received a share of the farm's product and profit according to the number of days worked, whereas a sovkhoz employed salaried workers. In practice, most kolkhozy did not pay their "members" in cash at all. In 1946, 30 percent of kolkhozy paid no cash for labor at all, 10.6 paid no grain, and 73.2 percent paid 500 grams of grain or less per day worked.[5] In addition the kolkhoz was required to sell its grain crop and other products to the State at fixed prices. These were set by Soviet government very low, and the difference between what the State paid the farm and what the State charged consumers represented a major source of income for the Soviet government.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd%E2%80%93even_rationing#U.S...
So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Keep people in the dark and they might be happy with their misserable life. Even people closer to the regime believed they had a good life because they received bananas and oranges before every Christmas...