Re:Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet ...
by rdtsc on Friday July 06, 2018 @01:28PM
(#17473324)
> Break ins were 50/50 annual events.
It really depends on the city and region. For example some of the people I went to school with ended up as serial burglars and pickpocket. Most came from broken homes with alcoholic or otherwise absent parents. Many were caught, sent to prison, then back out again presumably becoming even more hardened criminals. Others from the same school though ended up as software devs in the West, accountants and CEOs.
Going by personal narratives you can basically support either point of view. I've lived in more dangerous places in US in general, yet I've experience more personal harassment and bullying in the Soviet Union in the 80's than here in US. It's just hard to compare overall without good statistics.
Re:Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet ...
by mc32 on Friday July 06, 2018 @11:32AM
(#17472227)
Huh. Interesting. Maybe it depended on where you lived. The people I’ve talked to from the former USSR were all city folk, West of the Urals
Re:Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet ...
by AlexandrB on Friday July 06, 2018 @11:36AM
(#17472270)
Ukraine had plenty of crime under the USSR as well. My mom was shocked when arriving in Canada that people kept their doors unlocked or even open for most of the day in the suburbs.
Whaaaaaaaat? Well, according to official statistics.
From my father's side, we had relatives living in a closed down military city, but they were totally paranoid about break-ins during "Peak Brezhnev." Break ins were 50/50 annual events.
Street poverty existed as well, just not in big cities, where classless were either branded as substance abusers and locked away in jail, or being labeled as mentally ill and locked away in jail.
The regime tried really, really hard to make it appear that there were something wrong with the classless people, and "you keep your head low and everything be alright"