Thanks for the joke. I assume all the Soviet bloc countries were like this. Having lived in Romania during its communist years, it seemed that every single person who was not a communist wanted to leave or at least thought about it. After my parents managed to get out and get to the US, we met a lot of others from various Eastern European countries as well as Russia who all had pretty incredible stories of escape. I think for others who had not been there, it's incredibly difficult to imagine the conditions that would lead people, including people with families and small children, to literally risk their lives (or at least torture and jail) to get out, oftentimes without their children, not knowing if they would ever make it or see their family ever again. If there is a "hell," I doubt it's worse than communism.