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Comment by edgineer | Hacker News Reader

Stories of Russian war crimes personally experienced post-invasion told in my family

Sure, nobody is denying that. That does not contradict the argument (not mine) that perhaps people lived more secure lives under Soviet rule.

Note that I define "more secure" as in not living in fear of losing home and income. Not necessarily that their standard of living was as good as those in the West.

It depends: if you are part of the party and things are going good then yes. However, if you are from a group of people that you government has decided is trouble, then you tend to disappear in the night. Like my mother in law who says things where so safe when there was police on every corner in Spain during the dictatorship but my father in law was hiding "reds" under the floorboards as they where Jewish and being procecuted. One does not take away from the other, instead of criminals threatening you it's the government goons.

  > if you are from a group of people that you government has decided is trouble, then you tend to disappear in the night.

So this really is a case of survivorship bias. Those that survived the Soviet times, remember it, not fondly, but as a more secure time. Those that didn't survive, we don't hear their accounts very much.

  > my father in law was hiding "reds" under the floorboards as they where Jewish and being procecuted.

Why were the Jews being persecuted then?

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