Awareness, UntoHim, thank you brothers. It's really tough and frustrating for me when I am trying to talk to my wife. My talks seem to be useless, but I still hope that God helps me to plant some seeds. Anyway, I thank God for everything. My experience helped me realize that if I can't change my wife, I'd better start changing myself.
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Originally Posted by Truth
In the past, multiple 'new ones' have told me that the Local Church reminds them of communist dictatorship.
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I spent my childhood and schooldays in the USSR. I remember our meetings and how proud we were for we belonged to the first communist country. We were absolutely sure that we lived in the best country in the world, our leaders were the most intelligent ones, and communism was the best system of social organization. Our enemies, i.e. those foreigners who opposed the USSR and the Party were spawn of hell: Western capitalists, militarists, imperialists, and just naive folks, deceived by corrupted American politicians. Of course, it was us who were deceived by our own corrupted politicians. But we had no idea about that. Our believes had a "solid ground". We had great science, Yuri Gagarin was the first person in space, we had free medicine (including surgery and dental treatment), free education (kindergarten, school, college, university), we didn’t know such thing as unemployment, etc. It was all true. But it was only half-truth. We lived in a fallacious world created for us by our leaders. The past, the present, and prospects were filtered. We trusted everything. Every word from our leaders was the ultimate truth. Who wanted to oppose the ultimate truth? That would not be only suicidal but also mentally unbalanced. Since our leaders told us that black was white, it would be stupid of us to say that it was not white but red. We knew that the Western world was black and our world was white. We knew that the West was decaying, and the USSR was prospering. And we could not imagine that it was the other way around. Our ideology, based on lies, distrust, and control, was false, therefore the whole system was false.
As an ordinary Soviet schoolboy, I was a member of a few Communist organizations of schoolchildren. That was mandatory. In a way, it was fun, like the Scouts. But there were always sessions of brainwashing when our elder comrades told us fairy tales about how the US wanted to destroy the world and how the USSR was struggling consistently for universal peace. And we believed all that crap because there was no other information. We lived in, with, and by the myth. We were sure that the USSR was struggling for peace. And we had no idea that our country was sponsoring dictatorial regimes, with hope for communism to conquer the whole world one day. We didn’t know that “good grandfather Lenin” was not “the most kind man” but an arrogant and narrow-minded executioner. Of course, he didn’t murder people personally, with his own hands, but he made orders. However, for us Soviet kids, he was a holy man. That was the only Lenin we knew. There was no alternative reality. Any word against the Party, her leaders or politics could make you a pariah, social outcast.
Thank God, the last 10 years of the USSR were quite liberal. In Stalin's time, any critical remark could cost man his life or 10 years in a labor camp. However, control, manipulation, and lack of freedom of speech were always there. But we didn’t feel that. It was a part of the system. And it was a part of us. We were like a man who were born with chains around his legs but never noticed the chains because he didn't know the difference. He got used to his chains so much that he didn’t imagine a life without them. Moreover, he had fear to fall if he loses his chains. And we were like that. We wore chains but we thought we were free. We blindly followed instructions of our elder comrades and never questioned a thing. To question the ideology meant to lose your identity. From a good Soviet man, you turn yourself into a capitalist henchman, traitor, and servant of your Motherland’s enemy.
BTW, not many people know that the USSR was not a communist state. The ideology was communist but the USSR was a socialist state, ruled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin wanted to build a communist state but 75 years later the experiment failed.
Well, it’s a different topic and a long talk. So I'd better to stop here. Anyway, I don’t want to say that everything in the USSR was bad. Not at all. I had a great childhood. But since the system was based on half-truth, lies, and constraint, it had only two ways: to reform itself or collapse. The reforms didn’t work out and the system didn’t survive in the real world. When the control weakened, the myth died, the truth came out and everything started to collapse like a house of cards. Will the LRC collapse like the USSR? I doubt it. The control, lack of information, and lack of freedom of speech are still there. But it’s a good thing that we have a forum like this where everyone is free to discuss his or her opinion.