A first-hand visit to the Soviet Union in the early 1970s revealed extreme dreariness: empty streets, scarce goods, shoddy buildings, and almost no consumer choice. Even major cities like Moscow and Leningrad felt lifeless compared with Western capitals.

Everyday shopping required multiple lines and vouchers, while ordinary citizens were barred from foreign-currency stores reserved for tourists. The contrast with ordinary Western grocery shopping was stark and lasting.

The author argues today’s “Democratic Socialists” have never experienced real socialism and should study the lived reality of places like the old USSR before promoting similar systems in America.

So-called “Democratic Socialists” are winning elections in America (New York City and Colorado). I’m sure that no one who either is running on a socialist platform or who voted for a socialist candidate has ever visited a real socialist country.

One of the reasons is that there are not that many left. I can think only of Cuba and North Korea. Older voters may have been to some of the nations in Eastern Europe before the Iron Curtain fell around thirty-five years ago. I know of several former Air Force officers with whom I served who visited East Berlin and one long-time friend who went to Romania on a Fulbright scholarship in the late sixties. None of these gentlemen had anything good to say about what they saw or, in the case of the Fulbright scholar, what they endured there. But I saw the mother of all socialist countries—the Soviet Union—in the early 1970s as a young Air Force officer. The following is just what I actually saw there. I’ll try not to inject what others have said that may be interpreted as propaganda. The following will be a first-person account of what life is like in a real socialist country.

First—Some Background

It was the early 1970s and US President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev had reached an agreement to de-escalate the Cold War in a set of policies called detente. Visits to one another’s country were loosened and encouraged. I was a young Air Force officer based in England at one of the key bases of US nuclear deterrence. Frankly, nothing changed from a force posture standpoint, but word came down that we all were encouraged to go to the Soviet Union on leave.

First, the higher ups went and reported back that it was okay and that our eyes would be opened. So my wife and I booked a tour through an English tour company. We were joined by another Air Force officer and his wife. The........

© Eurasia Review