daily life behing the Iron Curtain

[Doug Henwood]

It's amazing for someone who grew up hearing the most hysterical cold 
war propaganda to read these tales from Woj of daily life in Poland 
and from ChrisD of the kids in Komsomol drinking, flirting, and 
listening to Pink Floyd. Has anyone done anything on daily life under 
formerly existing socialism?

A college friend of mine who spoke fluent Russian and spent a year in 
the USSR in the late 1970s told me that she missed the intensity of 
friendship and conversation, the likes of which she'd never seen in 
the US. (She got recruited by the CIA when she got home - fluent 
Russian and a Wharton MBA too.) Has that survived the end of the USSR?

Doug