[Viliam1234]

You can't speak freely at home when your little children hear you, because there is a risk they will repeat your words in public, which can get you in trouble. It's probably also quite dangerous with teenagers around; they may get a wrong idea about appearing cool to their peers by saying something that can't be say, and then get reported on.

First, you need to make sure your children understand the magnitude of danger from repeating what they heard at home. That requires some maturity and intelligence, but more importantly the idea that "there are important truths that you can get punished for saying in a wrong place" is itself one of those important truths that you can get punished for saying in a wrong place, so you either need to approach this very very carefully or take a risk and hope for the best.

[the_grue]

Are you talking out of experience or just theorizing? Because I was there. People were telling Gorbachov & Reagan jokes all the time in their kitchens, that was just a normal part of life.

[Viliam1234]

Experience. I was in the role of the teenager.

Yes, some jokes were okay, especially the toothless ones. Like, making a joke about being poorer or having worse quality of products than the West was relatively safer than making a joke about party members killing each other or hurting random people.

It also depended on who could hear you, and what kind of a job your parents had. The better job, the greater risk of losing your job for saying wrong stuff.

Also, "speak quite freely at home" is more than just jokes. I am pretty sure most people would not feel safe discussing The Gulag Archipelago at home.

[the_grue]

Well, I was talking about jokes. I do agree that people were more careful about voicing serious dissent, but then who actually did that? A very small handful of political activists, the rest just never went there, because a) usually their friends and family already agreed with them about politics b) everyone felt powerless to change anything c) everyone was too preoccupied with survival in the tough Soviet reality.

[Fins]

Gorbachev and Reagan, sure. Even Brezhnev and Carter. But by then you'd have to tell particularly strong ones to get sent to a labor camp, unlike under previous regimes.

[the_grue]

Well, I was born in the 80's, so I only witnessed that. However the famous Soviet "kitchen conversations" existed even before that.

[Fins]

Kids these days...

I am sure there were kitchen conversations even under Stalin, but to far less extent -- most conversationists ended up in some unpleasant places.

[myth_drannon]

I think you read 1984 too many times. What you wrote is a pure fantasy of a mind who grew up in cold era Western propaganda.

[Fins]

It truly boggles the mind when some kids from Berkeley (or Montreal, as the case may be) start telling people who actually lived it that it was all some "cold era Western propaganda" (whatever the hell this is supposed to mean).

Will you tell us next that Holocaust is just some Zionist propaganda?