[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.