[stunpix]

> During the USSR era you were able to travel freely. Even more freeer than today - you didn't even needed any passport to travel to huge distances, to Moscow or from it. You need one now.

NO! This is a HUGE fallacy (if not a lie). A "kolkhoz people" (kolkhoz stands for "collective farm") had no passports at all till 1974 and they had NO right to leave their living territories without identity documents. Sort of a slavery. As of 1970 the "kolkhoz people" were ≈20% (or ≈50 millions) of the population.

> Most of my childhood friends were children of Moscow newcomers.

This explains. Moscow always was a sort of "another world" than the rest of USSR.

[thesz]

You did not needed a passport to travel anywhere. Really. You go to bus/train station, you buy yourself a ticket and then you can go.

The need for passport to travel was introduced well into 90-s because of speculants who bought out tickets of whole trains/planes of popular destinations. I travel by myself from 1988 or so, and did not need any passport until mid '90s.

[thriftwy]

You could take a trip there but applying for a job / study in large cities were restricted, especially without passport.

[thesz]

And yes, let us first go after "applying to the study was restricted" lie, then we go after a "applying for a job was restricted" and then we go after that "without passport" condition.

[thriftwy]

You call me a liar, I tell you to bug off and live in your own commie utopia mental palace.

[thesz]

A non-negligible percentage of corresponding members of Academy of Sciences of the USSR were born in rural areas [1] (look at these who were appointed at around 1970-1980, they most probably born in USSR).

[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BE... (Russian)

How do they come to such heights if applying to the study in large cities was restricted, is a complete mistery to me.

[MichaelZuo]

Almost 80% of the population enjoying freedom of movement, minus expenses, still seems reasonable.

[rdtsc]

You could travel for vacations, see family and such. But it wasn’t as simple as get up and move to a new city. You needed a job. The place you lived was often allocated based on your workplace.

[stunpix]

> Almost 80% of the population enjoying freedom of movement, minus expenses, still seems reasonable.

That's not how a math working in a communist country: it doesn't mean that the rest 80% were able to do so freely.

If you think that you was able to move freely from one city to another "because I wish to try luck at a new place", then think about: how can you move to another city if you can't sell/buy apartments as they almost all owned by the state? You only can move if you got a job at a new place. Given that by the law you can't be unemployed (you could even face a criminal case if not), so you can't just go to "somewhere".

If you are usual worker that somehow managed out to get a new job in another city, then you highly likely (not always) will get an apartment from a factory/state for free, but… What was a chance for you to get a something good by being from another city? Provided apartments almost always were tiny, usually no amenities, and overall living conditions were terrible. Often people were getting just rooms in communes. To get a normal apartment you had to "get into a queue" and wait for 10-20 years. Thus in every city was a huge amount of people waiting for their apartment. When in the city a lot of people are waiting their apartments for years, why someone will give something decent to a newcomer? Yeah, highly skilled/experienced managers or scientists were a bit more privileged, so they could expect of getting something good without queueing.

Some people were trying to swap apartments with those who wanted to move into their city. Needless to say about chances of getting something in this way.

International tourism. It was available mainly to party management and leaders. From time to time a best "workers of socialistic labor" were able to visit other "friendly" (from socialistic block) countries as a "reward", but only after party's approval and only in groups. Never individually. Also such tourism had a strict rules for travelers (what you can bring back with you or what you can visit there). Thus more than 90% of people never were abroad.

The only 100% freedom to move was an inner tourism. You was able to visit almost 100% of territory inside the country as a tourist. You also can't travel across the country for a year like modern bloggers because (as I said above) you can't be unemployed.

Is that a freedom as you know it?

[MichaelZuo]

It's a lot more freedom then the negative propaganda would suggest, obviously it's vastly less than ideal in 2023.