To say life was hell, is to have poor command of the English language. There was a pervasive, ever-present, noxious fog of oppression across the entire nation and culture. Everyone was terrified of being ratted out for the smallest things. The beginnings of his clashing with communism began early in life, when he took apart a barrel at the age of ? i believe 15? or something in that range, and wanted to fashion himself a steam-powered, ice-skimmer? how do I explain this, essentially it had the frame of a boat, with a pair of ski's underneath, and in his juvenile mind, he had taken one of his grandfathers old 'Samovar's (a turkish contraption to boil water for tea, it heats water inside of a tube-like element) and he would build up enough pressure to give him propulsion across the ice. MIND YOU, who hasn't been gifted with silly spurning's of invention when one is a kid? Well, the local commissar confiscated everything, you see. He hadn't gotten a boat permit, or a permit to operate a water craft, etc etc etc. Also, HIS dad got a scolding to apparently by the Commissar as well, as owning an unlicensed water-craft was grounds for imprisonment, for attempts to flee the country. This sounds insane, I know. This is life under communism, totalitarian rule. ZERO. FREEDOM. Now, imagine this shyte interaction for something abjectly harmless and trivial, but now magnify it into EVERY. SINGLE. ASPECT. OF. LIFE. In every way you could think the state could fuck you, they would. I remember him telling me about having to wakeup at 4am, and then his mom would wake up and he'd go back home to sleep a bit after saving the spot in line, all for their daily loaf of bread. Like the saying, in capitalism, sometimes you have bread lines. In communism, sometimes you have bread. He would get to the front line some days, and he could see the entire back row filled with loaves, and he would ask to purchase one and the cashier would say "we're out, we don't have any" oh why, do you ask were there entire shelves lined with bread? they were for party members, of course. The elite, the privileged. They didn't suffer, as much as the rest of society. If you ratted out your fellow neighbor, if you told them what they did and every move, you were rewarded with guaranteed food and clothing allotments...Of course, if this "guarantee" fucked, the local villager, well, fucking sucks to be poor then. Fucking sucks to not want to participate in a police state. When he joined the naval academy, they offered to have him skip a year and graduate early if he just became an informant. He laughed in their faces. They didn't take it kindly. They failed him for 4 years in a row, even though he would ace the exam with a perfect 10/10 or 9/10, the political officer / commissar was standing next to the teacher when you'd go get your passing or fail score, and he would take my dads exam from the passing stack, and shred it in front of him. It didn't break my dad. Dare I say it, this is what got him wanting to learn to read English even more. This, and many events like this peppered throughout his entire life, well, when he started listening to Radio Free Europe and other illegal radio stations, it only made him yearn more for a country where he could be free. What finally made him do it, was getting marked as "unfit for navigation" in his naval merchant passport thingie (idk how to translate communist bullshit from 50 years ago lmao) and basically, due to bad blood and refusing to drink with this captain, the guy shafted him and nobody would crew him for foreign ports. This was the last straw, and a few months later he approached his best friend, essentially asking him if he would leave, would he join? and then his friend offered to help. etc.