the following information came from a very popularized book, but the picture painted of soviet life at the time is very generalized and is confirmed by other sources from the same period. economic conditions have improved somewhat since then, though there are indications that that change has not been great, but the general atmosphere depicted is still very similar.

viktor was an only child. when he was two years old his father divorced his mother and took him to the mining area of donbas. later he left for a factory in siberia that was owned by a friend and consigned viktor to live with his mother and sister, where the entire village was composed of mud and straw huts and there was one communal well. coal dust covered everything and permeated the food that was eaten. until he was six he had no shoes, including in winter. when, after waiting three years for assigned housing, his father came for him, but the promised housing did not exist and viktor was sent to a collective farm where he lived with an entire family and a cow in one room. after joining his father he lived in an apartment building and was able to go to school, but constantly witnessed the ragged clothes and vacant eyes of the people in one of the last work camps to survive stalin’s death. because of fighting within his new family he attempted to run away, but was captured by the police, who had no qualms about beating a little boy. after this, under the guidance of a sympathetic teacher, he became very studious. in later youth he was strongly impressed by how completely the new soviet leadership repudiated stalin, which changed his entire attitude toward life - if the old absolute truths that were drummed into every citizen could be so wrong, why not the new ones? he entered the military, where he was confronted with incredible brutality and inefficiency totally at odds with the picture given to citizens of modern reforms. on graduation from flight school he learned that he would receive benefits far above those of the average citizen or even professionals. even so, he found that his new home was a ruin with all amenities non-functional, which literally began to collapse after he took occupancy. finding that it had been created by military contractors riddled with graft, deceit and outright bribery he set about repairs at his own expense. everywhere within the military he was faced with systematic cynicism, make work, and officers doing everything possible to not take responsibility, while simultaneously he became an underling of the political officers of the KGB, the secret police, and was held responsible for the morals of those below him. the KGB was everywhere, prying into the smallest details of personal life for any sign of non-conformity. higher officers of the KGB would arrive in uniforms festooned with medals, which tempered the fear the caused with ridiculous humor because it was well known that no KGB officer was drawn from the active military. in the soviet system decisions about productivity of all kinds were made by the upper echelons without regard to the means required to fill them. to corroborate fake flight instruction records, thousands of gallons of jet fuel would be dumped onto the ground. pilots were killed in crashes simply because their training was woefully incomplete. pilots would riot and go on hunger strikes because the food given them was so repulsive. while their exceptional salaries were barely sufficient for survival, they were also expected to aid annually in local agricultural work, where they witnessed even more inefficiency and workers who were unable to repair their own machinery. he sympathized with much of the graft and bribery he witnessed, realizing it was done not for profit but for survival in a system, despite all propaganda, that  really pitted every man against every other. when attempted, following all official channels, to right some of the inefficiency and corruption he was accused of being insane and sent for psychological evaluation, where he was locked in solitary confinement and given food even more repulsive than usual. on release he was recommended for an elite squadron that flew the MIG-25. despite this promotion, before he left he was shunned by almost all his former friends because of the accusation of insanity, causing him to reflect that the soviet system caused people to act like pack animals who turn on the sick. later he could only surmise that the psychologists and superior officers, fearing exposure, had given him the necessary recommendations. if not for his natural abilities and a few sympathetic officers all of his years of effort not only would have been wasted but he could have spent his life in an insane asylum. on arrival he found even his new squadron was on the verge of collapse from indiscipline on the verge of chaos and training so poor it again endangered lives. desertion, drunkenness, and  hunger strikes were common. there were suicides and he witnessed his men confined to base because of epidemics of cholera and dysentery, both of which are diseases caused by lack of cleanliness.  in one instance an untrained pilot, unable to stop his plane upon landing, crashed through a bus of school children. soldiers sent to the rescue fainted from the horror of the scene they found.

 capitalists have pointed to the collapse of the soviet system as proof that the communist idea is untenable, yet communism has never been instated in an uncorrupted form. what the russian bloc people have been subjected to, the effects of which are inescapable today, was a literally medieval attitude of dog-eat-dog  covered with a veneer of social planning that was so illogical as to foster both small and large scale disasters. logic is not amenable to decisions by committee or individual whose only rational is preserving their privileges. crops would be planted in the far north where any peasant knew that they were unviable. industrial quotas would be upped with no regard to the facilities or work force available. in the famous  2000 kursk submarine disaster where the entire crew was lost in a mere three hundred feet of water, emergency oxygen packs were designed so poorly that they would burst into flame if exposed to water. an international rescue team  was assembled because russia had no viable rescue equipment yet russian admirals would not immediately divulge the location of the emergency hatch for fear of revealing military secrets.