The appearances are that people have to work hard just to survive, and that the economy is in a perpetual state of stagnant decline. But if it is hard to describe the economic wasteland of Russia to someone who hasn't been there, it is even harder to describe what their totalitarian system has done to the human spirit of 260 million people. It isn't just the drabness and grayness one sees everywhere. Or the rudeness and surliness one encounters so often. It's that you virtually never see people laughing, smiling or just seeming to enjoy themselves.
People seem to walk slightly bent over, their eyes always averting a stranger.
There is an overwhelming sense of oppression and depression. It is no wonder that alcoholism is a major problem in the Soviet Union. When we occasionally had opportunities to talk to people in parks or on the street, there was a phrase that kept recurring. We'd ask them if they had ever been outside the USSR, if they would ever own a car, if they could switch jobs if they wanted. Whereas in our society one frequently encounters a sense of outrage at injustice or a determination to achieve a goal against all odds, in the Soviet Union one just shrugs.