Crime and corruption were limited to people in power. The scourge of any society evidenced in drugs and pornography was non-existent. Western movies and music, rock bands especially, were forbidden. The control of law made for a very efficient society and an orderly civil culture. Now, ten years after perestroika , with new personal liberties and relaxed social controls by the government, the picture is radically different.
People can attend church without penalty and they can move about more freely than before.
But, with this freedom has also come a moral collapse with the rise of drug addiction, the flooding of the markets with western pornography, the growth of the mafia who control the streets more than the police. Lifting the restraints of the law was like sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind when nothing else was added to give the people a moral compass for their lives. It was quite a surprise to the West when shortly after the new wave of freedom in Russia Gorbachev turned to some of America's best known Christian leaders and asked for help. It was as if they intuitively understood that something was needed to control people's behavior, and if it was no longer the rule of law from outside, it needed to be a rule of faith from within. The American experience of these last 40 years makes the same point but we have come at this truth from the opposite direction.