I lived in Soviet Republic of Latvia before it was freed in 1990's. We had the KGB building literally across the street from us. A lot of people said they've heard torture screams from the building during quite nights. The building goes 6 stories deep and it is said that they tortured people in the basement.

When my mom brought foreign films home, no one was allowed to find out we have them or you'd risk chance of "disappearing".

My grandpa who's now dead, was a history teacher during Soviet era in Latvia, and also fought in WWII on the German side (forced to fight or they kill his family). He refused to teach the Russian version of history and taught the real history. The kids got pissed off that truth is hidden and went out to other side of city and spread note-cards in the forest that said "down with communism" & similar slogans. The KGB was able to trace the kids back to my grandpa by their hand writing. My grandpa was forbidden to teach history and was a gym teacher for rest of his life. He his was also mysteriously "searched". My grandpa found out that photos of other objects of interest, that were hidden, were mysteriously missing in his apartment. Someone had gone through EVERYTHING they owned (100's of books, etc) and literally gone through every page of every book and everything else, taken everything of interest, but otherwise left everything perfectly intact, untouched, no fingerprints, nothing.

Goods were scarce due to government run factories, which completely distorted supply and demand. My mom paid 10,000 rubles (think $10,000 dollars) for a pair of Levi's jeans, since there was literally nothing else to buy with your money. Everyone had money but nothing to buy. To buy a Russian car you had to stand in line for 10 years, then over-pay for the P.O.S. just to get it. Streets were empty and there was no traffic.

The government issued special tokens (money) to sailors, which were only valid in special stores that sold western goods. This was so sailors had access to western goods, so they would not embarrass the regime when they went to western nations. Sailors traded these tokens for rubles at a massive mark-up to regular people.

The elite was privileged and had everything the western world had, while everyone else was suppressed. So there was a elite class and a lower working class, no middle class.

If you wanted meat from the store, they had days of delivery, where everyone lined up and stood in line for an entire day to try to buy some before everything was gone. Supply & demand FAIL.

In Latvia, when communism collapsed it was not super dramatic compared to other revolutions. Everyone was mostly self-sufficient with their own gardens to grow vegetables/fruits, include cows, due to supply of goods being so bad.. So when the ruble was destroyed and goods became scarce as the system failed there were no massive food shortages in Latvia since everyone was growing their own.. etc.. self sufficient. i remember at this time tooth-paste and toilet paper became unavailable for a little bit, and we had to wipe our asses with newspaper.

When the first foreign ice-cream store (think Ben n' Jerry) opened up right across the street from me in capital of Riga, the line was 500 people long on the street (out of store) for first 3 weeks as people sought out foreign goods. It was a month before we could go to the store and purchase ice cream with a wait time of 30 minutes.

Also note that many Latvians/Russians are still convinced the Soviets were first to land on the moon. ... I don't even bother arguing with them on this. They'll eventually figure it out.