Building walls

[Boroda]

For Toad, Rip, Masherbrum and others who asked me "why USSR built walls to keep people in".

Interesting statistics from Soviet Border Guard Corps archives: in 1939 Border Guards caught 180,000 tresspassers. 145,000 of them were entering the USSR, others were trying to leave. So there were 4 times more people getting in then out. And I doubt that all 145,000 were spies and saboteurs.

Sometimes you learn very interesting things. 145,000 people just in one year, compared to about 200 (IIRC) loonies who tried to escape to West Berlin in like 3 decades.

[Tiger]

This is why I think we should build a Berlin-type wall along the Southern US border.  To keep the foreigners out.  

The Soviets did do alot of useful stuff you know.

[Neubob]

IIRC, Boroda, it wasn't just the brick and concrete walls that made getting out difficult.

The bureaucratic walls were plenty effective at keeping millions of others from leaving, or at the very least delaying their departure.

I bet you're pretty happy that all those traitors are gone now though.

[john9001]

"Interesting statistics from Soviet Border Guard Corps archives"





yes, comrade leader, we are shooting people trying to sneak into the workers paradise.

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Neubob
IIRC, Boroda, it wasn't just the brick and concrete walls that made getting out difficult.

The bureaucratic walls were plenty effective at keeping millions of others from leaving, or at the very least delaying their departure.

That's why I was so surprised when I talked to a Soviet immigrant in Australia, and he told me he spent a vacation (!!!) in Au in 1976 and in 1977 just left the USSR and moved there...

Many people even my age don't remember how it was in Soviet times, for example, when I got a "foreign" passport last year - a passport-visa officer simply didn't understand that I got a foreign passport once, in 1989, and had to give it back to OVIR after I returned home.

Originally posted by Neubob
I bet you're pretty happy that all those traitors are gone now though.

Everyone screaming "this bloody Russia! This Russian bydlo!" should leave ASAP. I feel just like many Americans here. At the same time I see many nice people returning from the West, and they are always welcome. You know, my Mother emigrated 12 years ago, and she's happy now. For her age and health it's seriously better to live in Australia, here we have too much fun sometimes

[Airscrew]

Originally posted by Boroda
145,000 of them were entering the USSR, others were trying to leave. So there were 4 times more people getting in then out. And I doubt that all 145,000 were spies and saboteurs.

does it say how many of the 145,000 were trying to get away from the Nazi war machine?  out of the frying pan and into the fire so to speak....

[Neubob]

Frankly Boroda, I prefer today's Russian than Soviet Russia. More fun, more exciting, less resistant to human nature.

Of course, that's why I only come to visit every now and then.

[68ROX]

I want to go to Russia in the future.

I have promised the wife to take her to Austria/Germany first, and maybe London, but I want to see Russia someday.

I'll have to study Russian more as my learned Russian is rusty, and I never go to another nation before learning to be at least conversational.

My friend from Minsk sent me a book on the history of the Kremlin, and it was fascinating.  I'd love to see St. Petersburg, and walk on the battlefield at Kursk.  My in-laws have been to St. Petersburg, but I haven't.

I have always been a history buff, and going where history was made always it come alive for me...like I can "see" it happening.

Besides....it would be nice to hang with people who appreciate jazz, blues, and rock!

68ROX

[68ROX]

My German friends on this board may be more knowledgable, but when I was there, there was a news story about an East German who was shot trying to escape to the west at the Lauenburg crossing.

At the crossing at Lauenburg (1979), I went to see the "Iron Curtain" myself, and shocked at all the efforts to keep people IN.

That same day, not knowing the rules, I crossed the 100m line while taking photos of the grey guard towers on the other side.  A loud speaker blared that I was commiting "espionage" and was to walk to the guard station on the East German side with my hands up, and turn myself in.

An East German soldier (looked just as much as a kid as I was) poured out of the guard shack...pulled back the bolt on an AK47 and pointed it at my head.  

I was in the process of giving the East German soldier the one-finger-salute when I could hear the footsteps behind me of the West German Grenzeschutz officer...he said, in German, to SLOWLY walk backwards until we were back over the 100m line and then go to the West German Zoll (customs) shack.

I was detained for 45 minutes while they told the East German border guards that he had confiscated my film and destroyed it. (He hadn't).

I wasn't trying to "break in" to East Germany...I just wanted photos to show my friends back home the extent to which a country would go to not let it's inhabitents escape.

It almost cost me a AK47 round in my pumpkin.  


No bad feelings though...I broke the rules.



68ROX

[Reschke]

He was just going to spray and pray....no way that those chinese/romanian/czech/soviet built AK's could have been accurate out past 10m much less 100m..... Runs and hides around corner and waits on someone to get ticked about firearms and their accuracy.

Originally posted by 68ROX
My German friends on this board may be more knowledgable, but when I was there, there was a news story about an East German who was shot trying to escape to the west at the Lauenburg crossing.

At the crossing at Lauenburg (1979), I went to see the "Iron Curtain" myself, and shocked at all the efforts to keep people IN.

That same day, not knowing the rules, I crossed the 100m line while taking photos of the grey guard towers on the other side.  A loud speaker blared that I was commiting "espionage" and was to walk to the guard station on the East German side with my hands up, and turn myself in.

An East German soldier (looked just as much as a kid as I was) poured out of the guard shack...pulled back the bolt on an AK47 and pointed it at my head.  

I was in the process of giving the East German soldier the one-finger-salute when I could hear the footsteps behind me of the West German Grenzeschutz officer...he said, in German, to SLOWLY walk backwards until we were back over the 100m line and then go to the West German Zoll (customs) shack.

I was detained for 45 minutes while they told the East German border guards that he had confiscated my film and destroyed it. (He hadn't).

I wasn't trying to "break in" to East Germany...I just wanted photos to show my friends back home the extent to which a country would go to not let it's inhabitents escape.

It almost cost me a AK47 round in my pumpkin.  


No bad feelings though...I broke the rules.



68ROX

[lazs2]

boroda.. you are not really saying that the walls were built to protect soviet citizens from illegal immigrants now are you?

If you are implying that then my hat is off to you for a great troll.

lazs

[Boroda]

Originally posted by lazs2
boroda.. you are not really saying that the walls were built to protect soviet citizens from illegal immigrants now are you?

If you are implying that then my hat is off to you for a great troll.

lazs

Just trying to show that the problem is much more complicated then you have been told.

Do you know  that Russia has the highest illegal immigration rate in Europe now? Guess why? Because we can't build real border with our former republics, and after the collapse of the USSR they were literally kicked back from developed society back into stone age. We have Tajik nuclear physics professors sweeping streets here.

As for 1939 - at least 75% of the population in countries that bordered USSR lived much worse then Soviet people. There were only Poland and Finland that had comparable level of prosperity. And I think that about 50% of the people caught on the way "out" were gangs stealing cattle somewhere in Central Asia. The war inside Soviet border was finished in mid-30s there, and immediately returned in 1991.

[john9001]

Originally posted by Boroda
We have Tajik nuclear physics professors sweeping streets here.
 

are those the one that built chernobyl?

[Slash27]

Originally posted by john9001
are those the one that built chernobyl?