According to legend, when Vladimir Lenin was asked how he planned to “hang all the capitalists” in the face of a rope shortage in the young Soviet Union, he replied “don’t worry comrade, the capitalists will sell us the rope.”
In the former Soviet Union, nearly every decision people made — from their jobs to their hobbies to their clothing — was politicized. Personal choices that were insufficiently collectivist for Communist Party officials negatively impacted careers, housing, and rations, which were allocated by political pull and socialist virtue-signaling rather than merit. Some decisions, such as starting a small business or storing some extra food, could result in the gulag or a firing squad. The personal was the political.
