Retribution not enough

[Ken Brown]

jamesd at echeque.com wrote:

 
> On 22 Oct 2001, at 12:21, Ken Brown wrote:
> > In general, no. But it happens now and again.  Governments
> certainly did
> > in (say) the old Soviet Union
> 
> I do not think so.
> 
> Lenin surrounded the cities to keep people and food from going in
> and out.   This was the first step in a program to reintroduce
> serfdom, binding the peasant to the land.
> 
> Lenin, and later Stalin, were waging war on the countryside to
> extort food without supplying goods.  This produced a flight from
> the countryside, that they immediately met with terror.

Of course. I was just pointing out that some of the time, in some
places,  they conscripted labour into industry. A lot of the time they
did various other things. In general they both wanted to restrict
movement and (later) to slowly reduce the proportion of people working
on the land. And like most other countries they had industrial
conscription during the war.

I wasn't really trying to make a point about the Soviet Union, just the
general point that a very large number of people don't get to make a
choice about where they live or how they work. Most people, in
practice,  not being prepared, or able, to risk execution, or starve, or
even drop  whatever they have and run for the border - that is if we'll
let them over the border.


All drifting very off-topic for cypherpunks.