Indoctrination: The tool which enslaves an entire socialist population after one generation.

We have all heard the horror stories of how socialist and communist countries were build upon mountains of dead bodies. This is true in the early years of any socialist state's transition. However, data also shows that these horrific acts subside after about 20 years. In the last decades of the Soviet Union and the Iron curtain, the stories of gulags and firing squads began to go silent. The last major challenge to the communist authority came in the 50s and 60s with insurrections such as the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

In years past I have had intellectual exchanges with individuals who were raised in Hungary, Poland, and E. Germany. Even though they acknowledged that life in the US was better, they didn't quite find life in their country of origin that terrible. After all, they had jobs, housing, and food. They even claimed socialism worked.

Why would anyone from those countries not see the reality of such a horrible system? The answer is simple. When socialist regimes rise to power, they find themselves fighting dissent. The only way to implement the policies is by iron fist rule. As dissent is squashed, in parallel indoctrination begins. Children are the first to adapt to the new reality. This is obvious since they will not learn about an alternate reality. As dissidents are either imprisoned or killed, the remaining population learns to accept the reality. By the time the new generations reach adulthood, they only know the system they are part of and more than willingly operate within it without a hint of the greener pastures on the other side of the fence.

One of the best anecdotes of the indoctrination effect can be found in Boris Yeltsin's autobiography, where as a member of the communist party, he could not believe the reality he saw when he visited the US in 1989. He was a product of the indoctrination initiated by Lenin and followed by Stalin.

- “When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin later wrote in his autobiography, “Against the Grain.” “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.” - (Source: The Federalist)

We later learned how horrified Yeltsin was when he led the USSR out of communism. 

Indoctrination, or as others affectionately call "Literacy programs" have only one goal; to enslave entire societies into serving those in power. As a friend of mine who lived behind the iron curtain once said - "We had clean water, housing, jobs, and food... The same can be said for most American slaves in the 1800's.