Originally Posted by
Beamr
This was my point as well, to give a view from the other perspective as well. Some may have fleed the regime and draft out of genuine disagreement with the regime, others may have left just to avoid draft still being supporter of the regime. And some just don't give a cr@p and leave to spend their rubles somewhere warm and peaceful.
Unfortunately the incident I linked is not an isolated one.
By way of transparency, I will add that my wife is East German. I smuggled her out of the Soviet Zone, illicitly, in the early 1980's (with a degree of misuse of diplomatic privileges). Perhaps that colours my view of peoples that live under authoritarian regimes.