Soviet & Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions

[Czert]

well, for your case, yes, it absolutely make sense, but i asuming it was relatively small shalow lake, aand not big and deep one as border lakes usualy are. not mentioning 5 km border deadzone in which no one except borger guards was alowed to enter, and these guys used "shot first, ask later" style.

 

[WandererRTF]

Heh, reminds of a something one of my relatives told. He used to live in Finland near the Finnish-Swedish border working for the metal industry there. And (in late 70s) received visitors - industrial & political people - from one of the Eastern Block countries. Something about steel trade from Finland if i recall correctly. Well.. regardless... like people in that region of Finland (or Sweden) do he didn't care much of the Finnish-Swedish border. Nor did the border guards on either side really. So he promptly - and without informing his guests - took them to Sweden. Which was all fine until the guests realized that they had entered Sweden - which took some time since it can be hard to tell. At which point panic started.

 

[Victor1234]

There is a Hungarian comedy film from the 70's mocking socialism in general called "A vereb is madar" where the twin brother of the main character illegally gets across the border disguised as a bicycle athlete during a Budapest-Vienna bicycle race.

The twin that stays in Hungary gets denied all kinds of benefits, including a passport and permission to travel to the West and his factory supervisor (sarcastically) tells him that "You might think we are discriminating against you because your dear brother defected to the West, but that's not the case at all. We just want our citizens to explore their own homeland completely before going abroad. Have you ever been to <tiny village no one has ever heard of>? No? Well, I had to go there for 2 weeks this year with my so called darling wife!"