How was it growing up in an autocracy?

April 15, 2025 7:17 AM

Has anyone here grown up in an autocracy? How do you think it affected you and other kids?

I've heard a lot of different things about life in an autocracy, ranging from it's dumb but not terrifying unless you're a target to it is terrifying and numbing for everyone.

I haven't seeing much about how it affects children, outside of Lea Ypi's autobiography about her life in Albania.

I'm looking for a broader set of accounts, either your own or written by someone else.

posted by anonymous to Law & Government (5 answers total)

George Jackson’s “Soledad Brother” is a good memoir that shows that for non-whites, esp those below a certain threshold of wealth and education, America has always been an autocracy, and the effects on adults and children, physical and mental health, are devastating.
posted by toodleydoodley at 9:22 AM on April 15 [8 favorites]

The United States installed and supported Hard Right Dictators in Central and S America because, OMG, anything but Communism. Many of those countries are still suffering, which is why people come to the US. We owe them immigration because we harmed them and denied them meaningful democracy.

Read Ann Frank's Diary.
Google life in Russia.
Look at the lives of the non-wealthy in the US.
Look at the lives of trans people and Black people in all sorts of countries.

Your question made me uncomfortable until I started writing. People who are white, male, educated, and wealthy will have pretty nice lives, but they will have to choose to ignore people being illegally shipped to a gulag, people being homeless, killed by cops, bullied, denied equal rights.
posted by theora55 at 9:51 AM on April 15 [8 favorites]

You could check out How we survived communism and even laughed by Slavenca Drakulic, about life in communist Yugoslavia. There are some parts that refer to her childhood in the 1950s, others are about her adulthood, but given that she grew up under communism, even the parts about adulthood are about how she was shaped by the regime.
posted by penguin pie at 2:22 PM on April 15 [4 favorites]

There was no toilet paper. The government (everything was nationalized obviously) didn't think fit to provide. At the same time - literacy rate was high, as one used to sit on the potty reading the local version of "Popular Mechanics" while kneading the pages already read to make them soft enough to be fit for wiping. (also, every month you could exchange your old newspapers for a few toilet paper rolls by weight.)
The response above of the person triggered by the question because they assume American-defined minorities were oppressed, while others were not, is hilarious. White and non-white (this generally meant "Roma" in this context), male and female, university professors* and miners, wealthy (lol! everyone was poor!), Catholics and Jews - everyone had ink stains on their anuses.
Surprisingly, bidets didn't take...

The book linked by penguin pie above might have interesting insights. Related - Radio Yerevan.

The system was not stable, depending on the party leader, there were political and economic thaws. Children ... don't usually observe acutely enough to connect their parents flushing pamphlets down the toilet in fear to the lack of political freedom and lack of bread in stores. But the every-5-years treat of oranges (from Cuba!) brought joy.

I have a bidet now! And I store enough food in the house that I'd have to be snowed in for a month before I'd have to eat cats (with houseplants! yum!).

*It wasn't miners who were sent to reeducation camps during the cultural revolution in China...
posted by Dotty at 4:47 PM on April 16 [3 favorites]

I do not think where I live meets the technical definition of autocracy but the notion of the first amendment as fundamental remains ludicrous to me because I have always had things you think, things you say to very trusted people, things you say to friends in private, things you say to friends in public, things you say to strangers or online about anything political. There are invisible markers around what you can and cannot say and do (or think - you learn to self censor) and how to talk around them, but no one is sure where the markers are on purpose. So you stay in the middle and everything is fine. I will never run for political office or voice a political opinion locally beyond generics because that is what we’ve had taught to us from the start. And that goes for civil activism too. This was explicitly told to me growing up and implicitly again and again. I am very happy with the bargain I have made and love where I live deeply, but the idea of political speech makes me hyperventilate in panic.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 10:01 PM on April 16 [3 favorites]