This refers to the article, “lies that the communists say” (December 9) by Anirban Ganguly. When we were students in 1950s, we were flooded with Soviet propaganda. Some of my friends and I walked from Shyam Bazaar to Dum Dum airport to see Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin when they visited Calcutta (now Kolkata).
Subsequently, I went to the USSR in 1990 when the communist state was on its last legs. I visited a factory in what is now Ukraine, and found many unhappy women workers. Also, as a vegetarian, I literally starved in Moscow because nothing was available in what was claimed to be the largest covered marketplace in the world. Second hand clothes were being sold. So much for communists telling the truth!