How were the Soviet citizens affected by the Cold War?

Question by N: How were the citizens of the Soviet Union affected by the Cold War?
There’s so much information on the Americans and how the Cold War changed their lives but the Soviet citizens must have been affected just as much or more! Anyone have any ideas? There was competition with US in arts and space travel, but they lived in a lot less fear than Americans (I’ve read that most of the fear was propoganda and created to cast the USSR in a bad light) but I need more ideas please!

Answers and Views:

Answer by Gerald Cline
Moscow’s subway system was actually build to act as a huge bomb shelter in the case of nuclear war with the United States. I don’t know if Soviet school kids did duck and cover drills like we did here in the United States, but I would not be surprised. The Soviet citizens lived with the same fear that the Sword of Damocles was hanging over their heads just like the Americans. Soviet propaganda assured the Soviet citizens that the Americans were a bunch of warmongers that would launch a first strike if they let their guard down an inch throughout the whole Cold War. I am sure the average Soviet citizen was as relieved that the Americans took their finger off the launch button as the American citizens were that the Russians had taken their finger of their launch button at the end of the Cold War.

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