Imagine living somewhere like China and not liking it. It would be hellish, you couldn’t even talk about it without a police visit or your boss passing trouble along to you. A giant human spirit grinder
Plenty people who have lived under communist regimes can tell you a lot what it feels like. In a way, you learn to live with it. You can talk about it with your family, your close friends. But not with colleagues - as you can't be certain who is and who isn't a spy. You need to be careful not to get involved in any provocation. If you have kids, you need to be extra careful - also about them. When you think about it, it's a bit tragic: normally you worry about your kid taking crack, but you'll probably notice that. But in a totalitarian regime, your kid can go to jail not for dealing drugs, but for being a sensitive, honest individual, naively believing they can change their country to be a better place. But most of the time it's not jail but things like being expelled from the university, losing your job (and not being able to find a new one), and similar forms of harassment to your family. But deaths were not uncommon, even after the Stalinist regime ended.