I WAS ONE of those lucky Muscovites who was allowed to stay in the city for the duration of the 1980 Games rather than being sent away to a temporary settlement 100km away from the Soviet capital. For that was what happened to schoolchildren, prostitutes, homosexuals and people with criminal records in the run-up to the USSR's showcase event. As a 26-year-old able-bodied heterosexual and duly Moscow-registered male, with no recorded frictions with the authorities (those came later), I was deemed suitable to be exposed to the inner workings of the Soviet propaganda machine trying to create three weeks of Communism inside one city. What was the technology of that spectacular deceit?
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