Ghost of a flea

Lets see: what's it like to live under tyranny? Well, I have a photo of those two great-uncles, probably from around 1919. They're in their young 20s, but look much older. They're thin. Emaciated, haven't-eaten-much-in-months thin. They're leaning on the new gravestone of their sister. It's just after WWI, and sometime just after or during the Russian civil war. They'd been marched at gunpoint to serve in the Czar's army, were captured by Germans, spent time in a POW camp, and released back to Russia where they found their sister and mother killed.

Now, lets see.. when I was 18, no one marched me at gunpoint to serve in the Army and the government didn't kill my sister. Funny-odd kind of tyranny we have here, huh?