I had an amazing personal experience working at Belomorskaya Biologicheskaya Stantsia, that is White Sea Biological Station of Lomonosov State University, near Murmansk. This is an absolutely unique place. Since the Soviet Union was exceptionally harsh on students, and since the propaganda was most fierce in Moscow, the capital, independently thinking people were looking for ways to meet and communicate outside of Moscow. For example, my circle of friends and I were regularly meeting in forests outside of Moscow, we camped, sang songs and spoke much about the politics and wrongs of the Soviet Empire. This was called loosely a KSP movement for Klub Samodeyatelnoj Pesni, or bard movement. Many of us wrote our own songs and we sang songs of other authors of the movement. This was a very spiritual activity. It made a lot of sense to us, especially because it unleashed our creativity, allowed us to find people thinking alike and allowed us to dream about better times and places. Thanks to this circle of friends, I was able to conceive emigrating from Soviet Empire and after many attempts succeeded in that.
BBS station was also an extension of the same layer of free thinking people. KSP and BBS circles overlapped much. The majority of people in both circles were scientists, engineers and people of intellectual labor. Many were extremely altruistic. During one of the natural disasters in a distant location of the Empire, one of my friends Lyonya went as a volunteer to help victims of the disaster. This was extremely unusual for the time. This was a sign of new human behavior appearing. I was proud for him.
BBS was set up in a very much isolated location. It was intentionally removed from civilization, from means of transportation and from local people. Access to the station was limited to people of the free thinking circle and biological students. In many ways it is similar to the off-world human colony, which I am proposing in this book.
This allowed it to maintain purity and limit the presence of KGB informers. The main work at the BBS was educational. Many students took turns by working and studying at it. These were biology students from the University and math students from Moscow mathematical high schools. The percentage of Jewish and partly Jewish people was very high among the math school students in general and among visiting BBS. This also affected the sense of intellectualism and freedom.
(I will give here a brief explanation about Jews: In general Jewishness is strongly associated and correlated with intellectualism. There are many reasons for that, one of which is that Jews traditionally didn't have the rights to do many jobs, so the only jobs allowed for them were of the intellectual kind. Another reason was that Jews traditionally were literate and living among a largely illiterate population. So I use the mention of Jewishness on BBS to indicate in part intellectualism, and free, alternative, grassroots way of thinking of the people working on the station.)
Working at BBS gave me a unique experience of meeting my kind of people. While in general, I almost always felt and continue to feel being an oddball among people, on BBS, I felt among people of my kind. This was a huge relief for me. Understanding that I am not alone and that my way of thinking can be shared by others was very helpful. Outside of BBS, we were surrounded by pure madness and absurdity. This is how possibly the Earth looks to you. If you watch our news or take an average of what people think and what they want, you would also feel disconnection. Generally, I was very disconnected from the collective spirit of aggression and absurdity in Russia. Finding a group of people who thought alike gave me a ground to keep moving and to exist in a generally hostile world.
Lightworkers also have a very similar feeling communicating with mainstream humans. The mainstream media is aggressive and absurd. It is obvious to lightworkers that the mainstream humanity is moving forward on suicidal path. Only by connecting to each other, we find a common ground and realize that we are a few sane people in surrounding madness. Due to my experiences on BBS in my youth, my current existence in an environment of surrounding madness is not as traumatic for me anymore; I can tolerate it and think relatively independently. Basically, in Soviet Empire, I calibrated my sense of what is right. I realize that in most cases, what is commonly considered true is wrong. Based on my Soviet experience and especially meeting sane people thinking alike, I am always suspicious of mainstream views and seek alternatives. This serves me well in America and is particularly useful in science. Thinking different is very helpful for a scientist to see truth.
I also need to note that in Soviet times, the information deprivation was much stronger than now in computerized parts of the world. Almost complete control over information allowed the Soviet Empire to survive for such a long time. Nowadays, with almost uncensored internet, people who are looking for answers can find them.