There is a show on the History Channel called Pawn Stars. The show is about a family of men that owns a pawn shop in Las Vegas and all the interesting stuff that comes in looking to be sold. A very entertaining show that has a great deal of interesting historical relics.

I was watching the show the other day and there was this clip in it where this woman was selling an antique printing press. She brings it in to see how much money she can get for it while the co-owner Rick talks a bit about the history of the printing press.

“Believe it or not, things like this were banned in a lot of countries. As a matter of fact in Russia you could go to the Gulag for 20 years just for having one of these things. There was no freedom of the press.”
– Pawn Stars, Season 2 Episode 21 “Off the Wagon”

Actually this statement is mostly false, there was very limited freedom of the press. There still exist copies of old political cartoons created in the 1920s criticizing the Soviet government. So this statement is not exactly true. Second you did not go to the Gulag for 20 years, you could only go for a maximum of 10 years. This is a blatant lie, but that’s assuming he knows what he’s talking about. Problem is people will just take this as truth and spread it.

The reason why it was illegal was because people were engaged in underground printing making money off of it. The point of the revolution was to end that. See the Soviet Union was socialist, now that means all means of production are owned by the state. They were running an illegal business, they were operating a capitalist enterprise that was exploiting people. It was also law that you had to turn in means of production to the state so that they could be used. That’s why it was illegal.

After that rick continued…

“Even down South, there’s parts of this country, where you printed things, even though there was freedom of the press in this country, they would go in your house and break your printing press to pieces.”
– Pawn Stars, Season 2 Episode 21 “Off the Wagon”

Well Rick, that doesn’t seem very free at all now does it?