Question to people who have lived in the old east block.?

Right, so I asked my father about it. Apparently you could travel with relative ease to "friendly countries", which of course were communist. It was quite hard to visit the West countries. After the return to Poland you had to return your passport to the militia (communistic police). And not everybody could even get the passport, you could be denied for no reason. It was easier to be allowed to travel to West if you had certain connections - for example if you were a member of communistic party. That's for Poland, I don't know how it was for other countries.