In contrast to the declining economies of the socialist West, the Russia that Krasnov imagines under the restored monarchy is economically and culturally flourishing while achieving marvelous technological feats such as building a sort of flying railroad system over the entire country and constructing vast canals that turn deserts into farmland. Every home in Russia has a television, which only airs the emperor's daily speech to his subjects. Every subject has a personal library in their home consisting of traditional books such as dream-readers, patriotic poetry, folk tales and the Bible. However, the regime allows no freedom of expression and one of the returning emigres says: "Some might say that the Russian government is now totalitarian, only this is not the same sort of totalitarianism as that of the Communists and the Masons of the West. They bow down to some invisible force, whose aim is destruction, but our society is founded on the bedrock of family and at its head is the Tsar, blessed by God, a man whose thoughts are only about the prosperity of Russia". The social order is enforced by the public floggings, torture and execution of any Russians who dare to think differently and those speak out "return home with black stumps in place of their tongues". The narrator of the novel agrees that despite the use of extreme violence and cruelty by the restored Tsarist regime that the system that exists in Russia is superior to the "rotting democratic West". The narrator of "Behind the Thistle" praises extreme violence committed by the state as not canceling out freedom, but rather "is indeed true freedom, a freedom that democratic Europe had never known or experienced-a freedom for good deeds that goes hand in hand with oppression against evil".