Refuseniks: the country you could not leave
Exit visas, Jackson–Vanik, and the asymmetry at the heart of the record.
What happened
Emigration required an exit visa, and applying was itself treated as evidence of disloyalty. "Refuseniks" — many of them Soviet Jews denied permission to leave — were commonly fired, stripped of professional accreditation, conscripted, or prosecuted for "parasitism" on account of the unemployment their own application had caused. The most prominent, Natan Sharansky, was convicted of treason in 1978 and spent nine years in prison and labour camps.
The results
People spent years in limbo, punished for the mere act of asking to leave. Change came mainly from outside leverage: the 1974 US Jackson–Vanik amendment tied normal trade terms to emigration rights, and the 1975 Helsinki Accords committed the USSR, on paper, to freer movement — commitments its own citizens then used to hold it to account.
Why it happened
A country that limits who comes in regulates a claim made by outsiders. A country that forbids exit asserts ownership of its own people. That is the purpose and the confession in a single gesture: a state that must lock the doors has already conceded that, given the choice, its people would walk out.