It was the year 1987 and I had visited Moscow from where I got a Soviet flag which I placed on the wall of mine in an apartment where I lived with three other people when I studied at the university. Then May Day (May 1st) came and my apartment mates plus few other people had made their own alcohol mix which I also tasted. I was not used to alcohol, because I hardly ever used it in 1987 and I passed out and somebody had taken me to my bed in my room. But when I woke up next morning I noticed that my Soviet flag had disappeared and later I learned that these other people had taken it and went to a parade with it. They told that they would return it, but I have not seen it yet in the past 28 years. I had a hobby to collect flags of different nations where I visited. Maybe they return it one day or maybe they liked it so much that they will never return it. 
Maybe these other people did a service for me when they stole this Soviet flag, because soon after I got interested in the capitalistic world and eventually headed to America.
Someone wanted it for themselves…maybe the secretly knew the breakup of the USSR was coming in a few years and the flags would be collectors items?
Anyways, it stinks that they stole your flag…
Yes, these intelligence agencies know about things much earlier than the public in general. Back in 1989 I studied Russian in Leningrad where I met many people such as one Alexei who had plans to start importing IBM PCs to the Soviet Union. It was March 1989 and as it happened George Bush Senior signed a change in laws that were regulating computer sales to the Soviet Union. This happened in the summer of 1989 if I recall right, and so this Alexei knew about it months earlier. They were so good in the Soviet Union that they knew exactly how to setup an export-import business for trading these PCs in Finland. They even wrote detailed instructions. But as it happened I went to study in America at one business school and this PC business was not realized.
In Leningrad in March 1989 I met people at a hotel who talked how there had been a stock exchange in Petersburg before communism and so things evolved in that way. They knew the world and the Soviet Union was changing.
It is funny how the life goes sometimes. Back in March 1987 when I was in Moscow I went to one computer show where computer manufacturers of the Warsaw pact presented their systems and then in the 1990s I visited numerous computer trade shows in America.
I wonder what is going on now in the business realm with all these sanctions ‘against’ Russia? I haven’t seen where computer tech is part of it, but the sanctions do target some businesses and banks, as well as defense and energy industries.