Did you hear the one about Vasily, who comes downstairs in the middle of the night to make himself a cup of tea because he can't sleep?

Well, out of force of habit, he flicks the light switch as he enters the kitchen and — — the light comes on! He stares at the bulb for a moment, murmering to himself, then crosses to the stove, where he turns on the element.

Almost immediately, the gas element starts to heat up, and Vasily backs away, ashen-faced and crossing himself. After a few minutes, the element is a cheery red, and Vasily gingerly advances, and picks up the kettle with a trembling hand.

Creeping to the sink, Vasily slowly turns the tap handle, wincing and closing one eye in dread. A stream of water shoots from the tap, and Vasily drops the kettle with a clatter and runs from the kitchen, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

Vasily's wife awakens to see him feverishly throwing clothes into a suitcase, with a crazed look in his eye. Alarmed, she sits up in bed and grabs him by the arm.

"Vasily? Vasily!? What is it? What is wrong? You are frightening me, Vasily."

Grimly, Vasily continues to shove clothes into the bag.

"Go get the kids and I'll start the car. We're getting the hell out of here, tonight!"

"But Vasily! What is it? What has you so alarmed?" she demands.

Panting, Vasily turns his feverish, panic-striken face to her. "The electricity... the gas... the water... it all adds up!" he shrieks in a hysterical pitch.

"What does?" she persists.

"The goddamned communists are back in charge!"

quote:

---

Disillusionment among former East Germans has fused with a fashion for all things 1970s and retro, elevating the lost country to a bizarre, cult status.

East German paraphernalia sells for exorbitant prices, films set in the communist East such as "Good Bye, Lenin!" draw huge audiences and night clubs offer period music and period drinks with free entry for those wearing communist youth brigade shirts.

---

This part is the part I really want to highlight for all the right-wing-oids who rant that there was no way anything in the Communist countries was better:

quote:

---

Drieselmann can well understand the reasons people why people want to reminisce and enjoy the novelty of old products.

"In East Germany the work place was often a fun place to be. There wasn't much to do because there were so many employees.

"People had relatively equal incomes so there was very little envy and a complete lack of freedom was compensated with a high degree of security."

Unemployment was virtually unknown in the German Democratic Republic (GDR); today it stands at 18.7 percent. Nearly 2 million people have packed up and left the East since the Wall fell -- many because they couldn't find work.

---

Yes, there was terrible lack of personal freedom, but economic security in one's life was virtually unmatched in any other bloc in the world. Zatamon (Too Old To Lie) himself wrote of the lack of fear of unemployment in Hungary. Valdas Anelauskas has written comparisons of his experiences in the USSR and the USA and while he rightly condemns the lack of political freedoms in the USSR he points out that to a great degree the USSR did guarantee a basic minimum of economic security which Western nations have, to some degree, abandoned:

quote:

---

However, in my opinion, the right to have a guaranteed job and to make a decent living, the right to get free medical help when you are sick, the right to free education, housing, social security -- are all much more important material needs for the vast majority of people than political liberties or freedom of worship. When you get seriously sick, you need to see a doctor first, not a priest.

---

Some food for thought.

[ 09 November 2004: Message edited by: DrConway ]

This is what I saw: kids with ricketts, public drunkenness on a huge scale, unemployment, outhouses even in the cities (one of my aunts lived in an apartment -- the outhouses were outside behind the parking lot), according to my mother her village had not changed much since she left in 1941 -- unpaved roads, no running water, outhouses.

Churches had been turned into storage depots or museums or whatever. There were many, many places where we were not allowed to take pictures -- I was warned twice and almost lost my film once.

To get to my father's village my cousin convinced a friend to drive us there. He parked about 5 blocks from our hotel and the whole time my cousin escorted us to the car he was doing shoulder checks to make sure we weren't being followed. We needed "papers" to travel to the village; I went without the "papers" because others in our tour were having problems.

In both villages we were hustled into their homes so that no one would see us.

Perhaps the situation was different in East Germany or some other eastern bloc countries but that was the situation in Ukraine in 1982.

The people were by and large poor and got by as well as they could.

An aunt in Moscow told us that they only saw meat in the stores maybe twice a year. The line-ups for food were for real. In June the only fresh veggies and fruit available were cucumbers and strawberries because they were locally grown. The milk stores were usually empty or you bought milk from a guy on the street who poured it out of the back of a small tanker. Because I was 5 months pregnant my relatives provided me with milk from their cow which was kept tethered to the fence in their front yard. The restaurants in the hotels didn't always have milk.

Another aunt accompanied us to the circus in Kiev. When she saw that Intourist was passing out oranges to the tourists she quipped, "If the people knew there were oranges here there would be a line-up like you've never seen!"

The philosophy was "If you don't work, you don't eat." No social safety net. Little old ladies sweeping the streets with home-made brooms. My uncle fussing over my 17-year old cousin who wasn't married yet. There were no other prospects for a young girl living in a rural village where the local school was the total sum for educational prospects; and certainly no money or student loans to send a bright young mind to university in the city.

Our hotel rooms were wired. No attempt to hide the mikes in the corners. Our passports were taken away from us when we entered the country; our hotel keys were taken away from us by a very large woman sitting behind a desk at the end of the hallway. We were issued passes to re-enter.

We travelled by overnight train from Chernivtsi to Kiev. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom at the end of our car. We were stopped at a train station. Through the windows I saw a vary large number of people all waiting to go somewhere in the middle of the night. Reminiscent of scenes from Dr. Zhivago. I turned towards the bathroom and there at the end of the hallway, right beside the bathroom and the exit from the train was a very large, gruff looking guard dressed in military uniform. He literally glowered at me as I walked towards him. At that moment I had a very small inkling of what life would be like under a totalitarian regime.

Sorry about the length of this post. I want to end by saying that I am not a capitalist nor a communist. We have to find that middle path.

quote:

---

Q: What could capitalism in Russia do in do in 10 years, that the communists couldn't do in 70?

A: Make communism look good.

---