Private Enterprise In The Good Old USSR

Josef Stalin ran the Soviet Union as an 8 million square mile prison camp from 1927 till his death in early March, 1953. He claimed to have been sanctified by the primary orchestrator of this nightmare, Nikolai Lenin. Extermination of peoples was a policy of no complexity whatsoever. Friendships, marriages, relatives, generals, doctors, ditch diggers, pedestrians, poets, composers, premiers, state advisors, wives, sons, nearly an entire middle class, millions of peasants disappeared. Nothing mattered, nothing had any meaningful value except Communist Party loyalty. Interpretations of that very Communist Party loyalty changed often, and often dramatically,depending on who was murdered, who had disappeared, who had reappeared, who had been demoted or promoted. Tides rose and fell monthly and annually. Histories were erased. People who once existed were “unexisted”. Comrade Stalin pulled the strings. Last month’s killers were this month’s dead. Fear spread fear.

Public confessions at public trials were well staged, after private tortures. State Socialism was the gospel and the supreme god. Up was down, cold was hot, freedom was slavery, happiness was grief. State Socialism’s Grand Linguist had been Lenin. Language always determined the State! Own the Language, Own the Universities. Own the Press. Own all Ownership…everything owned by the State.

Every American citizen should be profoundly worried about his own country’s ownership over the last five years. Its Democratic Party owned the Schools and Universities, owned the Press and the Entertainment Industry, owned the Nation’s blacks, gays, single females, atheists, unions, Latinos and Speculators of Big Business, especially the ones who love Big Government. The groundwork is already established for State Socialism. Its leaders have advanced controls of free speech. University students learn there was no difference between the US and the USSR during the Cold War. State Socialism is advanced unopposed. Party line science is awarded with huge taxpayer handouts. Opponents to Democratic Party science are silenced. Histories are rewritten. Democratic Party propaganda is passed as daily news.

If the leaders of the Democratic Party were honorable Americans, they should be equally concerned with the collapse of fairness, honesty and responsibility in our American institutions, especially the schools. It is the same Democratic Party that never shouted loud and clear that its gangs stirring the bombings, riots, staged Communist style strikes, threats, attacks, raids, invasions of offices, and murders during the disorders of the late 1960s by the druggies, lefties, black extremists, peaceniks, groupies, and anarchists, was not acceptable, now and never in a democratic society. Lefties of the university faculties then advanced the State Socialist rules of Political Correctness. This Correctness cost Americans jobs, promotions, forced some into confessions,some had to attend Communist like sensitivity training classes, and since have been brainwashed to believe there is no difference between male and female except for socialization, no difference between East and West, between Jihad Islam and Christianity, or good and bad, for all is relative. None of this is good for America, but the country is not yet the Soviet Union. We still live in peace.

Republicans are silent because they don’t want to offend anyone. And, they too do not know history. What is good for the country isn’t often mentioned in Republican dialogue either. What is good image for the Party counts.

If there was any private enterprise during Stalin’s days, it was rooted out and most of its adherents were murdered. After his death, and associated political readjustments, a thaw did occur. In 1956 certain Communist Party leaders, led by Nikita Khrushchev gambled. In the Surpreme Soviet, he denounced Stalin and his “personality cult”. Intrigue continued. Fear continued, but the stakes were no longer so lethal.

By the 1960s people were allowed to grow vegetables in small private plots. Selling such produce was permitted at certain restricted markets. Profits began to be allowed. I remember reading statistics of tomato production. The private plots outproduced tomatoes grown in the collectives by about 100 to one. When I returned to the Soviet Union in October, 1990 there was a serious food crisis. Apparently the crops grew well, but the government fouled up the delivery system. I remember reading 90% of the cabbage crop rotted in the railroad cars because there were no locomotives to move the produce.

By 1990 the black market in the USSR was probably the greatest exchange of money in the country. Its entrepreneurs were interested in capital and an open market. Bribery was always part of the State’s economic system. Favors occured when paid for, or in Stalin’s time died for, or spent time in Siberia for. My dollars in 1990 were universally preferred to the ruble, the country’s currency. The State still owned nearly everything and still pretended the ruble had value. The shelves were nearly empty of goods. The pride of the Soviet propaganda’s supermarket, Moscow’s GUM had fewer than 50% of its shelves filled with merchandise the day I visited it in 1990.

That same year MacDonald’s opened its first restaurant in the USSR. It was a spectacularly beautiful MacDonald’s with all the stuff MacDonald’s usually sells. The quality was reliable. The menu was reliable. The long lines were reliable. The day I stopped by, 400 people or so were in each of two lines. By agreement MacDonald’s had to contract local growers for their vegetables, and the State for the beef and chicken. They paid well. Service was efficient especially when one considers the numbers served. Workers worked without mood swings. No abacus was in sight. One expansive wall was a huge map of the world beautifully lit as if it were projected in three dimension. Everything was clean including the restrooms. Rarities in USSR State run “businesses”.

In 1966 I stopped by a “breakfast” place. I think it was in Moscow. It was a cold, echo reverberating cement block building about a 4,000 square foot square with a smell of toilets in the air. No matter, I was still hungry.

At one line a person could order bread or a kind of currant roll. About 100 persons were waiting in a line, patiently. However, if one wanted coffee or tea, one would have to stand in a new line all over again at the opposite side of the building. About another 100 were waiting in that line. After purchasing my currant roll I moved over to the other line to purchase a cup of coffee to go with my roll. After thirty minutes only three customers were ahead of me. Suddenly there was an argument between the abacus “cashier”, and a fellow awaiting his coffee. Harsh words were said. Whereupon the abacus gal left her post disappearing into a small kitchen area. There she stayed for twenty minutes. I asked the fellow in front of me to explain what had happened. He said that this gal had worked at “this shop” a long time. She was quite tempermental. She often picked arguments with people and would get mad and go to the back room for a smoke. “She’ll be out in five or ten minutes” he assured me with total calm. And he added, “She’ll be allright”.

He had heard the spat. The man in the battle had ordered coffee. He had been heard to have ordered coffee. The girl at the abacus apparently thought tea, and handed out a cup of tea. She was offended when he said politely, according to witnesses, that he had ordered coffee. While she disappeared in a snit, the man waited patiently until the woman reappeared. She had recovered. The man finally got his coffee. Not a single person of about 80 in the line left the line or noticeably complained.

In 1966 almost no one talked in public. There were no discussions on trains, buses, along walkways or in restaurants. People walked but just did not talk except in very small groups in large expansive parks. There were no private autos crowding the streets. By 1990 all that had changed. Traffic and conversations were everywhere. Police no longer appeared or behaved threateningly. Fewer of them carried weapons. Yet there was rebellion in the air. In the morning of my third day in Kiev it began with screaming whistles around 10:30 in October, 1990.

The beginning of the end of the USSR had begun.

Barack Hussein: The Climatologist – Geologist

There is a flood along the Red River of the North. Barack Hussein, our Big Brother of the American political scene reminded us this morning that the rising river was another example of the ubiquitous threat to peace and prosperity in the world caused by global warming. Unlike updated left wing climatology politics, our leader referred to now outdated term, global warming rather than climate change. He must have forgotten the revision.

I am for global warming. Citizens along the Red River should be as well. As Dennis Prager reminds us, cold causes many more deaths around the world than a warmer globe. But more importantly, if the Fargo – Moorhead community would stoke up to climate zone 4 or 4 and a half. it would be a prettier spot and might not have any floods at all. It is all in the snow piles and when they melt. Climatologist Barack Hussein might be interested in heating up the area for economic reasons. A warmer North Dakota and Western Minnesota would explode with new riches. Save energy as well. Might even rid our state of its Democratic Party overspending.

By tomorrow though, Barack Hussein might read something geology. He is so exciting and rich in ideas. Don’t miss a single chapter of Big Brother Barack Hussein’s morning report to the Nation. He may decide to invest in moving the Washington DC landmass, monuments and all northward…to Maine, maybe. He’d like the cooling. Stay tuned.

Although Barack Hussein announced his flood of grave concern was reaching a record high with elegance and poise mixed with august certitude without teleprompter aid, further proof he was in transition to become an authority perhaps from powers beyond mankind, he didn’t mention that the record high flood level was reached in 1898. I wonder if he ran out of will. Or did the second place finish of the 2009 flood take all the wind out of his bag?

I don’t think Barack Hussein is interested in the flood exactly. He is interested in how special he has become to be able to talk so authoritatively about his discovery of modern climatology…the script Al Gore wrote. Yesterday he discovered the benefits of soaking the rich to bribe the poor. The day before, more accurately during his campaign to become President, in the same sentence he discovered he was against gay marriage, but that he thought we all should understand that there should be gay marriage. In between, after, and before… name any time since we have come to know our Big Brother Barack, he has prayed for more getting along, reminding us we should all be one. He cheerily sells the idea that the way to make money is to borrow and print…borrow and print..a trillion here and a trillion there, and four trillion in between.

I wonder what he says elsewhere without teleprompters. I am sure it is said with a smile.

“Students” From The USSR On Tour In The USA

In 1962 just 4 years before my great trek through the Soviet Union I was teaching Russian at the University of Minnesota High School located on the University’s Minneapolis campus. I got a call from a State Department official. He asked if I would like to accompany him with a group of Soviets around the Twin Cities area for about ten days. It was March and spring break. At that time no one was spoiled and wealthy enough to prowl the Mexican beaches.

I wouldn’t be paid, but to me that didn’t matter at all. I was expected to add conversation. My first opportunity to be with the real deals. I had met Yuri Morozov and a couple of his hockey team mates a few years earlier, when his Soviet squad came visiting to crush the University of Minnesota hockey team. I don’t remember much about the party evening except there was vodka and the place was crowded.

There had been an exchange “of equals” agreement. The Soviets needed cash. We needed friendship and to be loved. The agreement went like this…straight out of Washington. The US would send the USSR twenty young professionals. The Soviets agreed to receive a group of YMCA member students no older than 20 years. The USA seeking friendship rather than converts, didn’t push stipulations and were given 20 Soviet “young professionals” in return. Well, I can only remember Gennady by name. He was at least 40 and had been an editor, it was claimed, for ten years. The nineteen others were all over 35, all members of the Communist Party, and nearly all took notes as they passed through the show places offered by Twin City folk. This was by agreement considered “equal”.

Soviets liked younger Americans. These were a happy lot, gullible, naive, and, as always, simple minded when it came to understanding world realities. (They might become little Reds in no time, it was thought.) To these young folk the World was just like home…everyone having a peaceful time eating pizza, a food new to the Twin City college palate. They learned it was just what the schooners of beer needed at the college bar. Especially when entertained by Doc Evans Dixieland Jazz band shaking the floors in Mendota Heights. My memory tells me we took the 1962 Gennady led group there for an evening, which every one in this entourage did much enjoy.

Outside of the nine hour vodka party at the lower floor duplex on Erie Steet Southeast where my wife and I lived, I well remember two trips during the Soviets’ ten day visit. The first scaling a skyscraper sized flour mill high above Hiawatha avenue, and the other examining a new health facility out in rural Buffalo, Minnesota. On each occasion I was cornered by a Soviet visitor. At the mill it was by a Ukrainian. At the Buffalo facility a Lithuanian pulled me aside. In both cases the visitors appeared frightened. They made roughly the same plea. “Glenn, this is for you. Don’t tell any of the others I am giving you this.” The one from the Ukraine put into my pocket a little glass elephant. In the health clinic the Lithuanian handed me something tightly rolled up and made of cloth with a rubber band around it. “This is for you. Put it away. I’m Lithuanian.” He looked exactly like S. Z. Zachal, a Hollywood comedy character actor of the 1950s, but with no smile. “Be my friend”, he mumbled in English. The gift turned out to be a hand woven chartreuse and blue tie..something Lithuanian. All but one of the visitors was blue eyed. The exception was Gennady. Remember, folks Russians used to be Vikings.

We will meet Gennady again four years later in an unbelievable circumstance with odds about 200 million to one. At the beginning of our tour the State Department man reminded me that there would be likely two KGB (secret police) members in the group. They would be unknown to the members and to each other as well. This was the way it was. One had to spy on the others and reports had to be made. Files had to be filled. I had learned that from my studies. The State man asked me to think about which of the group might be the agents. After the visitors had left the area there was a gathering of five or six volunteers who had helped host the group. We agreed Gennady was likely one of the agents. He was always asking political questions. Oppression of blacks was always on his mind. Yet, he was an editor of a Komsomol (Communist youth) magazine. He might have been doing that job and the spying one as well. There was no agreement about who might have been spying on Gennady. These were only guesses anyway. We really didn’t know.

The going away party started at my place at 7 PM.. The visitors stayed at the University dormitories just off Oak Street, a couple of blocks away. I had picked up 36 bottles of vodka at Walt Sentyrz market in Northeast Minneapolis that morning along with other appropriate goodies. The flight for our guests would leave shortly after 6AM, but promptly at that time.

Guests, that is, the 20 Soviets, two State Department leaders, and three local Russian speakers, immigrants from Eastern Europe who had helped as interpreters mingled with about ten of my iinvited friends. Eventually the crowd swelled to about 50, perhaps more when the rumor spread their was a party on Erie Street with real Russians attending. By 4AM there were about 15 bodies lying around mostly on the livingroom floor. I knew I was going to be sick. Not from foolishness, but from custom. Each of the Soviet guests, except Gennady, and two others, cornered me in my kitchen for a special personal toast, a friendship secured by a guzzled glass of vodka. Some came back a second time having forgotten their first visit. Maybe some returned a third, but by that time I was just trying to hang on.

At about 4:05 someone whistled with a real whistle..Everyone was toast. Still, those who had a flight to fly, struggling and stumbling, with no idea where they were, including Gennady, somehow made it out my door. I stumbled with them, and contrary to custom, I was told later, I and two students who had been at the party, both total strangers to me, were allowed to enter the Soviets’ rooms in the dormitory. We helped them pack, that is, throw things into travel bags. Everyone panicked for fear the flight would be missed. I remember pushing bodies into a very crowded but quiet van destined for Wold Chamberlain airport as the Northwest hub was usually called in those days.

It was a cold evening with deep snow still on the ground. I walked the two blocks home alone. My head was ringing. I was sick for two days. I had done my duty. Except for the aftermath, I had enjoyed every minute of the tour.