I have a feeling that I’m not making myself clear on the subject of the so-called Soviet economy. So let me put it this way:
The lifestyle I, the daughter of a linguist and a school teacher and a grand-daughter of a famous doctor, a corporate lawyer, a school-teacher, and a World War II veteran, enjoyed while growing up in the Soviet Union is the kind of lifestyle that a kid has today in the US if her mother is a drug-addicted prostitute and her father is a convicted criminal who hasn’t seen the outside of a jail in a decade.
My parents only had 2 kids, didn’t drink or smoke, and worked all day and well into the night to the point where we barely saw them. And the result of all that industry was that I saw a piece of cheese maybe once a year if I was lucky, only wore hand-downs, and couldn’t visit my friends’ birthday parties in winter because – other than my school uniform – I had no clothes to wear outside. My cousins (both boys and girls) had to wear my and my sister’s used underwear. Where my underwear came from is also a very interesting question. That’s how we lived. And that’s just a small part of it.
The children of the party apparatchiks, decked in diamonds and furs and lighting cigarettes with a bill that represented my father’s entire monthly salary, lived differently, of course.
But yes, we all had security. We could all be completely secure in the idea that, as long as the USSR persisted, every generation of us, lowly doctors, teachers, academics, lawyers, etc., would live exactly the same abject lifestyle where the greatest achievement you could hope for was to wrestle a piece of butter from the hands of equally desperate and pathetic individuals beating each other up in stores over basic food-stuffs.
Is it a little clearer now why steam starts coming out of my ears whenever anybody says anything even remotely positive about the Soviet Union?
Clarissa's Blog 
Yes, definitely clear. I feel the need to sincerely apologize for the difficult childhood that you had. I think there’s something to be said for a communist system on paper. Unfortunately, man is flawed and manages to botch the best of ideas.
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You definitely don’t need to apologize. Unless your real last name is Brezhnev. 🙂
I’d like to think that we didn’t go through all of this in vain, that at least we have demonstrated once and for all that communism doesn’t work. People keep dismissing our experiences, though.
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Haha, definitely not. Kelson is a Danish name and Fife (my mom’s maiden name) is Scottish.
Hopefully people will realize soon that communism just does not work.
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Communism may be `reinvented` and history never repeats itself. Look at how capitalism successfully managed to reinvent itself creating over and over again new forms of inequalities.
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I’d like to see a list of these new forms of inequality that supposedly arose in Eastern Europe since 1991 because it’s easier for me to discuss concrete examples. I can’t think of a single one right now.
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How did my family live better? May be because we lived in Donbass? My mother’s childhood was better than what you describe and when I was born, as I remember, we lived better too. F.e. buying meat and definitely cheese, normal clothes, etc. Towards the end of USSR things turned for worse in our town and in the end we choose to go to Israel. There never were “diamonds and furs”, but neither the kind of horrible poverty you describe. My grandmother was a school-teacher, while grandfather – an economist in one of coal mines.
On a happier note, since Christmas was recently, I want to share this poem:
http://sites.google.com/site/donslibrary/Home/united-states-fiction/robert-frost/a-witness-tree/to-a-young-wretch
What made an impression on me is the philosophy in the 3rd stanza.
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I might be mistaken, but didn’t you tell me you were 27 years old? If you are, then you cannot possibly remember the eighties. Your mother’s childhood is hardly relevant because the food disappeared in the 1970s and the situation got really dire in the 1980s.
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And in case you haven’t heard of it, one of my favorites of Frost’s, which can be analyzed for hours:
http://poemhunter.com/poem/mending-wall/
For example, the speaker who says “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down” is also the first one to ” let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again”
What I love about his poems is that they’re small stories in blank verse, that can be read simply as a story too, but beyond is a richness of philosophy, sometimes of Frost’s aside remarks, etc.
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In college, my freshman year English teacher loved to analyze Frost’s poems. He claimed that everything had one or more hidden meanings. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening may, for all I know to the contrary, have been about death as the teacher claimed. As a result of what I considered his unnecessarily pedantic attempts to intellectualize, I could not abide Frost’s poetry for several years.
Frost’s, like other poems, should be read aloud and appreciated, like music, for the emotions they evoke. Having come to realize that, Frost is my favorite North American poet.
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“the kind of lifestyle that a kid has today in the US if her mother is a drug-addicted prostitute and her father is a convicted criminal who hasn’t seen the outside of a jail in a decade”
Is this offensive (and poorly chosen) comparison really necessary? Once again, you are doing the exact same thing you are complaining about. Gee, it must have been tough having to move every few months because your mother couldn’t pay the rent. And starving all the while.
And oh yeah, didn’t you say that everyone in Ukraine wore fur?
There is something materialistic and classist about this also. You are very bitter because you had to live this way, or because someone of your deserved (though not realized under that system) status.
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“You are very bitter because you had to live this way, or because someone of your deserved (though not realized under that system) status.”
Sorry, I edited this sentence and didn’t notice it got mangled when more than I realized was deleted. I can’t even reconstruct it; what I was trying to say is: you are bitter especially because you think your highly accomplished family deserved better, but doesn’t any family deserve better? Not diamonds and furs, but food in the grocery store and some new clothes once in a while?
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“Is this offensive (and poorly chosen) comparison really necessary”
– Offensive to whom exactly? As we all know, I like myself a lot. So I can’t possibly offend anybody by comparing them to me.
“Once again, you are doing the exact same thing you are complaining about. ”
– I’m “complaining” about the fact that people see something positive in the USSR.
“And oh yeah, didn’t you say that everyone in Ukraine wore fur?”
-Yes. So? It’s cold. Luxury items differ in different cultures.
“You are very bitter because you had to live this way, or because someone of your deserved (though not realized under that system) status.”
– Neither. I hate the communist system because it reduces people to complete and utter materialism and consumerism. I would have been bitter if I’d been born in a millionaire’s family. That would have been a tragedy. The part about “status” makes no sense at all. I was 15 when the USSR collapsed. What “status” can people deserve at that age?
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It is offensive to me. You compared your lifestyle to a situation you know nothing about.
“-Yes. So? It’s cold. Luxury items differ in different cultures. ”
Well once again you are using it as an example of a luxury: “The children of the party apparatchiks, decked in diamonds and furs ”
“Neither. I hate the communist system because it reduces people to complete and utter materialism and consumerism.”
You do seem very focused on material goods.
“The part about “status” makes no sense at all.”
You keep listing your family member’s intellectual accomplishments. Why wouldn’t you have been equally bitter if you had been a coal miner’s daughter?
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I’ve also often been told I’m bitter about my status. However, the meaning of that status is constructed in people’s minds in all sorts of ways, to the point that they don’t even overlap. For instance, I’m supposed to be bitter because I lost my status, but also bitter because I unconsciously envy the Westerner’s status, but overall, very, very bitter about status.
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Upon reflection, maybe migrants are supposed to be preoccupied with status because “status” is intangible much of the time. It may be the only qualification that native residents can grant or withhold at whim. Hence, they insist that migrants ought to be concerned with it.
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Yeah, I’m totally projecting. Maybe I’m victimizing Clarissa with my Western hegemony also? Because I am a Westerner and all that? i.e. what the fuck are you talking about? Did you even read the OP?
One thing is for sure: you definitely have A LOT of issues with “Westerners”. I thought you let that all go when you finished your dissertation?
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What’s the OP?
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“It is offensive to me. You compared your lifestyle to a situation you know nothing about.”
– Are you a child of a drug-addicted prostitute and a convict? If not, stop affiliating yourself to the pain of others.
“You do seem very focused on material goods.”
– Did you expect a discussion of something different in a post on economy?
“Why wouldn’t you have been equally bitter if you had been a coal miner’s daughter?”
– You know nothing about the USSR, do you? Coal miners made about 5 times more than people of intellectual professions. I should know since half of the family consists of coal-miners. They were all violent drunks, though, so it didn’t benefit their children much.
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Okay why mention your relatives academic accomplishments over and over (and over)? What is the significance? And what do you know about being the child of a drug-addicted prostitute and a convict? Or about having to come up with a massive rent or mortgage payment every month of your life, through good times and bad. Was the prospect of homelessness hanging over your family’s head throughout the period? I suspect your lifestyle had very little in common with this hypothetical, stereotypical family.
Both you and Jennifer are extremely attached to comparing yourselves to Westerners and Americans; and doing so, by reducing people to stereotypes even as you rail against being unfairly and inaccurately stereotyped yourselves.
So you were starving, were you? No food at all? I guess that could make a person obsess over material things. I grew up wearing hand-me-downs also, but still feel pretty non-materialistic. But my siblings are different; furthermore, we never went hungry.
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‘Okay why mention your relatives academic accomplishments over and over (and over)? What is the significance?”
– What is the significance of my relatives to me? Seriously? Try to venture a wild guess. 🙂 Or are you once again trying to berate me for sharing my stories on my blog instead of yours or somebody else’s?
“So you were starving, were you? No food at all? ”
– I will not answer any more of your comments, Isabel, until you learn to read before responding. There is nothing like this in my post. Yet again, for God knows which time, you keep ranting and raving about something you can’t even define. Boring.
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Why can’t you express your memories without belittling the situations of others? I absolutely agree that people should write about what they know.
btw, capitalism brings problems to the food supply also, as you have pointed out on your blog (bad American food). Of course, in your telling, it was the consumers who have forgotten their rights who were at fault…
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If you had actually read the post before commenting, you’d know that I was belittling the Soviet Union. The post is aimed at praising the capitalist system of the US and criticizing the Communist system of the USSR. You’d know all that if you read the post.
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Hahaha. No. An action or mode of behaviour is not a stereotype or identity.
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There is a pattern, though, to Isabel’s accusations: “You are concerned with status” means “I wish you would be more concerned with status, so that I could police your attitudes better.” You are attached to comparing yourself to Westerners actually means:”I wish you would make better comparisons between yourselves and Westerners, because I could really get off on that. “
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Yes, that is a perfect translation. 🙂 🙂
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Haha that is hilarious! Seriously, Jennifer, I am not the one who manages to relate every discussion to some theory regarding stereotypes about Westerners. I find the subject extremely boring, and pretty ironic considering your obsessions with defensiveness about the judgements of said Westerners.
Perhaps this is all some sort of defensive, preemptive judging.
It’s sad… would you have any identity at all if you couldn’t contrast it to what you imagine Westerners do, think, or expect of you?
“- What is the significance of my relatives to me?”
Now you are being disingenuous…obviously the question is: what is the significance of their intellectual accomplishments? That would make a much more interesting post than this offensive comparison to hackneyed stereotypes ofl American low-lifes.
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“That would make a much more interesting post than this offensive comparison to hackneyed stereotypes ofl American low-lifes.”
-So go write it. Nobody tells me what to write about until I ask for suggestions. Got it?
“would you have any identity at all if you couldn’t contrast it to what you imagine Westerners do, think, or expect of you?”
-And that’s another unintelligent comment. No collective identity exists without a contrast, without the Other, without the constant replaying. That’s how every identity works.
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Isabel right about now reminds me of Stanley Kowalski, fishing through Blanche’s trunk, looking for damning evidence against her. “Oh, look! Furs! Bushy white fox furs! Pearls! A crown fit for an empress! Where did all of this come from, I demand to know! There’s no way you got this legitimately, my suspicions about you shall be confirmed!”
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Wow, that’s uncanny because I identify with Blanche on many levels.
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It may interest you to know that my first real act of feminism was in grade 10 English, when we were reading Streetcar, and I gave a loud, impassioned lecture to a boy in my class who thought Blanche deserved to be raped because she had been teasing and flirting with Stanley in the near beginning of the play.
Since I was 15 at the time, my impassioned lecture also involved telling him to go fuck himself at the end, so I got kicked out of class for it. 😛
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“Since I was 15 at the time, my impassioned lecture also involved telling him to go fuck himself at the end, so I got kicked out of class for it.”
– I’m not 15 any more, but I’d totally say that to him today, too. 🙂 Kudos to you for standing up to him!
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I have no idea what you are talking about. I don’t doubt that Clarissa suffered, but I don’t see the point in belittling the suffering of other people. And you obviously don’t get the reference to furs. It was a reference to a previous thread. Well never mind. Do you really think worrying about paying the rent every month, having to move every few months, having criminal parents with one parent in jail, is a “lifestyle” that compares to lack of food choices in the stores and having to wear hand-me-downs? It is belittling beyond belief. I know people who have lived that reality. Why is it necessary to belittle their experience (after all they are Americans, who don’t know what real suffering is)? Yes, it is disingenuous to leave out housing costs, the main problem that poor American families have to cope with. Maybe Clarissa is right in this analysis, but I would not trust her word on it. It’s her own version of the oppression Olympics.
“The post is aimed at praising the capitalist system”
Yeah, I got that. I was pointing out how capitalism breeds corruption and causes major problems with access to good food on a massive scale also, even though when you did acknowledge this problem, you blamed the consumers.
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The cult of suffering — with its economy of demanding or withholding recognition for suffering — is indeed strange. Also, irrelevant.
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You do realize what capitalism entails: mining companies in South America… fruit companies in Central America… overconsumption of natural resources in North America… not a pretty picture.
How can you conciliate your praise for US capitalism with that? I know you like to stir up debates (and because of that I love your blog) but I have never quite understood your stance on capitalism.
There is an expression that defines pretty well the intellectual climate of our time: pensée unique/pensamiento único. I do not know whether there is an English equivalent. I think the term was coined in France, but it is used in the hispanic world a lot. Since the 1980s+/-, the ‘pensée unique’ came to define a general consensus on (neo)liberalism as the only/or the best/or the less bad ideology available, dismissing any alternative views on economy.
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My friend, in these posts I’m not talking about Central America. I’m talking about my part of the world. It’s a big part of the world, too. Hundreds of millions of people, huge territories. We deserve to be part of the discussion. But in progressive Western circles, we never are because we disrupt the worldview people have. And they just won’t budge. I haven’t had a single conversation with a progressive Western person where I’d start talking about our experience and they’d immediately try to steer the conversation towards Bangladesh, Guatemala or South Africa. And with all due respect to Bangladesh, Guatemala or South Africa, I think we deserve attention just as much as they do.
In my part of the world, the fall of communism and the rise of capitalism has been an absolute, indisputable blessing. And the capitalism we had was the “wild capitalism”, which is a really harsh. But still, it was better than what we had before.
As for the alternative views, I don’t know much about economy. I can only discuss what I see or have seen. If there is a real existing alternative somewhere, I’d like to see it and then form an opinion.
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Despite the current recession, things are still pretty good in the United States. However, I sometimes wonder whether the “some pigs are more equal than others” analogy from Animal Farm’s take off on “Communism” (a.k.a. Stalinism) as practiced in Stalin’s Russia/USSR might provide useful insights into the “crony capitalism” that seems to be getting more pervasive in the United States.
Where is the line between capitalism and statism? Capitalism seems to function inadequately to the extent that political influence and decisions made at the macro level displace the marketplace in deciding which businesses survive and prosper and which don’t.
Capitalism seems to function better when small incremental decisions are made with high levels of freedom by consumers and when manufacturers can, also incrementally and freely, respond to those decisions. Perhaps some day an ancient incandescent light bulb may illuminate on the situation.
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“Capitalism seems to function inadequately to the extent that political influence and decisions made at the macro level displace the marketplace in deciding which businesses survive and prosper and which don’t.”
-And that’s what happens more and more often in the US, making the American economy sometimes look strangely similar to the Soviet economy. And that’s a very bad thing.
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Got it. I know how bad the situation was in USSR in the 1980s believe me. I grew up listening horror stories. And I always love to hear more about post-communism in Russia and Eastern Europe.
That being said, reading that wild capitalism was an improvement made me choke on my xmas leftovers:)
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No, my friend, don’t choke! We don’t want to lose people who are the future of our discipline!
The Russians managed to stick it to the IMF but good, and that alone made the entire wild capitalism stage worth it. 🙂
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