In the Soviet Union, Government Planners Determined How Many Toys and Pencils the Economy Would Sell
In Trump's America, the Donald and his 78-year-old diseased brain makes these decisions (2 dolls and 5 pencils)
Having spent a lot of time in Russia, it always boggled my mind that a country as big and diverse as the Soviet Union couldn’t figure things out well enough to guarantee its citizens a steady supply of food, shoes, coats, cars, apartments, toys, and pencils. I first arrived in June 1990 and saw lines like the one above outside a bread store. The only time I could enter bread freely was when it was empty, or had a few bags strewn about of things I then didn’t recognize.
If you look to the upper right-hand corner of this photo, you will see what looks like a letter “P.” This is an “R” in Russian, and the word is “remont obuvi:” shoe repair. The photo was snapped in 1988. The two phone booths at the end of the line played important roles in the lives of the local Moscow residents. Many people didn’t have phones, or they had to share numbers with nosy neighbors who would sometimes listen to private conversations. From what I could tell, the people are waiting for the store to reopen after lunch. A delivery must have been made during lunchtime, so the bread shop would have been empty in the morning.
If you had to choose 100 photos that summed up the history of the Soviet Union, this would definitely be included. I could talk about the people in this line for hours. There is a good chance I could tell you what they are talking about — what person is annoying others, and what “others” are being annoyed. How do I so confidently make such a statement? Easy. When people fight for survival, it becomes easier to deal with the indignities of being forced to do so by melting into the crowd. If you stand in that line and assume an air of being better than everyone else, the crowd will make you pay. If you smell bad, the crowd makes you pay. If you are too obnoxious, the crowd will make you pay. The line, along with the innate motivation to survive, demands conformity.
When most citizens are in that same boat, one that demands conformity to buy a loaf of bread, a pair of shoes, a hunk of barely edible meat, a doll for their daughter, or some pencils for their son, the last thing they think about is fighting back.
A large, monolithic building in Moscow, not far from the Kremlin, was responsible for planning the production of everything for the citizens of the Soviet Union. Statisticians would sit around analyzing numbers and predicting consumer trends based on nothing but their whims. The goal was to ensure that precious resources were never wasted on producing too much of anything. Surplus, it was feared, would lead to speculation and profiteering.
The statisticians would jot down “orders” in their big notebooks like “the country needs 18,786 purple pencils.” Soviet citizens, however, might have wanted 50,000 purple pencils, but that didn’t matter. The “experts” made their determinations, and the leader would grant the allocation of funds to manufacture the 18,786. When the production plan was fulfilled and all of the pencils sold, the director of the pencil factory would get a medal and maybe a car.
When a shortage of pencils resulted in hoarding, resale on the black market, or thousands of people needing pencils, the leaders would not go to the West to buy more. They couldn’t because to do so would be to support the enemy. The Western economies were the enemy. When the 78-year-old wealthy felon and criminally-corrupt president of the United States, Donald Trump, tells children in America they don’t need as many pencils as they may desire — or dolls — because such want only benefits our enemies, Trump is acting no different than the Soviet planners. He is creating future deficits.
Personally, I love the idea of people consuming less. I wish everyone would consume less, and that we could return to when things were repaired instead of tossed and repurchased. I loved the culture of fixing things in Russia. Having lived there for 28 years, I was at such repair shops. Nonetheless, what disturbs me the most is the extreme hypocrisy with which we are forced to live.
When Michelle Obama tried to combat childhood obesity by getting more vegetables in school lunches, Republicans led by Fox called her a communist — a Soviet planner telling people what they eat. When lightbulbs were changed out for LED lights, Trump, along with Fox and the entirety of MAGA, screamed about how Democratic communists were telling them what they could buy and what they were forbidden from buying.
And yet, when Trump explains to American children that they have too many dolls and pencils, there isn’t a squeak of protest. It’s as if this is what is supposed to be because our sick, confused, loser of a president, who knows nothing at all about anything, wants it that way.
And MAGA, like good Soviet citizens, accept it because to balk at any of this would jeopardize their ability to survive the economic ruin into which Trump is leading us.
Very educational. Thanks.