Thursday, January 29, 2004

The Failure of Socialism in Anthropological Objects

The ingenuity needed to survive socialism, at times, manifested itself in the most common of objects.  Objects that were not available in stores, were created and manufactured by individuals, for their personal use in their homes.  Though the homes were not really theirs.  In the same way, Russians who were even less fortunate than their “free” countrymen, residing in the gulags scattered throughout the socialist “empire,” fashioned common everyday objects they needed.  Objects as ordinary as toothbrushes.  There’s a sure sign a failure, the soothing canards of socialism, with it’s for the common man mantra, cannot even support providing so common an object as a toothbrush.

There is an interesting article in the Washington Post which looks at an individual by the name of Vladimir Arkhipov who is collecting these "homemade contraptions." The article is entitled “Handmade Versions Of Soviet History - An Artist Shows Off Makeshift Objects People Used to Cope With Shortages."

I was made aware of this article via a post by Natalie Solent over at Samizdata. Natalie posted a link to the article because she read a comment by John Weidner, at Random Jottings, who had the following to say after reading the WP article.

"God made the 20th Century to teach us that the notion that things work better when experts plan them is a fallacy. It’s a pity that a hundred-million or so had to die to illustrate the lesson. But now we got it. Right?"

Posted by John Venlet on 01/29 at 04:18 AM
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