7 ms·

In Romania you would get arrested if you had a walkie-talkie. The fixed phones were installed only in the homes of people that were part of the regime (even if

by GoToRO 9y ago

In Romania you would get arrested if you had a walkie-talkie. The fixed phones were installed only in the homes of people that were part of the regime (even if you had a very simple role like handling money). They invested some on PCs but only until it became clear that they allowed easy access to information. Then it was dead. So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Keep people in the dark and they might be happy with their misserable life. Even people closer to the regime believed they had a good life because they received bananas and oranges before every Christmas...

pinewurst 9y ago
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-story-of-cobra-the-1980s-illicit-handmade-computer/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-stor... An example of people trying to circumvent restrictions in Romania.
pvg 9y ago
Romania was a bit of an outlier even among Warsaw pact countries, though. All these regimes were quite paranoid about anything that might challenge their power but the Romanian one went to the extra level of repression and control.
sandworm101 9y ago
>> a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. That is the old thinking. Today many such countries are realizing that such information networks are great tools both for surveillance (China) and manipulation (Russia). Telephones were once seen a threat, until they realized that intercepting telephone calls is far easier than intercepting letters. North Korea is probably behind the curve on this front. Give everyone a smartphone. Get them to direct as much of their lives as possible through that phone. Now you can watch them better than ever before. That students will use the phones to organize protests pales in comparison to the intelligence streams they create.
- tryingagainbro 9y ago
  Telephones were once seen a threat, until they realized that intercepting telephone calls is far easier than intercepting letters How many people can send /receive such letters? You would have to be INSANE to put anything in writing, just as John Gotti didn't send memos on Gambino Family stationary. Merely complaining about brown veggies or lack of veggies would get you locked up for spreading dangerous propaganda. The internet on the other hand...can spread those ideas in an instant. Not to mention planning But most people were born into the regime eventually, they had no clue about alternatives. In fact they feared the alternatives. Dangerous ideas were nipped in the bud and entire families sent to each country's version of Siberia. They didn't need to intercept much: Just as most US citizens in a "decent" neighborhood would report a shooting, quite a few would report even their family members for saying dangerous things. Then, a nice chunk were officially part of "KGB" network, informers. Maybe 10% of the population...
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    The Soviets certainly did care about minor complaints, but that isn't an issue today. Today's more modern repressive regimes aren't concerned about minor things. They are much more interested in things like metadata (ie that X is friends with Y). They would rather have that complaint happen than not. The modern oppressor fears silence, fears a lack of data. See the "going dark" debates. Asking the population to report on itself has limitations. They have to know what is to be reported. They need to know what is good and bad. But what if the dangerous idea is something that you don't want the population to know anything about? What if you want to supress an idea without anyone knowing what you are doing? That's the modern context: removing data and changing stories without anyone knowing that you are pulling strings.
    - tryingagainbro 9y ago
      >>They have to know what is to be reported. They need to know what is good and bad. But what if the dangerous idea is something that you don't want the population to know anything about? Oh they did. Everything foreign, anything that is not the party line. Report to the local police and they sort it out, keep an eye on things. When you risk 20 years in a gulag AND your family sent away you keep your mouth shut. You learn from other people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny would have lasted 30 minutes under Stalin, give or take a few :)
vumgl 9y ago
As horrible as the regime was, you would not get arrested for having a walkie-talkie. And anyone could get a phone line, except there was a looong wait (years). And most likely you will end up on a "coupled" line, meaning that you and your neighbor will share the same line - you can listen in to your neighbor's conversation simply by picking up the phone.
- bboreham 9y ago
  FWIW shared phone lines and long waits were standard in the UK too, prior to ~1980. I believe a combination of digital exchanges coming in and the privatisation of British Telecom fixed it.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  > And most likely you will end up on a "coupled" line, meaning that you and your neighbor will share the same line That was a thing indeed, but it was not "most likely", not even close.
  - jerf 9y ago
    It seems like that would depend on the era we're talking about. Party lines were a thing in the US, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(telephony) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(telephony) That suggests they were still in widespread use in the 1970s. One imagines that other countries had them for longer yet.
    - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
      Right, it was probably just a symptom for the growth pains of the telecom industry. I would assume that industry had a whole range of extra issues in the Eastern Bloc, beyond the shall we say "natural" challenges of wiring up a whole territory.
    - jcrawfordor 9y ago
      While researching another topic in newspaper archives I recently came across a piece from the late '50s lamenting the number of people in Albuquerque, NM who were still on 4- and even 10-home party lines. By the time of the editorial this was already uncommon in cities (the point of the editorial was to complain that the Bell System had been very slow in upgrading Albuquerque), but at that time it was still very common outside of the few major cities in NM.
andrepd 9y ago
>So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network It's a shame that reality contradicts you then. See Allende's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn. In a much less positive vein, see China's rapidly developing communications infrastructure (hand in hand with massive surveillance and censorship)
- smcl 9y ago
  The point GP was making is more nuanced than that. The governments of eastern Bloc countries were well aware their citizens were not well off and would remain so for a long time to come. I imagine that Chile under Allende hadn’t quite hit that stage, and presumably the government still had some belief they were on the road to prosperity. Also I’m no expert, and it might be splitting hairs but can we really describe the Chilean government of the time as “communist”?
  - andrepd 9y ago
    He was a self-described Marxist socialist, implemented sweeping changes inc. widespread land reforms, and was the target of an US-backed coup. I'd day it hits all the checkmarks.
- FreakyT 9y ago
  Yeah, I also immediately thought of Project Cybersyn when I read this post. On the other hand, Allende's vision for Chile would probably be better described as a democratic-socialist one than a "communist state" one.
  - wahern 9y ago
    That's what Allende's supporters say, yes. But one of the things I took away (of my own accord) from the book, "Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile", is that the conservatives were rightfully fearful of Allende's government moving inexorably toward communist central planning. (Note: the book is, IMO, unbiased wrt the politics. It's basically a Ph.D thesis on Cybersyn and--because as a thesis paper it needs to make some novel argument beyond documenting the history--why Chile's early experience with integrating advanced technology into its economy failed. In as much as it's not clickbait, the book title is more matter of fact--Cybersyn was an Allende-era program. The author wasn't trying to treat Cybersyn as some sort metaphor for Allende's policies.) One of the reasons Cybersyn failed was because it was difficult to get private enterprises to cooperate with the central authority--either the Cybersyn group (which in the grand scheme of things was a relatively small affair), or any other government group. This was deeply frustrating to the government and to Allende. The pace of government takeovers was accelerating rapidly until Allende's assassination. Of course, part of the reason private enterprise refused to cooperate was because of it's antagonistic relationship with Allende's government and the left generally. We could "blame" the capitalists for this failure. But that's sort of beside the point. The fact remains that for those and other reasons, Allende was on the path to something akin to communism (Venezuela if not Cuba) simply because that's where circumstances were leading him. He couldn't go around, under, or over the opposition; the only way to achieve his originally modest goals was to conquer the opposition--that is, nationalize the bulk of Chilean industry so he could directly pull the levers necessary to achieve his goals.
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
> The fixed phones were installed only in the homes of people that were part of the regime (even if you had a very simple role like handling money). Are you talking about landline telephones? Everybody had those, it was not a privilege. > They invested some on PCs but only until it became clear that they allowed easy access to information. Then it was dead. OTOH there was an industry that was making 8-bit personal computers, that were using cassette tapes as external memory - mostly Sinclair Spectrum clones, and at least one or two local designs that never quite caught up. Those tended to be owned by schools and other institutions. > no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime Right. That was the real crux of the issue.
rdtsc 9y ago
> So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Could think of it the other way. They would invest it in it so they can ensure people only transmit the right information. Stasi or KGB would love to have access to something like Facebook.
- trhway 9y ago
  >Stasi or KGB would love to have access to something like Facebook. They could only dream about making all people carry a device which can record and report precise location and all movements and allow listening and watching through the device remotely at any time.
- jpindar 9y ago
  I'm sure the North Korean government loves their version of social media (on their country-wide intranet).
pault 9y ago
r/communist/authoritarian
supergirl 9y ago
but you can't compare Romania, which was a communist puppet state, with the Soviet Union
kafkaesq 9y ago
Even people closer to the regime believed they had a good life because they received bananas and oranges before every Christmas... People who work in elite tiers in the U.S., e.g. finance, tend to have a similar mentality. Granted they get a bit more thrown at them in the way of trinkets (e.g. a nice condo or house, rather than a basket of oranges) in exchange for keeping their heads down and not rocking the boat. And they don't have to worry about getting shot or sent to a labor camp (or more commonly, banned from professional employment) specifically. But the basic mentality is basically the same.
- albertgoeswoof 9y ago
  Um, not really.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  in the US I can buy the same Coca Cola that Buffet and Gates can. I can many of the same products they can, drive to same places, and for the most part shop where they do. the difference between capitalist societies and dictatorships, communist regimes, and the like is, the majority of that the powerful have access to the every man does as well. there is no restriction from buying as much as you can afford. there is no one saying you need to wait for your turn to buy food or what brands you can buy. so, no we don't have anything in common with these people described. we just don't have the ability to really conceive how much of the world had to live and even today have to live. Oh sure we can say "I understand" but we really don't. if we did we would realize how much of what we rant about is so truly meaningless
  - vkou 9y ago
    First of all, the capitalist-communist and repressive-free political axes have little to do with eachother. Setting that aside... > the difference between capitalist societies and dictatorships, communist regimes, and the like is, the majority of that the powerful have access to the every man does as well. there is no restriction from buying as much as you can afford. there is no one saying you need to wait for your turn to buy food or what brands you can buy. No, that's the difference between a society with scarcity and one without. Rationing has existed in the West, too - outside of war time. The difference between a communist society and a capitalist one is who owns the means of production, and how the economic profits from it are distributed. The Communist Party of the USSR owned the means of production, but distributed the profits from it incredibly unequally. [1] (For decades, the party promised that communism would be reached Soon(tm). And we just need everyone to work hard for a few more years...) Capitalists (And, to a smaller extent, people with 401Ks) of the USA own the means of production, and distribute the profits from it incredibly unequally. (While telling half the population that they too are going to be wealthy. Just work hard for a few more years... And vote Republican - because taxes and regulation and foreigners are the reason they are poor.) The reason you can buy Coca-Cola at 7-11 is because the USA produces more then enough staples. Were there a serious, long-term food shortage, you'd see ration cards[2] being implemented before you could say 'But, markets!' [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz > In a kolkhoz, a member received a share of the farm's product and profit according to the number of days worked, whereas a sovkhoz employed salaried workers. In practice, most kolkhozy did not pay their "members" in cash at all. In 1946, 30 percent of kolkhozy paid no cash for labor at all, 10.6 paid no grain, and 73.2 percent paid 500 grams of grain or less per day worked.[5] In addition the kolkhoz was required to sell its grain crop and other products to the State at fixed prices. These were set by Soviet government very low, and the difference between what the State paid the farm and what the State charged consumers represented a major source of income for the Soviet government. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd%E2%80%93even_rationing#U.S._gasoline_rationing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd%E2%80%93even_rationing#U.S...
jxramos 9y ago
>>in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Keep people in the dark and they might be happy with their misserable life. Makes me think about a virtual Berlin Wall of sorts, which in the history of things is an obscure wall in that it was built no so much to keep things and people out but to keep people in. Quoting a book I recently read that taught me this is in order... """Communist regimes have routinely refused their citizens the right to exit--that is, to escape--the misery and destruction they have implemented within their own borders. In some cases, they erected walls to lock the masses into their workers' paradise: cement barriers patrolled by secret police with guns aimed not outward at some perceived enemy seeking to enter, but inward upon the unarmed, immiserated populace. The ultimate symbols of that repression were the Berlin Wall, erected in August 1961 to keep the East Germans from fleeing to free West Berlin, and the fenced in people-zoo that was the Soviet Gulag, the prison system created by Lenin and Stalin.""" The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism – Paul Kengor
- goialoq 9y ago
  Great Firewall of China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall
- gumby 9y ago
  I must say I immediately thought of the Berlin Wall (which didn't just go around West Berlin but also includes a separate wall that divided all of the DDR from the BRD) when Trump talked about a US border wall. I have no belief that Trump wishes to keep people in! But once things are implemented, scope creep almost always follows. And US border "protection" is scrutinizing departing passengers as well as arriving ones.
rasz 9y ago
Dont forget paper. Printing was 100% state controlled in Poland under Russian occupation. Every printer had inspectors assigned and usage strictly logged. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://nowahistoria.interia.pl/prl/news-niezniszczalny-druk-solidarnosciowego-podziemia-kisiel-i-pas,nId,1675744&prev=search https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://... https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://www.sw.org.pl/techniki.html&prev=search https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://... Being stopped by police with paint, roll of paper, or underground bulletin meant instant prison.

by GoToRO 9y ago

pinewurst 9y ago

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-story-of-cobra-the-1980s-illicit-handmade-computer/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-stor... An example of people trying to circumvent restrictions in Romania.

pvg 9y ago

Romania was a bit of an outlier even among Warsaw pact countries, though. All these regimes were quite paranoid about anything that might challenge their power but the Romanian one went to the extra level of repression and control.

sandworm101 9y ago

>> a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. That is the old thinking. Today many such countries are realizing that such information networks are great tools both for surveillance (China) and manipulation (Russia). Telephones were once seen a threat, until they realized that intercepting telephone calls is far easier than intercepting letters. North Korea is probably behind the curve on this front. Give everyone a smartphone. Get them to direct as much of their lives as possible through that phone. Now you can watch them better than ever before. That students will use the phones to organize protests pales in comparison to the intelligence streams they create.

tryingagainbro 9y ago
Telephones were once seen a threat, until they realized that intercepting telephone calls is far easier than intercepting letters How many people can send /receive such letters? You would have to be INSANE to put anything in writing, just as John Gotti didn't send memos on Gambino Family stationary. Merely complaining about brown veggies or lack of veggies would get you locked up for spreading dangerous propaganda. The internet on the other hand...can spread those ideas in an instant. Not to mention planning But most people were born into the regime eventually, they had no clue about alternatives. In fact they feared the alternatives. Dangerous ideas were nipped in the bud and entire families sent to each country's version of Siberia. They didn't need to intercept much: Just as most US citizens in a "decent" neighborhood would report a shooting, quite a few would report even their family members for saying dangerous things. Then, a nice chunk were officially part of "KGB" network, informers. Maybe 10% of the population...
- sandworm101 9y ago
  The Soviets certainly did care about minor complaints, but that isn't an issue today. Today's more modern repressive regimes aren't concerned about minor things. They are much more interested in things like metadata (ie that X is friends with Y). They would rather have that complaint happen than not. The modern oppressor fears silence, fears a lack of data. See the "going dark" debates. Asking the population to report on itself has limitations. They have to know what is to be reported. They need to know what is good and bad. But what if the dangerous idea is something that you don't want the population to know anything about? What if you want to supress an idea without anyone knowing what you are doing? That's the modern context: removing data and changing stories without anyone knowing that you are pulling strings.
  - tryingagainbro 9y ago
    >>They have to know what is to be reported. They need to know what is good and bad. But what if the dangerous idea is something that you don't want the population to know anything about? Oh they did. Everything foreign, anything that is not the party line. Report to the local police and they sort it out, keep an eye on things. When you risk 20 years in a gulag AND your family sent away you keep your mouth shut. You learn from other people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny would have lasted 30 minutes under Stalin, give or take a few :)

vumgl 9y ago

As horrible as the regime was, you would not get arrested for having a walkie-talkie. And anyone could get a phone line, except there was a looong wait (years). And most likely you will end up on a "coupled" line, meaning that you and your neighbor will share the same line - you can listen in to your neighbor's conversation simply by picking up the phone.

bboreham 9y ago
FWIW shared phone lines and long waits were standard in the UK too, prior to ~1980. I believe a combination of digital exchanges coming in and the privatisation of British Telecom fixed it.
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
> And most likely you will end up on a "coupled" line, meaning that you and your neighbor will share the same line That was a thing indeed, but it was not "most likely", not even close.
- jerf 9y ago
  It seems like that would depend on the era we're talking about. Party lines were a thing in the US, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(telephony) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(telephony) That suggests they were still in widespread use in the 1970s. One imagines that other countries had them for longer yet.
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    Right, it was probably just a symptom for the growth pains of the telecom industry. I would assume that industry had a whole range of extra issues in the Eastern Bloc, beyond the shall we say "natural" challenges of wiring up a whole territory.
  - jcrawfordor 9y ago
    While researching another topic in newspaper archives I recently came across a piece from the late '50s lamenting the number of people in Albuquerque, NM who were still on 4- and even 10-home party lines. By the time of the editorial this was already uncommon in cities (the point of the editorial was to complain that the Bell System had been very slow in upgrading Albuquerque), but at that time it was still very common outside of the few major cities in NM.

andrepd 9y ago

>So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network It's a shame that reality contradicts you then. See Allende's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn. In a much less positive vein, see China's rapidly developing communications infrastructure (hand in hand with massive surveillance and censorship)

smcl 9y ago
The point GP was making is more nuanced than that. The governments of eastern Bloc countries were well aware their citizens were not well off and would remain so for a long time to come. I imagine that Chile under Allende hadn’t quite hit that stage, and presumably the government still had some belief they were on the road to prosperity. Also I’m no expert, and it might be splitting hairs but can we really describe the Chilean government of the time as “communist”?
- andrepd 9y ago
  He was a self-described Marxist socialist, implemented sweeping changes inc. widespread land reforms, and was the target of an US-backed coup. I'd day it hits all the checkmarks.
FreakyT 9y ago
Yeah, I also immediately thought of Project Cybersyn when I read this post. On the other hand, Allende's vision for Chile would probably be better described as a democratic-socialist one than a "communist state" one.
- wahern 9y ago
  That's what Allende's supporters say, yes. But one of the things I took away (of my own accord) from the book, "Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile", is that the conservatives were rightfully fearful of Allende's government moving inexorably toward communist central planning. (Note: the book is, IMO, unbiased wrt the politics. It's basically a Ph.D thesis on Cybersyn and--because as a thesis paper it needs to make some novel argument beyond documenting the history--why Chile's early experience with integrating advanced technology into its economy failed. In as much as it's not clickbait, the book title is more matter of fact--Cybersyn was an Allende-era program. The author wasn't trying to treat Cybersyn as some sort metaphor for Allende's policies.) One of the reasons Cybersyn failed was because it was difficult to get private enterprises to cooperate with the central authority--either the Cybersyn group (which in the grand scheme of things was a relatively small affair), or any other government group. This was deeply frustrating to the government and to Allende. The pace of government takeovers was accelerating rapidly until Allende's assassination. Of course, part of the reason private enterprise refused to cooperate was because of it's antagonistic relationship with Allende's government and the left generally. We could "blame" the capitalists for this failure. But that's sort of beside the point. The fact remains that for those and other reasons, Allende was on the path to something akin to communism (Venezuela if not Cuba) simply because that's where circumstances were leading him. He couldn't go around, under, or over the opposition; the only way to achieve his originally modest goals was to conquer the opposition--that is, nationalize the bulk of Chilean industry so he could directly pull the levers necessary to achieve his goals.

Florin_Andrei 9y ago

> The fixed phones were installed only in the homes of people that were part of the regime (even if you had a very simple role like handling money). Are you talking about landline telephones? Everybody had those, it was not a privilege. > They invested some on PCs but only until it became clear that they allowed easy access to information. Then it was dead. OTOH there was an industry that was making 8-bit personal computers, that were using cassette tapes as external memory - mostly Sinclair Spectrum clones, and at least one or two local designs that never quite caught up. Those tended to be owned by schools and other institutions. > no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime Right. That was the real crux of the issue.

rdtsc 9y ago

> So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Could think of it the other way. They would invest it in it so they can ensure people only transmit the right information. Stasi or KGB would love to have access to something like Facebook.

trhway 9y ago
>Stasi or KGB would love to have access to something like Facebook. They could only dream about making all people carry a device which can record and report precise location and all movements and allow listening and watching through the device remotely at any time.
jpindar 9y ago
I'm sure the North Korean government loves their version of social media (on their country-wide intranet).

pault 9y ago

r/communist/authoritarian

supergirl 9y ago

but you can't compare Romania, which was a communist puppet state, with the Soviet Union

kafkaesq 9y ago

Even people closer to the regime believed they had a good life because they received bananas and oranges before every Christmas... People who work in elite tiers in the U.S., e.g. finance, tend to have a similar mentality. Granted they get a bit more thrown at them in the way of trinkets (e.g. a nice condo or house, rather than a basket of oranges) in exchange for keeping their heads down and not rocking the boat. And they don't have to worry about getting shot or sent to a labor camp (or more commonly, banned from professional employment) specifically. But the basic mentality is basically the same.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago
Um, not really.
Shivetya 9y ago
in the US I can buy the same Coca Cola that Buffet and Gates can. I can many of the same products they can, drive to same places, and for the most part shop where they do. the difference between capitalist societies and dictatorships, communist regimes, and the like is, the majority of that the powerful have access to the every man does as well. there is no restriction from buying as much as you can afford. there is no one saying you need to wait for your turn to buy food or what brands you can buy. so, no we don't have anything in common with these people described. we just don't have the ability to really conceive how much of the world had to live and even today have to live. Oh sure we can say "I understand" but we really don't. if we did we would realize how much of what we rant about is so truly meaningless
- vkou 9y ago
  First of all, the capitalist-communist and repressive-free political axes have little to do with eachother. Setting that aside... > the difference between capitalist societies and dictatorships, communist regimes, and the like is, the majority of that the powerful have access to the every man does as well. there is no restriction from buying as much as you can afford. there is no one saying you need to wait for your turn to buy food or what brands you can buy. No, that's the difference between a society with scarcity and one without. Rationing has existed in the West, too - outside of war time. The difference between a communist society and a capitalist one is who owns the means of production, and how the economic profits from it are distributed. The Communist Party of the USSR owned the means of production, but distributed the profits from it incredibly unequally. [1] (For decades, the party promised that communism would be reached Soon(tm). And we just need everyone to work hard for a few more years...) Capitalists (And, to a smaller extent, people with 401Ks) of the USA own the means of production, and distribute the profits from it incredibly unequally. (While telling half the population that they too are going to be wealthy. Just work hard for a few more years... And vote Republican - because taxes and regulation and foreigners are the reason they are poor.) The reason you can buy Coca-Cola at 7-11 is because the USA produces more then enough staples. Were there a serious, long-term food shortage, you'd see ration cards[2] being implemented before you could say 'But, markets!' [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz > In a kolkhoz, a member received a share of the farm's product and profit according to the number of days worked, whereas a sovkhoz employed salaried workers. In practice, most kolkhozy did not pay their "members" in cash at all. In 1946, 30 percent of kolkhozy paid no cash for labor at all, 10.6 paid no grain, and 73.2 percent paid 500 grams of grain or less per day worked.[5] In addition the kolkhoz was required to sell its grain crop and other products to the State at fixed prices. These were set by Soviet government very low, and the difference between what the State paid the farm and what the State charged consumers represented a major source of income for the Soviet government. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd%E2%80%93even_rationing#U.S._gasoline_rationing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd%E2%80%93even_rationing#U.S...

jxramos 9y ago

>>in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Keep people in the dark and they might be happy with their misserable life. Makes me think about a virtual Berlin Wall of sorts, which in the history of things is an obscure wall in that it was built no so much to keep things and people out but to keep people in. Quoting a book I recently read that taught me this is in order... """Communist regimes have routinely refused their citizens the right to exit--that is, to escape--the misery and destruction they have implemented within their own borders. In some cases, they erected walls to lock the masses into their workers' paradise: cement barriers patrolled by secret police with guns aimed not outward at some perceived enemy seeking to enter, but inward upon the unarmed, immiserated populace. The ultimate symbols of that repression were the Berlin Wall, erected in August 1961 to keep the East Germans from fleeing to free West Berlin, and the fenced in people-zoo that was the Soviet Gulag, the prison system created by Lenin and Stalin.""" The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism – Paul Kengor

goialoq 9y ago
Great Firewall of China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall
gumby 9y ago
I must say I immediately thought of the Berlin Wall (which didn't just go around West Berlin but also includes a separate wall that divided all of the DDR from the BRD) when Trump talked about a US border wall. I have no belief that Trump wishes to keep people in! But once things are implemented, scope creep almost always follows. And US border "protection" is scrutinizing departing passengers as well as arriving ones.

rasz 9y ago

Dont forget paper. Printing was 100% state controlled in Poland under Russian occupation. Every printer had inspectors assigned and usage strictly logged. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://nowahistoria.interia.pl/prl/news-niezniszczalny-druk-solidarnosciowego-podziemia-kisiel-i-pas,nId,1675744&prev=search https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://... https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://www.sw.org.pl/techniki.html&prev=search https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://... Being stopped by police with paint, roll of paper, or underground bulletin meant instant prison.