Socialism Survival Podcast # 014: Listeners’ Appreciation & Principal Points of Socialism Survival
First of all I’d like to wish to all my listeners and readers a Happy New Year 2010!!!
In podcast, first part is made of listener’s messages, which I will leave only in audio.
Here now I’d like to move to my second part of this podcast and share with you some basic points or principles of Socialism Survival. Of course, I’m talking about us to survive, not socialism, although I could talk a lot why socialism survived so far, but our survival of socialism is more important.
First, is the knowledge. And that is why this podcast exists: to give you and your family the knowledge about socialism, it’s strong and weak sides, it’s tactics and manipulations to advance in capturing and controlling peoples and territories. Although in different context, but I like Hosea 4:6, where God says: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”. Actually, knowledge is needed to have faith in God. Because faith comes from hearing of the Word of God, shared by someone with the knowledge of that Word. Therefore, number two on my list is:
Ffaith in GOD. As I already shared with you in previous podcasts, faith helped people to endure and withstand in the midst of fierce persecutions. Soviet Communist Party First Secretary Nukita Khrushchev who continued persecutions of believers promised to show last believer in 1970th. While he himself died in 1971, faith in God survived not only him, but all Soviet socialistic system. By the time of Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 there were more believers in USSR, than when Khrushchev died. American socialists know that true faith in God is more powerful, than all their ideology, that’s why they are continuously attacking Bible and those who believe in God and His Word.
Next to our relationship with God as number 3 on my survival list I put human relationships. It includes family relations, friendship, neighbor to neighbor relations and membership in faith-based groups. Whether it was church or other kind of congregation, people helped each other building houses and basements, planting gardens and harvesting crops, watching children, offering food and money to the needy. As it was true to all close human relationships in Soviet Union, I believe it still will be true everywhere people are or will be oppressed by socialism. There is one more thing I should mention while talking about human relations and it is the word “BLAT”. It could be translated as “favor” with specific Soviet flavor. How It worked? Lets say, for example, to survive Russian winter Peter needs to buy a warm leather coat. Of course, he wakes up early in the morning and, before store opens, he takes his legs and money to the store where he finds out that 10 coats just arrived to the store and… 100 people already in line to buy it! They obviously woke up even earlier. Disappointed, Peter is about to leave, when he sees Maria, his neighbor’s granddaughter.
Hi, Maria, I’m Peter, your grandma’s neighbor, do you remember me?
Good morning, Peter, of course I remember you. Grandma can’t stop talking about you fixing her roof, thanks for helping her!
Anytime, Maria… Are you here so early to buy something?
No, Peter, this is my work, I am supervisor in this store. Do you need something?
Yes, winter is coming, I need new leather coat, but look how many people here and I’ve heard there are only 10 coats…
Don’t worry, Peter, come back at noon, I may have one your size.
Noon time. Huge crowd is gone when Peter returns to the store. Maria takes him to back office where she opens two more doors and they end up in a large fitting room, twice the size of the one in the store. Five new coats and other stuff draw Peter’s attention.
American jeans?!!! You have it too?!!!
Well, sometimes… This pair was left for communist party boss’ teenage daughter. Next time we’ll get more I will save for you too. Try this coat…(pause) perfect!
Thank you, Maria! Let me know if I may be of any help to you too…
In ten minutes Peter walks out of the store, happy owner of new leather coat. Now he’s ready to survive many winters in his life, thanks to… “BLAT!” BLAT worked not only when buying something, but to get good job, or pay raise, or to go up on professional or partisan ladder.
Number 4 on my list is self-sufficiency. Here I have 3 subcategories: a) skills; b)production; c)storage. It includes growing fruits, vegetables; raising various poultry for meat, eggs and feather; raising cattle, goats for meat, milk and leather, sheep – for all above plus wool. Hunting, bee keeping, construction, carpentry, tailoring, shoemaking and repair, cutting hair, mechanic skills – all are important for self-sufficient lifestyle. Although Soviet system didn’t allow people to own land, we still were allowed to have permanent rent of land from government where we could build a house and grow our own food. My father was good gardener, barber and shoe fixer. Having 7 boys and 2 girls, he saved a lot of money simply by cutting our hair and repairing our shoes. Mom would resize our shirts and pants and even fix holes on our socks. My grandpa was also good gardener, plus he was bee keeper, “burki” maker (that’s the word for felt boots with leather soles, popular in Soviet villages) and he was known in people’s medicine as someone who knew how to prepare various healing ointments using herbs and bee products. Everyone in our family participated in growing food and then – in preserving it. Potatoes, carrots, beets, onion and garlic were store on basement floor, while shelves were filled with glass jars. Almost everything was preserved in these jars. Half and one liter jars were used mostly for jams, fruit purees, juices. Larger, 2 and 3 liter jars were used for whole fruits and berries, tomatoes, cucumbers, shredded cabbage, various mixed vegetable salads and even meat. Self-sufficiency in food meant for us to have enough stored food to get to next harvest.
Of course, not only food had to be stored in sufficient amounts, but many other things, like coal for heating and cooking in the house during cold season, nails, wood, plywood, pipes and other things for emergency fixes.
Such thing like producing own energy, although was absolutely impossible for us there, but if available here, would be great for self-sufficiency. As well as staying debt free and having enough cash or other means of exchange for emergency situations. Having big family with low income, my parents never borrowed money, on the contrary, our neighbors often came to my dad asking to borrow some cash from him for a week or even one or few months. And he never demanded interest from his borrowers.
Fifth principle I would put this way: forget socialism and it’s ideology as much as you can, even if you are in the midst of it. Live you life full of interests that are important to you. while living through socialism, I loved listening to short wave radio, tuning into capitalistic and religious stations, I was reading a lot of books, wrote my own stories and poetries, listened to music, composed my own music, played guitar and sang songs, collected stamps, coins and even chewing gum from different countries. As teenagers we loved to have a company of friends getting together, sharing music, playing games, like soccer, ping-pong, checkers, telling jokes and funny stories. Shortly saying, entertainment! We loved visiting our grandparents in the village, playing there in the field, fishing, swimming in the river.
Let me say this: hard working, self-sufficient person or family need to switch sometimes from work to something else and relax. Even being oppressed by socialistic regime. own you life as much as you can. That’s what I did. When they wanted me to read their books, I read my books; when they wanted me to sing their songs, I sang my songs; when they wanted me to believe in communism I kept believing in my God; when they wanted me to laugh at their jokes that mocked capitalists, priests, Jews, I laughed at jokes about stupidity of socialism, its communist ideology and short-minded party leaders.
Well, its actually time for some soviet entertainment. Today I have few Soviet anecdotes for you.
“Soviet sparrow flew over the border to the West.
- Is it so bad with food in Russia? – asks Western sparrow.
- No, they have plenty! Nowhere you’ll find so much grain on the ground as in Russia.
- So, why you didn’t stay there?
- I wanted badly to chirp!
Brezhnev invited cosmonauts to his office.
- Comrades! Americans landed on the moon! We decided, you will fly to the sun!
- But, tovarishch Brezhnev, we’ll burn!!!
- Don’t worry, comrades, our party took care of everything. You’ll fly at night!
Soviet collective farm. All cows wear muzzles.
- Are they biting?
- No, eating too much!!!
Judge comes out from the court, laughing.
Why are you laughing? – he is asked.
- I’ve heard anecdote there.
- Then tell us, so we could laugh!
- I can’t. Just sentenced to 10 years someone who told it.
All right, it’s time to round up. Whatever didn’t fit in this podcast will have its continuation in the future. Maybe in someone’s opinion, the order of survival points should be different. Well, this is my order, yours may be different than mine and I’m OK with that, most important is to have all of them activated in your life. And I hope the coming year 2010 will be the year of activation. If you are wondering why I didn’t talk about resistance against socialism, please look deeper into these points and you’ll see it there. You’ll be in active resistance to socialism gaining knowledge, believing in God, maintaining relationships and living self-sufficient life instead of relying on socialistic government system. And when socialism will rot again from inside, as it was in Soviet Union, it will collapse. (Again, I say this assuming socialism is already here…) You thing it’s not? Then do something to prevent it.
