How Private Property Sustained The Soviet Union

The Commonwealth Conservative ^ | 7/10/2009 | C. E. van Avery

[SolitarySaint]

Yuri Zarakhovich at the Jamestown Foundation has an article on the impact of the dacha in Russia today that gives some insight into how the USSR managed to endure as long as it did.

Indeed, it is the dacha that keeps Russians fed during the country's perennial crises -and curiously serves as the major indicator of the current state of the economic crisis. "The more potatoes people grow at their dachas, the worse things are becoming in Russia," Andrei Tumanov, editor of Vashi 6 Sotok ("Your 600 Square Meters," Russia's most popular gardening magazine) told Moscow's TV 3 channel on May 16. "That is a law of statistics," he continued.

Tumanov explained that the sales of vegetable seeds had increased by 40 percent from last year, and potatoes by a staggering

[hinckley buzzard]

Back in the sixties, when people actually paid attention to facts, there was common knowledge that relatively miniscule private gardens kept the USSR alive while monster collective farms mostly fed epidemics of mice, rats, and bureaucrats.

[antiRepublicrat]

There was also a capitalist economy underlying the factories. The central planners had it so screwed up that a class of businessmen grew who basically brokered under-the-table trade between factories so they could actually produce stuff people needed.

[Proud_USA_Republican]

But you couldn't take it any farther than the private farms feed yourselves. Last girlfriend was from Russia. When she was a child, and living in a country area near a military base, they had chickens to produce fresh eggs to eat and trade with neighbors. The mother got an idea to build a small incubator, so they could raise more chickens to eat and sell them to others around the village. Within a few months, the military pulled up and actually seized her tiny homemade incubator telling her, "You don't sell chickens or eggs to others, the government provides those to the people."

That story really reminds you of the evils of communism.

[lump in the melting pot]

Our 600 square meters in Florida only has some fruit trees on it at the moment, but might have a few rows of corn and tomatoes in it by the time Obama gets done with us...

[Jacquerie]

That story really reminds you of the evils of communism

What the Soviets did was violate the unalienable rights of man at every turn.

The US is incrementally headed toward the same end.

[brityank]

Mmmmmmm ... ... Vwodka !!!"