Thank you, Dora, for sharing your experience with us. I think it speaks volumes about the conditions for lacemakers in a communist environment. It may have been better than starvation... but only just that...
Clay, you confirm my life-long belief that missionary work is a waste of time and money... :) We all see what we *want* to see, and will continue to do so, no matter how many "spin doctors" (of whatever "persuasion") talk themselves blue in the face to convince us otherwise.
The practice of weighing the thread against the lace "output" goes back to the very beginning of lacemaking; it's not something the evil reds invented. The reason communist countries stuck with it past the dinosaur stage is that we were *poor*. We were poor as individual nations, and poor as a "pack". And one of the reasons we were poor is that we were being "squeezed", via economic "sanctions", by other countries -- toe the line *or else* is *still* the political "mainframe".
After retirement, my mother did "outwork" at home; she hemmed silk scarves for a Jewish-supported firm. She got so many scarves, with so many spools of thread, and both were counted on delivery. Even though the *silk* was imported through the firm, the *thread* was bought within Poland. And the thread was in short supply (as was everything else, except hot hair from the offficials).
To an extent, *it's no different* than your buying a *kit* (cross stittch, needlepoint, etc) -- the amount of thread included doesn't allow much room for mistakes. If you make more than one, you're on your own; you have to buy the extra thread. Which is OK if you're an amateur -- you can afford to buy a kit, you can afford to buy the replacement threads, and the free market structre makes sure that you *can* (buy the replacement thereads) -- which we couldn't, most of the time (buying *toilet paper* was a major achievement, usually left to the -- male -- "hunter/gatherers")
OTOH...
The lacemaking "drones" may have had to account for every gram of thread given to them but, in return, they're likely to have had (I'm assuming Poland and Czechoslovakia didn't differ *all that much*, judging by the films I'd seen): almost free housing/utilities (to be sure, we were piled on top of one another. We don't even have "privacy" in our vocabulary). Free schooling *through* the PhD level (if your brain was up to it). Free medical service (and our doctors may not have had access to the latest technical "wrinkles" -- that's how/why I lost my own Mother -- but, as *diagnosticians* they were way above the American doctors; I had a serious problem, I "saved" it until I was in Poland). *No* un-employment was in the creed, so you had *4* aggressively-offensive clerks painting their nails "on company time" and totally unacquainted with the term "service" instead of one, but the rules of "flying under the lines", which I'd learnt in communist Poland, apply -- in equal measure -- to the current US conditions. Except that, in US, the "flow through the cracks" margin of people left beyond the safety net is much wider than it had been in Poland of my childhood/teens.
Additionally, Elena Holyeczova *herself*, as a *designer* and an *artist* would have had a totally different status (and pay), even if all she ever designed was *lace*.
"Barely above starvation level" is Clay's summing up of the situation. Yes, but 97% of us were in the same "stew pot"; "keeping up with the Jones's" was never an issue <g>. The remaining 3% who were above, were "free game" and they knew it. And we didn't have *any* who were *below* the starvation level -- because the system couldn't stomach the possibility, it made sure to take care of everyone, at least to the point of the roof over one's head, and bread/soup enough to survive. The first time, *ever* I saw (in Poland) people (mostly old ones, though some children, also) sleep in the streets and dig through the trashcans for food (*and* fight over the "territory" -- better pickings in heavily-touristed areas) was in '99 -- some years after the "system upgrade"...
Americans tend to think in black (commies) and white (US)... Most of the world is painted in many shades of *grey* :)
Off my soapbox, and back to lace problems in still freezing VA ----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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