I apologize to everyone, who will consider this email as totally inapropriate for this mailing list Jack, I started typing this as a private answer, but it got so long that I decided to share it with others - at least Dave is interested too.
First of all - this is only my personal opinion. Secondly, I was only 7, when USSR fell apart, so I have not seen much of those days with my own eyes, but I have been watching people for last 20 years and listening to stories of parents and other people. It started from the fact that in communist there was no private property. Everything - factories, shops, real estate - belonged to state. So there was no motivation to take care for their surroundings, for the place they lived in, because everywhere was that "this is not my property, so I do not care. It does not matter that I live here" attitude. And this attitude is still there in many elderly people and also in their children, because that is what they have been taught in their families. One more consequence of "no private property" condition was that nobody was really interested in maintaining maximum efficiency in operating different organizations, especially factories etc. In capitalism there is owner of company, losses of company are his/her personal losses, so he/she will implement harsh procedures just to ensure that company is operated efficiently. In communism there was not such attitude. Manager of organization was interested to fulfill the plan - economy was planned in 5-year cycles. Planned was everything - how much wheat should be grown, factory output etc. Supply was not connected with demand, almost every commodity was deficit. All the things were available at first to party members, then to people that were involved in distribution. So it was important to have the right connections otherwise it was hard to get anything. One could not just buy a car or an apartment. My grandma got a car after 8 years waiting in a row and I was told that it was quickly. And one important consequence of the fact that nobody was really interested in maintaining maximum efficiency is that it was common practice to "borrow" different resources from job place. All You had to do was to give a share to the responsible guy. This stealing was so widesperad that people even now consider it as a normal behavior and I find it to be a big problem. BTW at least in my country there are many people that say - it was better in USSR than now in EU. The arguments are that people had jobs and people had more money. Kind of true, because there was law that unemployed people could be punished. And there were no things to buy or spend money on, so people had feeling that they had it. Now with open market people are earning 4 times more and spending 7 times more. Other big problem is that it was totalitarian regime. Any initiative could be considered as anti-soviet activity, for which there were harsh punishment. And there were many manufactured cases with no real evidence. Stalin is the author of very famous phrase, which is hard to translate, but the meaning is:"Give us a person, we will find a clause (in law, under which that person will be convicted)". That also added to that "I do not care" attitude. Viesturs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What Every C/C++ and Fortran developer Should Know! Read this article and learn how Intel has extended the reach of its next-generation tools to help Windows* and Linux* C/C++ and Fortran developers boost performance applications - including clusters. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmay _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
