Communist Daze

This darkly comic memoir ';reveal[s] much about the poverty, drunkenness, political corruption, anti-Semitism, and fundamental absurdity of rural life in the Soviet 1960s' (Deborah A. Fieldauthor of Private Life and Communist Morality in Khrushchev's Russia). Welcome to Gradieshti, a Soviet village awash in gray buildings and ramshackle fences, home to a large, collective farm and to the most oddball and endearing cast of characters possible. For three years in the 1960s, Vladimir Tsesisinestimable Soviet doctor and irrepressible jesterwas stationed in a village where racing tractor drivers tossed vodka bottles to each other for sport; where farmers and townspeople secretly mocked and tried to endure the Communist way of life; where milk for children, running water, and adequate electricity were rare; where the world's smallest, motley parade became the country's longest; and where one compulsively amorous Communist Party leader met a memorable, chilling fate. From a frantic pursuit of calcium-deprived, lunatic Socialist chickens to a father begging on his knees to Soviet officials to obtain antibiotic for his dying child, Vladimir's tales of Gradieshti are unforgettable. Sometimes hysterical, often moving, always a remarkable and highly entertaining insider's look at rural life under the old Soviet regime, they are a sobering expose of the terrible inadequacies of its much-lauded socialist medical system. ';To understand the confusing reality of Russia today, it helps to recall the ';bad old days' of the late, unlamented Soviet Union. This warm, touching and occasionally hilarious book can assist those recollections.' Michael Medved,nationally syndicated radio show host