Holy cow? No, it is not about India.

It is about 1/6th of the world, where, since I can remember myself, we have been catching up with the Rotten West (that's how they put it in the newspapers).

The Spring came in the 50s with the new leader Nikita Khrushchev. They called it the Spring as the dark years of Stalin's terror were behind, and the nation started breathing, just a little bit, and the first time since the war the chances of surviving the executioners' bullet was becoming a reality. There were still labor camps and political prisons, but a black car stopped coming in the middle of the night and take people away to the place from which there was no return. Actually, people started returning… After 10 or 15 years. Those who survived

But we knew that these were the mistakes, and that as a society we were so much better, than the rest of the World. We were about freedom for the common folks, brotherly love between the people, the society where money were a temporary evil soon to be gone, and we needed just a little bit of luck to beat the West and, finally, outrun it for the shining glory of Communism. And the world would follow us to the Communist future. We were proud to call ourselves communists, from elementary school kids to veterans. We were the home to many nations under one Party, which was taking us to the ultimate glory of life on the Planet Earth.

It was time to catch up with the West and finally outrun it and prove the moral superiority of Communism over the rotten capitalism.

There was a whole national movement - DIP (abbreviation for Догнать и Перегнать - Catch up and Outrun). Industrial machinery, expropriated from the defeated Germany was called DIP. The overwhelming enthusiasm was in the air.

Virgin lands (please do not confuse with Virgin Islands - LOL) were ploughed, new industrial giants were built, new railroads were laid, new grandiose housing projects were initiated, and we were promised that every family would have their own room and not a space in the room with 3 other families, separated by hanging sheets).

We were already producing more steel, more bricks, but because we were surrounded by imperialist forces, waiting for a moment of our weakness to attack us, so they could get our natural resources, and also silence us, so that their own folks would not have who to look to and follow, we had to spend a lot of money for our military. We, of course, were peaceful, but this was because of THEM...

Somehow the road to glory was marred by shortages of meat, eggs, milk, potatoes, tomatoes, wheat, corn and everything else edible. Empty shelves of the stores with rows of canned fish were white and clean and empty. Somehow, the weather always cooperated with imperialists, and there have always been shortages of food to put on the table. Actually, shortages were everywhere, and, of course, they were temporary... but I digress.

Back to cows. They, the cows, also had to catch up and outrun those capitalist cows... in their peculiar cow way... the milky way... The cows did not know that they were destined to become the most productive cows in the world. If a normal well fed cow could produce 3,000 kg of milk a year, the Communist Party great leaders figured that if the cows would be giving 6,000 kg – 10,000 kg a year, there will be no shortage of milk.

The kick was in the Почин (Initiative). This movement started even before the WWII, in 1935, when a miner Alexei Stakhanov set the record jack hammering 227 tons of coal in a shift with the local party organizer standing behind his back providing moral support and encouragement. His portrait even made it to Time magazine. That was his initiative, and that’s how the initiative movement started.

Initiatives were highly praised by the Party Leaders as they were supposedly coming from the people, who wanted to do more and to do better for the country. They quickly became the norm, and they were directed by the Party officials (how come that in this industry there are no initiatives? Come up with something and it better be good).

In agriculture there were plenty of their own initiatives. Like completing sowing the seeds early, so that they have more time to ripe. The initiative took over all other senses, and people were throwing seeds into the snowy land, as the weather this particular year was colder than last, but you could not sow the seeds later than it was last year. It would be a defeat, and there was no such option.

After Khrushchev’s visit to the US, where he was fascinated with corn (there was no corn in Russia), he came back with the solution to food shortage problem. The blissful corn. They planted it from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean and pretty much at the same time. And that imperialist corn boycotted the vast areas of Russia, where they still kept planting it year after year, and the best they could use it for was to feed the cattle. But it was not up to the farmers (collective farms) to decide what and when to plant. If the party said it was good, it was good. Even if it wasn’t.

I remember the anger of Soviet people when they read in the newspapers that in the US they were destroying some crops, but did not give it to people. They were doing it to keep the prices up. We would never have done it. We would have given it to people… if we had what to give. But we didn’t. But morally we were still so much better.

In our understanding those people, that did not get it, should have been hungry … We were looking into the mirror, but we did not see the world behind it…

So they came up with the initiative to make the cows be more productive. The trouble with that was that cows were not responding favorably to the Initiatives.  Milkmaids worked hard to get more milk from the cows. There was a ferocious competition between the cows milkmaids to get the best result, and the numbers were growing. 4,000 kg, 5,000kg, 6,000 kg, and even more and way more (and we learned that milk is food, not drink, and that it is measured in kilograms, not liters). Of course, the more milk they were getting, the more water it had. And for every extra kilogram of milk you had to spend 3 times more on food and care.

We were beating you, guys, practically on all counts, you just did not know that. Watch the news and you would hear that we produced more of something, than the US and Belize combined, that we manufactured more tractors, bulldozers, planes, electric bulbs, toothbrushes…. That our cows were the most productive cows in the world, as our chicken…

Our free health care system was undoubtedly the best (and we did not know that our leaders would go abroad for simple surgery), our free education was far superior to everyone else… but we still were a darn poor country…

…Choosing cuts here in the US is a poem for my ears. Tenderloin, picnic, butt, London broil…And steaks: rib eye, porterhouse, T-bone steak, New York strip, sirloin, blade steak….I can go on and on…

In the best of the worlds life was simpler. The choices were meat, or no meat. If meat, 1/3 of its weigh was supposed to be a bone, and they will weigh the meat and then grab and weigh the bone…Our cows were bony, but it was fair and great. Because quite often there was no meat, and no bones… The cows, that made it to the fridges of party and government officials, were meat only, but this was a minor inconvenience.

Of course, we were extremely grateful that the Communist party and the government (The People’s Government) were there for us. We knew that without them we would become an easy prey to Imperialist forces…

All the good was coming from them. The day Stalin died, people cried. The whole nation cried. Because who would save us from the cruel imperialist world now? Government was everything.

Without it we were nothing… Without it there would be no meat and no bones...

P.S. Later, in Brezhnev's era, when we were still not free, but no longer that naive, and did not believe in Hell and in Communism, but were still afraid of Communism (let's call it Communism enforcement) way more than of Hell, there was a joke about the Rotten West.

"Yes, the West is rotten... but smells wonderful..."

* Photos courtesy of Flickr