El azote de Occidente

Más sobre los 20 años de la caída del Muro de Berlín. Las impresiones del presidente de Cato en un viaje que hizo a la Unión Soviética en 1982:

The Soviet Union is a backward nation with no rational division of labor, no price system, and a command economy that clearly doesn't work. There is hardly any food to eat -- even in the "best" hotels. Potatoes, cucumbers, and bread were in reasonable supply, but what little meat there was turned out to be inedible. We hear reports in the U.S. from business groups from time to time pointing out how much greater our GNP is than Russia's or how many more hours a Russian peasant has to work in order to buy what his American counterpart does. But that kind of analysis rather leaves the impression that if a Soviet worker was industrious and saved money, then one day, perhaps at a later stage in life than in the U.S., but one day, he could have a decent standard of living. The truth is that there is no way for Soviet workers to have a decent living. The appearances are that people have to work hard just to survive, and that the economy is in a perpetual state of stagnant decline.

But if it is hard to describe the economic wasteland of Russia to someone who hasn't been there, it is even harder to describe what their totalitarian system has done to the human spirit of 260 million people. It isn't just the drabness and grayness one sees everywhere. Or the rudeness and surliness one encounters so often. It's that you virtually never see people laughing, smiling or just seeming to enjoy themselves. People seem to walk slightly bent over, their eyes always averting a stranger. There is an overwhelming sense of oppression and depression. It is no wonder that alcoholism is a major problem in the Soviet Union.