is anyone out there who failed to really get a good firsthand look at the pre-1989 glories of Eastern European Communism, I should perhaps explain that I was referring not only to the vile, badly-built mass housing that Marxist governments loved to throw up anywhere, including the middle of nowhere - (inspired by some nonsense about urbanising the countryside, somebody told me, and probably also motivated by a desire to stop peasants from having their own little houses with their own little small holdings, god forbid) - but also to all the horrible, inefficient, hideously pollutant industrial monstrosities they could not resist plastering every spare inch with.
Turning a corner in deepest rural Albania, I remember coming upon a huge and hideous tangle of stained pipes covered in mouldy tattered bits of lagging. A town in Yugoslavia we regularly passed through was thickly - and permanently - coated in bright orange dust, which came, presumably, from the billowing smoke pouring out of the chimneys of the factory that stood in the town centre.
Remembering these and other similar Communist bloc horrors, I can’t help feeling amazed by the fact that Western Green parties tend to align with Socialist ideology. In my experience, the world has never seen environmental vandals to match those acting in the name of Socialism.
Of course, like so much else left behind by the old admirers of all things Lenin,
the special legacy of grot is not that easily removed. Which is why, if you take the
train from Budapest to Arad you still have an opportunity to see some A-grade
genuine examples of the genre (the lagging is an absolute classic feature, as is the lavish use of rust):
But this is the People's grot you're insulting. When you inhale the smoke from Tractor Combine 371, you are breathing in progress itself.
ReplyDeleteYour bourgeois, reactionary attitudes are of great concern to us, comrade.
Damn it - I thought I'd managed to cover them up so well.
DeleteAgree absolutely with Steerforth. Wait till the revolution comes, running dog lady capitalist neo-imperialist person.
DeleteOh wait. The revolution did ... never mind.
There's always another revolution just over the horizon
Delete"In my experience, the world has never seen environmental vandals to match those acting in the name of Socialism."
ReplyDeleteCapitalism holds up its end pretty well, says I who spent part of last night listening to a man describe the pollution of the Everglades by sugar cane farms and coal companies. They're trying to reverse it now, and the farms are "on board," said the man, but it's taken decades to overcome the recalcitrance of sucrose.
No question about lots of capitalist filth - think Nigeria, think oil spills. Nevertheless in a totalitarian dictatorship, there is no press to bring you programmes about it, there is no environmental arm of the government to intervene and tell 'entrepreneurs' to stop doing what they're doing, there is no opportunity to protest and try to stop what's happening. All there is is a bunch of thugs who do whatever they want, without any possibility of anyone stopping them - and I saw so much more evidence of the mess those types made than I ever have seen in the democratic West.
DeleteCall me perverse, but I rather like the big rusting pipes - the modern world's equivalent of ruined abbeys. There's a new bunch of thugs (though of the slippery rather than the brutalist communist variety) taking over Romania currently and lieing and cheating without shame; if the new prime minister Victor Ponta carries on like this then this country may find itself thrown out of the European Union and losing the best friend it'll ever have.
ReplyDeleteRomanian politics is enough to make anyone despair.
Delete