--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What made Soviet socialism . . . real existing socialism was the legal system and ownership rights - property rights, that prevented anything other than means of consumption passing into the hands of individuals. That is to say . . . means of production could not pass into the hands of individuals.
-- Hi Melvin, This isn't totally true. The USSR did allow small-scale private farming and very small-scale private enterprise, e.g. sewing and repairing clothes for money. Half of Soviet agriculture in the Brezhnev era was produced ny collective farm workers who, after doing their work at the kolkhoz, could grow produce on their private land plots, which they would take to the cities and sell. If anybody is interested in a vivid description of daily life in the Khrushchev era, I recommend Russian writer (and political agitator) Eduard Limonov's wonderful little book about his life as a young man in Kharkov in the 1950s turning from petty crime to literature, Dairy of a Scoundrel. It's available on the Web in English, translated by the eXile's John Dolan, if anyone is interested. (It's not one of the shock books Limonov is famous for, just a simple retelling of his youth. I recommend it wholeheartedly. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
