urrected and depicted as the forerunners of Stalin. History had tobe rewritten. "Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the presentcontrols the past," wrote Orwell. Stalin rarely appeared in public but his presence waseverywhere: portraits, statues, books, films and quotations from his idiotic bookssurrounded the Soviet man and woman. Life was hard inside Soviet Russia and the standard of living declined in the 1930s, despiteStalin's claim that the Five Year Plans had modernized the nation. Black bread and shabbyclothes came to represent the Russian masses. There were constant shortages of foodalthough heavily taxed vodka was always available. Housing was poor and in short supply.Although life was hard, the Soviet people were by no means hopeless. The averageRussian saw himself heroically building the world's first socialist society while capitalismwas crumbling in the west. On the positive side, the Soviet worker received social benefitssuch as old age pensions, free medical services, free education and even day care facilities.Unemployment was technically non-existent and there was the possibility of personaladvancement. The key to advancement was specialized skills and a technical education.Rapid industrialization under the Five Year Plans required massive numbers of experts,technocrats, skilled workers, engineers and managers. So the State provided economicincentives for those people who would faithfully serve the needs of the State. But for theunskilled, low wages were the rule. But, the State dangled high salaries and specialhousing to those members of the growing technical and managerial elite. This elite joinedforces with the "engineers of the human mind" to produce a new social class -- and all thisin a supposedly classless society. Stalin's ego mania and paranoia eventually contributed to the near destruction of SovietRussia. His perpetual and pathological lying and deception, culminating in the infamouspurge...
