When I ordered a steak at a restaurant on Main Street, the meat was tough and stringy, and the knife wouldn't go through it. I think it was a cow that had been worked to death in the kolkhoz.
November 06, 2019
The following is from an article by Hiroshi Furuta, which is being serialized in the current issue of the monthly magazine WiLL under the title "Fighting Epicurus."
Part 5: The Implied Prophecy of the Fall of the Soviet Union
Reducing Pain and Increasing Pleasure
In 1979, in the back streets of the Soviet Union, which was supposedly a country of full employment, I was utterly at a loss when I saw a crowd of unemployed people and an employment agency advertisement.
"For example, the Bolshevik government of Russia took the ideological stance that there should be no unemployment in socialism, and rather than trying to deceive people with propaganda about the fact of unemployment, they abolished all unemployment benefits without using propaganda at all (The Origins of Totalitarianism, Vol. 3, Misuzu Shobo, 1981, p. 64), as the translation by Hannah Arendt tells us, but that was a few years later.
At that point, I didn't know any of this.
It was only much later that I felt the anger of being deceived.
The method I, the hedonist, took was to abandon my studies of Russian in one fell swoop and forget about them.
For the unfortunate, it was more urgent to reduce the things that could cause immediate pain than to dream of the happiness of all.
Of course, it wasn't a waste of time at all.
The above explanation is also something I came to later.
At the time, I intuitively thought my constitution was to "instinctively avoid danger."
I also abandoned the "study" of Marxian economics at the same time.
I didn't know at the time what the relationship between the deception of the Soviet economy and Marxian economics was.
Still, I knew instantly that all of this was a fabrication due to some causal relationship, so I decided to detoxify myself "before the poison in the pen took effect."
However, this ended up playing a role similar to that of "conversion," as described by Tsurumi Shunsuke.
After that, I could no longer believe anything I saw in Western "theory."
No matter how much I looked at it or read it, it would fly out of the corner of my eye.
It was like the advertisements for employment agencies pasted up in Leningrad were peeling off the concrete walls one after another and flying away, and the thin Scandinavian-style sauna chimneys in the background of the squalid crowds of unemployed people were billowing up black smoke like ghostly apparitions.
I would see such an ominous chimney smoke again 23 years later when I visited the thermal power plant in Chŏngjin, North Korea.
Vast and desolate socialist countries
I want to record a few observations about the scenery of socialist countries here.
I have not seen anything written about this anywhere, so I think it won't be easy to link visual images to this in the future when people start to take a land-based approach.
The scenery of socialist cities can be summed up in one word: vast and bleak.
For example, the public roads in Moscow have six lanes in each direction, for 12 lanes.
Not a single car was passing by.
The road looked like a park, so I took a photo in the middle.
Later, I learned from the perspective theory that the labor theory of value in Marxian economics is problematic.
In this school of economics, labor creates value, and distribution is considered to be of no value.
Therefore, there is no way that goods trucks would be running around.
In North Korea, the Labor newspaper was transported on the railway during the Japanese occupation and was unloaded at the station.
Furthermore, the streets are full of idols and monumental buildings.
In the Soviet Union, there were statues of Lenin; in North Korea, there were statues of Kim Il-sung; and in Albania, there were statues of Enver Hoxha, all of which were erected everywhere.
At the lobby of Kiev Airport, a huge bronze head of Lenin, placed in the center, blocked the flow of people.
Pictures and slogans were written on the huge buildings on the wide streets.
In Moscow, slogans included "Our Pride, Our Power, Our Authority," "Long Live Progressive Science," and "Communism Will Triumph," while in Wonsan, there were "Sincerity" and "Speed."
The buildings are not close together, and there is a lot of space between them.
So, in winter, the wind blows through, and it is freezing.
I thought that Pyongyang was like Heijokyo, the ancient capital of Nara.
The huge Todai-ji temple and Rushanabutsu, the city with sparse buildings, the feeling that time has stopped.
People disappear into the buildings as if being sucked in during the morning commute, and there is almost no foot traffic during the day.
The back streets are different.
There is a smell of life there, and you can hear children's voices.
Unlike the main streets, there are dirty walls, cracked glass windows, and advertisements for employment agencies.
In the backstreets of Moscow, the windows of even the poorest fruit and vegetable shops were packed with lush cucumbers.
It was a greengrocer's shop run by people who didn't know the balance between supply and demand.
When I ordered a steak at a restaurant on Main Street, the meat was tough and stringy, and the knife wouldn't go through it.
I think it was a cow working hard in the kolkhoz.
On the other hand, people in the Ukraine were rich, and even sour cream appeared on the dinner table.
That's why I could understand why Russia and Germany were targeting them.
On the other hand, the beef from Ch'ongjin in North Korea melted as soon as it was placed on the charcoal brazier and turned to ash.
The meat itself didn't have any nutrients.
The toilets in socialist countries are interesting.
The toilet at the People's University in the North was about the size of 20 tatami mats.
On the far right-hand wall, there was a solitary morning glory (urinal) inlaid in the wall.
A mirror was in the hand-washing area, but it was above my face.
When I jumped up to look at it, the mirror and my face were distorted, too.
It lacked the public nature of being made for other people, and it also lacked modern rationality.
Later, when I was researching the nuclear facilities in Yeongbyeon, I saw on the internet that there were four or five Taekcheon power plants and dams supplying electricity to the facilities, built on the Chongchon River, which is not a particularly fast-flowing river.
I immediately noticed the lack of modern rationality and was able to convert my thinking experience into a perceptual experience.
In 1976, during the Cold War, Soviet military officer Viktor Pelenko landed in Hakodate, Japan, in a MiG-25 (Foxbat) and sought asylum.
The aircraft was made of stainless steel and used many vacuum tubes in its equipment, which greatly surprised the West.
The problem was that they believed in Marxian economics as a universal science without technological innovation.
In addition to this, there was a lack of modern rationality.
Three years later, I saw the Soviet Union for the first time.
At the time, there was no way I could have known any of the above.
All I knew was that the Soviet Union would surely perish.
This article continues.
in Kyoto
