In 1997, I went to Cuba to learn about what Communism was to understand why my parents had left the former USSR in 1980, when the teachings of Marx and Lenin still reigned supreme.

I recently read parts of Gary Berkovich’s book, Watching Communism Fail and realized that this would be a good book for someone who didn’t know much about daily Soviet life and the corruption and hypocrisy of the Communist state, especially in how the government treated its Jewish citizens.

Obviously, seeing the realities of Communism first hand in China, North Korea or Cuba may be more instructive than a book, but most people can’t go to North Korea or Cuba and don’t speak Chinese to truly comprehend daily Chinese life.

From the absurd to the extreme, Berkovich’s shows the inside out of a regime that was hyper effective in making the lives of its citizens a living hell.
Berkovich describes how the Soviet customs officials at the Moscow airport unscrewed the heads of all the toys he and his family were carrying with them to see if they were hiding any money or valuables inside the toys. My dad had to relinquish a Russian children’s alphabet book at the Leningrad Airport because the authorities deemed the book a public item that could not be exported.

As our own capitalist economic system is decaying and collapsing, we can learn about how another heralded economic ideal disintegrated. Maybe there are some lessons to be learned.

-Susanna Zaraysky blogs for New America Media about the issues of global identity, global citizens, multilingualism, and the life of a child of immigrants. Her website is: www.createyourworldbooks.com and her email is info@susansword.com.