The Red Ledger II: Odd Tales in Communist History

Dear comrades, communist history is mostly bleak and dismal stuff, but it’s the weekend, so here are a few strange and humorous anecdotes from the vaults of the People’s Archive. If you like these, be sure to check out the first installment of the Red Ledger. Enjoy.

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Russia’s Foxy Comrades

The man most responsible for showing us the process by which wolves become dogs was the son of a priest named Dimitri Belyaev, a Soviet geneticist and director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics. In the 1950s, Belyaev began studying the genetics of domesticated animals by breeding the silver fox (Vulpes vulpes).

The project went on for decades, and in each new generation of fox, Belyaev bred only the foxes that showed the least fear of humans. Eventually, none of the offspring showed any fear of humans. In addition, their once pointed ears were now floppy, their once straight tails now curled, and they even wagged their tails like dogs when they saw their human caretakers.

Belyaev not only made one of the most profound contributions to the study of evolutionary science, but also proved wrong the great American sage Benjamin Franklin, who once said, “Many foxes grow grey, but few grow good.”

The Ballads of Birth Control

The Chinese government maintained its one-child policy from 1975 to 2015, using propaganda songs to help shore up public support. One such song was titled “It’s Good to Have Only One Child,” which included the lyrics, “If you have a second child / you violate the law. / Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” You can watch a young boy sing part of the song in the trailer for the 2019 documentary One Child Nation.

Soviet Space Dogs

Before humans ventured into space, the Soviet space program sent dogs, the most famous of these being Laika on November 3, 1957, making it the first animal to orbit the Earth. Laika was a stray mongrel picked up from the streets of Moscow and flown aboard the Sputnik 2. Today, a monument to Laika stands in Moscow, honoring her sacrifice. Many of us know this much, but did you know how Laika died?

The Soviets told the public Laika was fed poisoned food to ensure her peaceful death, as they did not yet have the technology to de-orbit. But in truth, the central R-7 sustainer failed to separate from the payload, preventing the thermal control system from properly operating, and some of the thermal insulation tore loose. The cabin temperature rose and Laika died from overheating, essentially cooked to death. The public didn’t find out the real cause of death for almost 50 years.

In the end, the Soviet space program ended as embarrassingly as the Union itself. “Nothing better illustrated the realities of the Soviet collapse than the fate of Sergei Krikalyev, a Soviet cosmonaut who was fired into space in May 1991,” wrote Norman Davies in his classic Europe: A History. “He was still circling the earth at the end of the year for want of a decision to bring him back. He had left a Soviet Union that was still a superpower; he would return to a world from which the Soviet Union had disappeared. His controllers at the Baikonur Space Centre found themselves in the independent republic of Kazakhstan.”

The Great Soviet Pen Shortage

The Soviet Union famously lacked even most basic supplies. I remember my own grandfather sending care packages to our family in Russia, placing things such as whole cloth, candles, and yarn in the box. Trivial basics to us, but treasures to our loved ones in the Old Country. Indeed, the first toilet paper factory in the USSR was not built until 1969, and even then it took many more years for toilet paper to become a common household item.

As one woman recalled, “People with connections, friends working in grocery stores, used the rough gray paper that was used for packaging. And they were in the minority! We could only dream of toilet paper rolls. I remember a line of some 100 people queuing to buy those.”

Pens were similarly rare and sought after. There is an old story that tells how the Americans invested in developing a special pen that could operate in zero gravity for use by astronauts, whereas the Soviets simply gave their cosmonauts pencils. I chuckled the first time I heard this as a boy, and read the story as evidence of Russian ingenuity, rather than proof of Russian destitution. Years later, I read about the infamous “Moscow Pen Incident,” in which Western journalists attended an international event and were astonished to see Soviet officials and journalists tripping over each other and shoving their fellow Soviets aside to get their hands on pens that someone had put out for attendees.