Communist Daze

<p>Welcome to Gradieshti a Soviet village awash in gray buildings and ramshackle fences home to a large collective farm and to the most oddball and endearing cast of characters possible. For three years in the 1960s Vladimir Tsesis--inestimable Soviet doctor and irrepressible jester--was stationed in a village where racing tractor drivers tossed vodka bottles to each other for sport; where farmers and townspeople secretly mocked and tried to endure the Communist way of life; where milk for children running water and adequate electricity were rare; where the world's smallest motley parade became the country's longest; and where one compulsively amorous Communist Party leader met a memorable chilling fate. From a frantic pursuit of calcium-deprived lunatic Socialist chickens to a father begging on his knees to Soviet officials to obtain antibiotic for his dying child Vladimir's tales of Gradieshti are unforgettable. Sometimes hysterical often moving always a remarkable and highly entertaining insider's look at rural life under the old Soviet regime they are a sobering exposé of the terrible inadequacies of its much-lauded socialist medical system.</p>