Last summer while visiting my home country I came across my uncle's diary. He wrote it in the early 70's while working in the Ministry of Everything. The family story is that his career ended abruptly when the diary was left by accident in the ministry outhouse where apparently he was composing his entries. This is a loose and imperfect translation of some of these entries.
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March 3, 1971 Beets, potatoes and corn
My name is Tadeusz. I work in the Ministry of Everything, in the Botany Unit. In spite of its name Ministry of Everything is rather small. The reason is that we are _interested_ in everything, talk and think about it while other agencies are more concerned with _doing_ things.
Botany Unit is dealing with plants. Majority of interest is in potatoes, beets and corn, but as we do not loose sights of anything that grows. Beets are the noblest plants. They are not all that popular and useful but display huge variety and have a long history. My closest buddies in the Botany unit work in beets, and my background is in beet farming too.
Potato is by far the most popular plant that we work with. It is a workhorse of agriculture and it is everywhere. Together with our comrades we try to beat capitalist pigs in developing a better potato!
In comparison, potato lacks refinement, color and taste of a beet and some beet people often claim that it is downright ugly. This is all silliness as our citizenry devours tons of them daily.
Corn is a third main component of our business. By volume corn is perhaps the most important product. Unfortunately it tastes the same no matter what you do with it and not very many people want to deal with it. It is used mostly as animal feed which is where it proves its worth. Corn people want to have a separate unit and many of them have a serious inferiority complex.
March 9, 1971 Flowers and Fruits (and Turnips)
I came to the ministry when my boss was hired. My specialty is flowers which is far from the core business of our unit and everybody else in the building as well. My comrades often joke that growing flowers is a capitalist folly and look at it with suspicion. However, I feel that flowers are important and I do net let myself to be frustrated about my lack of success in expanding my domain. Once a while I mention artichokes, cauliflower, chrysanthemum tea or other flower that most people are familiar with. Overall, my section has its ups and downs and I worry about the future sometimes.
Two years ago I started also working in the Fruit task force. For some historical reason fruits were linked with corn, but lately they are closer to beets. In the end Fruits and Flowers task force is plodding along under somewhat skeptical eyes of my colleagues.
My background is in flowers and beets, and I missed potatoes and corn in my educational trajectory. In my work in Botany unit I had to broaden and hone my farming expertise and hide my prejudices against corn and potatoes. By now I have been hiding them for so long that some days I wonder if possibly lost them altogether!
March 11, 1971 Dobravka
Dobravka is the most recent addition to our unit. She came from the Crop Counting group established by the Communist Farmers Association. Her expertise is in turnips, a new task force that separated from beets. Together we started Fruits, Turnips and Flowers task force and we work together on all these plants. Some comrades are puzzled by the emergence of this new task force but so far it is doing all right. Dobravka left her husband behind, but she lets herself be distracted by his frequent visits. He practices bricklaying early morning and takes part in solo bricklaying competitions once a while.
March 22, 1971 Womenfolk
Capitalist pigs keep their women at home to shop, cook and indoctrinate their piglets. This is not so in the most developed society such as ours. For one thing there is not much to shop for or with, and anybody can cook potatoes and boil a slab of meat until it is tender enough to bite a piece off. The little ones are so happy to see both parents coming back from work after a long day. Small gestures like lighting a cigarette for them or cracking a bottle of vodka before the evening meal puts smiles on their young faces.
So our unit is full of women and we are happier because of this. They smoke, drink, swear and spit just like any of us. They work hard and are totally committed. In many instances they surpass us in their intelligence and drive to excel. Just to give you an example, Marusia on top of her normal duties obtained certification to operate a tractor and she is building one in her family barn! Dobroslawa, who is our immediate boss, in spite of her soft sounding name has tenacity of a Russian crack trooper and a temper of a Crimean Cossack. Just to prove her resolve she kept her husband for 20 years in a remote farming outpost. Half of this time he spent shoveling snow. As a matter of fact all women who transferred to our unit from afar left their husbands at home. Not burdened by the family entanglements they work all the time and volunteer for additional assignments. They set standards that are difficult to reach for menfolk. In contrast, all men who travel to work with us bring their families with them. Perhaps our society is not yet as egalitarian as it may be!
In summary, we have jolly good time working with our womenfolk and respect them tremendously. Capitalist stereotypes of women being feather-brained and bitchy are myths of this diseased system.
April 2, 1971 Workers and Veterans
I glanced at my last entry and my heart filled with pride. Yet I have to report that there are still problems in our society that we do not fully grasp. Just yesterday we got another directive - each of our working groups has to include three workers or veterans. This is a sad story that I have to explain. Farming is a glorious activity, and plant growing is what our society needs very much. Everybody is equally able to contribute to this task yet workers and veterans are severely underrepresented in our task forces. Nobody knows for sure why is that but the problem is acute and very visible. Until now the quota was two workers per task force but now it is increased to three. This is a big leap forward and if you remember our Chinese comrades ten years ago you will understand that some things cannot be accelerated beyond their natural pace. Yet we struggle and try to cope, but the errors multiply. Just yesterday I brought a worker with interest in sugar beets to my fruit task force. He was mighty surprised and my colleagues in sugar beet group were not pleased either!
This is not a good situation and I hope that out bosses will let go a little. The main concern is that workers and to some degree veterans are heavily stereotyped in our society and making mistakes like that reinforces these stereotypes. We are too small to change the society and chasing too many secondary goals takes us away from our mission.
April 9, 1971 Jagienka
Jagienka is my wife and she brought me to the Botany unit. Earlier I called her my boss and this is not far from truth. She is very smart and never gives up. This combination allows her to win most arguments. She believes that in modern society men and women should be able to play the same roles. Consequently I acquired lots of skills that my mother did not think I will need in life. I am happier because of that. However, I still cling to obsolete and old fashioned concepts of family. Recently, I developed fondness for removing leaves from rain gutters - something that Jagienka is unlikely to pick up. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction.
April 19, 1971 Large B and small c
Beets and botany both start with B and this creates a small problem. Potato people don't care much for it and they go about their job. However corn community is very chippy about it and they want to have a little c somewhere in the name of our unit. Our new director who is a former leader of corn growers union is restless about it. Not much can be done as these names were established by Central Committee in 1958 but it is a constant irritant and a source of tension. Corn people have a bit of persecution complex, they constantly complain about some beet farmer being rude to them, machine farming people stealing their crop seed and generally the society not caring enough for corn or using it in some questionable ways.
I do not know what is the remedy for this. Our corn group has just three people. It is led by Gunther, the only foreigner among us.
Sweet corn is the only kind that people fancy and perhaps it would be wise to concentrate on this leaving the animal food for others to take care of. Beets and sweet corn have some passing similarity and maybe some collaboration can be established. If only the darn thing would not be so tasteless!
April 22, 1971 Tomasz, Antoni and Krzysztof
Tomasz, Antoni and Krzysztof are buddies that I hang out with a lot. They all deal with beets, Tomasz and Antoni's specialty is golden beets - a special very refined variety that is like caviar of beet farming. Krzysztof works on leafy beets, equally intricate and important. None of these are grown or consumed in great quantities but they are very visible and important. Once every four years farmers union awards a Field award - 10,000 square meters of arable land near lake Baykal. It is conveniently reachable from the populated areas by a 7-day trip on the Transiberian railroad.
The sophistication of golden or leafy beet farming reached amazing proportions. Most farmers do not know much about these types of beets and their eyes glaze over when they are mentioned. Yet, when I listen to my comrades talking about them I have a strong sense of excitement and I am with them 100%.
April 27, 1971 Sugar beet group
Most of my colleagues were born during or after the Second World War. The only exception is the Sugar Beet group whose comrades recall the First World War. This makes them a bit old fashioned but no less friendly and social. Sugar beets are very important and they have forms that are just like potatoes and some that are very close to beets. Sugar beet group continuously struggles with trying to define the boundaries of their involvement and their meetings are very lively. They shout and scream at each other but in the end they all are good friends. Over time their focus tightened and lately they claim that some of the sugar beets are really flowers and some other are fruits. I am less convinced but for now I go along with this argument.
April 30, 1971 Potato group
Potato group is the largest in our unit and most successful. They started as a big potato group, few years ago they sprouted a machine potato growing outfit and finally an underground farming piece. The background for this success is simple - they deal with important stuff in a businesslike manner and they are good colleagues. Because of the importance of potato in our culture they do not need to spend extraordinary amount of time advocating and promoting. There is no need for trying to game the system either. The best potatoes are really good stuff and everybody knows it. If we ever complain, it is that they are so big that sometimes some crummy stuff sneaks in. But potato people are good guardians of their business. The sore point for beet people is that a beet farmer grows the same beets all the time and does not have much flexibility. On the other hand the same potato can be fashioned into french fries, can be mashed, boiled, steamed, chopped, grounded and made into a thousand of different things. Potato farmer can have hundred of different ways to peddle his potatoes and lack of success in one of them is not a fatal flaw.
May 3, 1971 Underground farming
Underground farming is a recent fad. Historically, farming and mining were viewed as completely disjoint activities. In fact miners hated plants, and farmers were not much interested in any underground activities. Yet, underground farming has a tremendous future, particularly if the capitalist pigs keep polluting our precious environment. We keep planting stuff underground and expose miners to it. It is a slow going and sadly most farmers view miners as a bit slow and unresponsive. On the other hand most miners view farmers as arrogant and lacking appropriate knowledge and qualifications. This is all annoyingly complicated. Yet, we make tremendous investment of resources in the underground farming. We have several working groups, a farming outpost and many ongoing initiatives. The farming outpost which is called a Sunless Station sits in the middle of the country quite far from any mining activity.
I can't say that we have much to show for all this activity. The yield from underground farming is rather small and the techniques are standard - plow, sow and reap. It is the setting that makes the activity exciting but for the amount of work involved it is a bit tiresome. However, the term underground farming is very catchy, and it sells well to the public. I suppose it is with us to stay for a long time.
May 11, 1971 Farming outposts
Our unit has several farming outposts. First one was started thirty years ago and it concerns predominantly beet farming. Rather foolishly they call themselves "a jewel of botany" which our management finds extremely annoying. Potato people are good sports but this facility rubs them the wrong way. I do not know what is the reason but in part it has to do with the fact that they are doing a really good job and set high standard for the rest. Needless to say the rest has its ups and downs.
We also have a fairly new corn outfit and many potato stations. Some are quite good such as the facility on the coast, but others seem rather drab and uninspired.
I already mentioned the Sunless Station - our underground farming outpost. It is probably the most questionable one, as it is limping along failing to excite either miners or farmers. Their programs are inbred and the previous manager was a bit of a nutcase, but we keep recommending them to the Central Committee, as they are rather trivial to advocate for when you are dealing with people who do not care much about the details.
Anyway, the basic idea behind the farming outposts is simple. Get the farming folks together, away from mundane and boring chores of the day. Have them talk, sing and be merry and expect good things to happen.
Initial reaction of the farming community to these outposts was very frosty. They felt that it takes away resources from the individual farming without giving much in return. Over the years a big change slowly occurred. These days farmers are fond of these outposts and compete to visit them. With the exception of folks in the middle of the country who are not good for much anyway the outposts remain a popular destination for farmers that want to maintain contact with the community.
May 26, 1971 Little runt
One of the farming posts stands out among the others. It is quite small and it is housed in an old cement factory. It specializes in beet growing and our management is uneasy about it. I have a strong suspicion that they might want to shut it down using ideological deviations as a convenient excuse. It is sad because this little runt provides a splash of color and a breath of originality in a rather monotone landscape. This outpost is organizing its groups around a simple idea, every participant has to grow something during their stay at the facility. Of course it does not always work as expected but they have many success stories to tell.
At the same time there are many issues - they oversell their success, manage their resources arrogantly and without following appropriate procedures, and generally do not indicate much respect in the process. They also show little interest in potato farming and none in corn. Our bosses are exasperated with them and their patience is wearing thin.
June 3, 1971 Lech
Lech was hired the same year as I did. He is a nice guy - a bit secretive and distanced from the rest of our unit but a good colleague. His real passion is to create unusual working teams, often reaching outside boundaries of traditional farming. He maintains close connection to Butchers and most of his creations involve them. Perhaps you do not know what I am talking about so let me explain. Butchers form a completely separate Ministry with the largest budget in the country. We are a meat-loving society and it shows, even though most of meat products we tend to export to comrades who are more in need. Butchers are paranoid people who value obedience above all. Lech used to work for them and he soaked in this mentality. Most of farmers are wary of working with Butchers and any such collaboration is not on our terms anyway.
June 15, 1971 Command Center
Our society enjoys the supreme social order and we all benefit from it. Unlike capitalist pigs that treat their workers like dirt we do not have unemployment. When people come to work for the Ministry, with the exception of members of temporary working groups, it is a contract for life. Of course, not everybody has the same capacity to contribute but we take good care of our slower colleagues and this does not create any problems. However, there is one aspect that troubles me slightly and I suspect that capitalists may have outsmarted us a little. Let me explain. Our Botany unit, together with four other units form a larger cluster managed by the Command Center. Command Center is where all strategic thinking occurs and high level decisions originate from. The director of the Command Center is a boss of our boss and he carries his job on a four-year rotation. This is a good and well thought out system but this is also where the full employment policies clash with reality. Command Center is a terminal destination for colleagues who were once top employees but over time became less active, less smart, less liked or simply less useful. They cling like barnacles to our flagship institution and slow it down. As a result, the director of the Command Center is surrounded by misfits whose advice is shaky, judgment poor and egos inflated. Consequently, his ability to delegate actions and solicit input is compromised and the organization suffers.
June 18, 1971 Scandal
To give you a sense of the issues with the Command Center let me recall a recent scandal that rocked our Ministry and resulted in quite a mess for everybody. A high ranking party member discovered that a distinguished employee of the Command Center for a number of years was spending a huge numbers of hours praying loudly in his office and performing other strange religious rituals. Mind that our society is very tolerant of any religion and most manifestations of it are allowed in the privacy of one's home. However, praying in public is just too much! Colleagues were incensed by noises coming from the room, correspondence with members of several churches, including some outfits in Asia, and general lack of proper action on the part of the management. The Command Center job that was supposed to be a harmless sinecure led first to boredom and then to an insatiable religious obsession that exposed serious weakness in the system!
June 29, 1971 140% of the norm
One of the features of the supreme social system is that it aims at exceeding all targets in a consistent and predictable manner. In our case it means that the Party wants us to grow 70% of things in the first six months of the year. Since the stuff grows all the time one might think that this means that we need to do 140% of the norm every time. This is not so, and in fact the requirement is not without merit. Yet it is somewhat arbitrary and it creates a period of hectic activity just before the due date. Needless to say quality suffers. Dobroslawa is a chief enforcer of this rule and this is not a laughing matter. She takes making the 70% cut very seriously. She cracks the whip and prods and pushes to make it happen. In the end, it is not particularly hard to make this goal so we good-naturedly comply.
Yet, by doing so we perhaps hide and obfuscate the genuine problems of our unit - understaffing, poor working conditions, irrational workflow and more. Yet again capitalist pigs beat us with their pragmatic approach to the workplace!
July 2, 1971 Ideological purity
We have strict rules on the ideological makeup of the members of our working teams. There is an elaborate screening process and lot of attention is given to trying to make sure that nothing inappropriate comes out. This used to be done by Dobroslawa but later four more people were added to the group. It is a lot of work - proper documentation must be entered, all documents have to be screened for signs of questionable activities, and so on. Sometime one little code indicating improper ideological upbringing can wreak havoc in our accounting. Dobroslawa keeps track of all of it and she is driven not to let even a small mistake slip out. Lately our new director declared that he wants to do all of this work by himself. This is probably not possible and Dobroslawa is quite grumpy about it. She stealthily checks everything herself somewhat obscuring the size of the problem.
Continued here.
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March 3, 1971 Beets, potatoes and corn
My name is Tadeusz. I work in the Ministry of Everything, in the Botany Unit. In spite of its name Ministry of Everything is rather small. The reason is that we are _interested_ in everything, talk and think about it while other agencies are more concerned with _doing_ things.
Botany Unit is dealing with plants. Majority of interest is in potatoes, beets and corn, but as we do not loose sights of anything that grows. Beets are the noblest plants. They are not all that popular and useful but display huge variety and have a long history. My closest buddies in the Botany unit work in beets, and my background is in beet farming too.
Potato is by far the most popular plant that we work with. It is a workhorse of agriculture and it is everywhere. Together with our comrades we try to beat capitalist pigs in developing a better potato!
In comparison, potato lacks refinement, color and taste of a beet and some beet people often claim that it is downright ugly. This is all silliness as our citizenry devours tons of them daily.
Corn is a third main component of our business. By volume corn is perhaps the most important product. Unfortunately it tastes the same no matter what you do with it and not very many people want to deal with it. It is used mostly as animal feed which is where it proves its worth. Corn people want to have a separate unit and many of them have a serious inferiority complex.
March 9, 1971 Flowers and Fruits (and Turnips)
I came to the ministry when my boss was hired. My specialty is flowers which is far from the core business of our unit and everybody else in the building as well. My comrades often joke that growing flowers is a capitalist folly and look at it with suspicion. However, I feel that flowers are important and I do net let myself to be frustrated about my lack of success in expanding my domain. Once a while I mention artichokes, cauliflower, chrysanthemum tea or other flower that most people are familiar with. Overall, my section has its ups and downs and I worry about the future sometimes.
Two years ago I started also working in the Fruit task force. For some historical reason fruits were linked with corn, but lately they are closer to beets. In the end Fruits and Flowers task force is plodding along under somewhat skeptical eyes of my colleagues.
My background is in flowers and beets, and I missed potatoes and corn in my educational trajectory. In my work in Botany unit I had to broaden and hone my farming expertise and hide my prejudices against corn and potatoes. By now I have been hiding them for so long that some days I wonder if possibly lost them altogether!
March 11, 1971 Dobravka
Dobravka is the most recent addition to our unit. She came from the Crop Counting group established by the Communist Farmers Association. Her expertise is in turnips, a new task force that separated from beets. Together we started Fruits, Turnips and Flowers task force and we work together on all these plants. Some comrades are puzzled by the emergence of this new task force but so far it is doing all right. Dobravka left her husband behind, but she lets herself be distracted by his frequent visits. He practices bricklaying early morning and takes part in solo bricklaying competitions once a while.
March 22, 1971 Womenfolk
Capitalist pigs keep their women at home to shop, cook and indoctrinate their piglets. This is not so in the most developed society such as ours. For one thing there is not much to shop for or with, and anybody can cook potatoes and boil a slab of meat until it is tender enough to bite a piece off. The little ones are so happy to see both parents coming back from work after a long day. Small gestures like lighting a cigarette for them or cracking a bottle of vodka before the evening meal puts smiles on their young faces.
So our unit is full of women and we are happier because of this. They smoke, drink, swear and spit just like any of us. They work hard and are totally committed. In many instances they surpass us in their intelligence and drive to excel. Just to give you an example, Marusia on top of her normal duties obtained certification to operate a tractor and she is building one in her family barn! Dobroslawa, who is our immediate boss, in spite of her soft sounding name has tenacity of a Russian crack trooper and a temper of a Crimean Cossack. Just to prove her resolve she kept her husband for 20 years in a remote farming outpost. Half of this time he spent shoveling snow. As a matter of fact all women who transferred to our unit from afar left their husbands at home. Not burdened by the family entanglements they work all the time and volunteer for additional assignments. They set standards that are difficult to reach for menfolk. In contrast, all men who travel to work with us bring their families with them. Perhaps our society is not yet as egalitarian as it may be!
In summary, we have jolly good time working with our womenfolk and respect them tremendously. Capitalist stereotypes of women being feather-brained and bitchy are myths of this diseased system.
April 2, 1971 Workers and Veterans
I glanced at my last entry and my heart filled with pride. Yet I have to report that there are still problems in our society that we do not fully grasp. Just yesterday we got another directive - each of our working groups has to include three workers or veterans. This is a sad story that I have to explain. Farming is a glorious activity, and plant growing is what our society needs very much. Everybody is equally able to contribute to this task yet workers and veterans are severely underrepresented in our task forces. Nobody knows for sure why is that but the problem is acute and very visible. Until now the quota was two workers per task force but now it is increased to three. This is a big leap forward and if you remember our Chinese comrades ten years ago you will understand that some things cannot be accelerated beyond their natural pace. Yet we struggle and try to cope, but the errors multiply. Just yesterday I brought a worker with interest in sugar beets to my fruit task force. He was mighty surprised and my colleagues in sugar beet group were not pleased either!
This is not a good situation and I hope that out bosses will let go a little. The main concern is that workers and to some degree veterans are heavily stereotyped in our society and making mistakes like that reinforces these stereotypes. We are too small to change the society and chasing too many secondary goals takes us away from our mission.
April 9, 1971 Jagienka
Jagienka is my wife and she brought me to the Botany unit. Earlier I called her my boss and this is not far from truth. She is very smart and never gives up. This combination allows her to win most arguments. She believes that in modern society men and women should be able to play the same roles. Consequently I acquired lots of skills that my mother did not think I will need in life. I am happier because of that. However, I still cling to obsolete and old fashioned concepts of family. Recently, I developed fondness for removing leaves from rain gutters - something that Jagienka is unlikely to pick up. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction.
April 19, 1971 Large B and small c
Beets and botany both start with B and this creates a small problem. Potato people don't care much for it and they go about their job. However corn community is very chippy about it and they want to have a little c somewhere in the name of our unit. Our new director who is a former leader of corn growers union is restless about it. Not much can be done as these names were established by Central Committee in 1958 but it is a constant irritant and a source of tension. Corn people have a bit of persecution complex, they constantly complain about some beet farmer being rude to them, machine farming people stealing their crop seed and generally the society not caring enough for corn or using it in some questionable ways.
I do not know what is the remedy for this. Our corn group has just three people. It is led by Gunther, the only foreigner among us.
Sweet corn is the only kind that people fancy and perhaps it would be wise to concentrate on this leaving the animal food for others to take care of. Beets and sweet corn have some passing similarity and maybe some collaboration can be established. If only the darn thing would not be so tasteless!
April 22, 1971 Tomasz, Antoni and Krzysztof
Tomasz, Antoni and Krzysztof are buddies that I hang out with a lot. They all deal with beets, Tomasz and Antoni's specialty is golden beets - a special very refined variety that is like caviar of beet farming. Krzysztof works on leafy beets, equally intricate and important. None of these are grown or consumed in great quantities but they are very visible and important. Once every four years farmers union awards a Field award - 10,000 square meters of arable land near lake Baykal. It is conveniently reachable from the populated areas by a 7-day trip on the Transiberian railroad.
The sophistication of golden or leafy beet farming reached amazing proportions. Most farmers do not know much about these types of beets and their eyes glaze over when they are mentioned. Yet, when I listen to my comrades talking about them I have a strong sense of excitement and I am with them 100%.
April 27, 1971 Sugar beet group
Most of my colleagues were born during or after the Second World War. The only exception is the Sugar Beet group whose comrades recall the First World War. This makes them a bit old fashioned but no less friendly and social. Sugar beets are very important and they have forms that are just like potatoes and some that are very close to beets. Sugar beet group continuously struggles with trying to define the boundaries of their involvement and their meetings are very lively. They shout and scream at each other but in the end they all are good friends. Over time their focus tightened and lately they claim that some of the sugar beets are really flowers and some other are fruits. I am less convinced but for now I go along with this argument.
April 30, 1971 Potato group
Potato group is the largest in our unit and most successful. They started as a big potato group, few years ago they sprouted a machine potato growing outfit and finally an underground farming piece. The background for this success is simple - they deal with important stuff in a businesslike manner and they are good colleagues. Because of the importance of potato in our culture they do not need to spend extraordinary amount of time advocating and promoting. There is no need for trying to game the system either. The best potatoes are really good stuff and everybody knows it. If we ever complain, it is that they are so big that sometimes some crummy stuff sneaks in. But potato people are good guardians of their business. The sore point for beet people is that a beet farmer grows the same beets all the time and does not have much flexibility. On the other hand the same potato can be fashioned into french fries, can be mashed, boiled, steamed, chopped, grounded and made into a thousand of different things. Potato farmer can have hundred of different ways to peddle his potatoes and lack of success in one of them is not a fatal flaw.
May 3, 1971 Underground farming
Underground farming is a recent fad. Historically, farming and mining were viewed as completely disjoint activities. In fact miners hated plants, and farmers were not much interested in any underground activities. Yet, underground farming has a tremendous future, particularly if the capitalist pigs keep polluting our precious environment. We keep planting stuff underground and expose miners to it. It is a slow going and sadly most farmers view miners as a bit slow and unresponsive. On the other hand most miners view farmers as arrogant and lacking appropriate knowledge and qualifications. This is all annoyingly complicated. Yet, we make tremendous investment of resources in the underground farming. We have several working groups, a farming outpost and many ongoing initiatives. The farming outpost which is called a Sunless Station sits in the middle of the country quite far from any mining activity.
I can't say that we have much to show for all this activity. The yield from underground farming is rather small and the techniques are standard - plow, sow and reap. It is the setting that makes the activity exciting but for the amount of work involved it is a bit tiresome. However, the term underground farming is very catchy, and it sells well to the public. I suppose it is with us to stay for a long time.
May 11, 1971 Farming outposts
Our unit has several farming outposts. First one was started thirty years ago and it concerns predominantly beet farming. Rather foolishly they call themselves "a jewel of botany" which our management finds extremely annoying. Potato people are good sports but this facility rubs them the wrong way. I do not know what is the reason but in part it has to do with the fact that they are doing a really good job and set high standard for the rest. Needless to say the rest has its ups and downs.
We also have a fairly new corn outfit and many potato stations. Some are quite good such as the facility on the coast, but others seem rather drab and uninspired.
I already mentioned the Sunless Station - our underground farming outpost. It is probably the most questionable one, as it is limping along failing to excite either miners or farmers. Their programs are inbred and the previous manager was a bit of a nutcase, but we keep recommending them to the Central Committee, as they are rather trivial to advocate for when you are dealing with people who do not care much about the details.
Anyway, the basic idea behind the farming outposts is simple. Get the farming folks together, away from mundane and boring chores of the day. Have them talk, sing and be merry and expect good things to happen.
Initial reaction of the farming community to these outposts was very frosty. They felt that it takes away resources from the individual farming without giving much in return. Over the years a big change slowly occurred. These days farmers are fond of these outposts and compete to visit them. With the exception of folks in the middle of the country who are not good for much anyway the outposts remain a popular destination for farmers that want to maintain contact with the community.
May 26, 1971 Little runt
One of the farming posts stands out among the others. It is quite small and it is housed in an old cement factory. It specializes in beet growing and our management is uneasy about it. I have a strong suspicion that they might want to shut it down using ideological deviations as a convenient excuse. It is sad because this little runt provides a splash of color and a breath of originality in a rather monotone landscape. This outpost is organizing its groups around a simple idea, every participant has to grow something during their stay at the facility. Of course it does not always work as expected but they have many success stories to tell.
At the same time there are many issues - they oversell their success, manage their resources arrogantly and without following appropriate procedures, and generally do not indicate much respect in the process. They also show little interest in potato farming and none in corn. Our bosses are exasperated with them and their patience is wearing thin.
June 3, 1971 Lech
Lech was hired the same year as I did. He is a nice guy - a bit secretive and distanced from the rest of our unit but a good colleague. His real passion is to create unusual working teams, often reaching outside boundaries of traditional farming. He maintains close connection to Butchers and most of his creations involve them. Perhaps you do not know what I am talking about so let me explain. Butchers form a completely separate Ministry with the largest budget in the country. We are a meat-loving society and it shows, even though most of meat products we tend to export to comrades who are more in need. Butchers are paranoid people who value obedience above all. Lech used to work for them and he soaked in this mentality. Most of farmers are wary of working with Butchers and any such collaboration is not on our terms anyway.
June 15, 1971 Command Center
Our society enjoys the supreme social order and we all benefit from it. Unlike capitalist pigs that treat their workers like dirt we do not have unemployment. When people come to work for the Ministry, with the exception of members of temporary working groups, it is a contract for life. Of course, not everybody has the same capacity to contribute but we take good care of our slower colleagues and this does not create any problems. However, there is one aspect that troubles me slightly and I suspect that capitalists may have outsmarted us a little. Let me explain. Our Botany unit, together with four other units form a larger cluster managed by the Command Center. Command Center is where all strategic thinking occurs and high level decisions originate from. The director of the Command Center is a boss of our boss and he carries his job on a four-year rotation. This is a good and well thought out system but this is also where the full employment policies clash with reality. Command Center is a terminal destination for colleagues who were once top employees but over time became less active, less smart, less liked or simply less useful. They cling like barnacles to our flagship institution and slow it down. As a result, the director of the Command Center is surrounded by misfits whose advice is shaky, judgment poor and egos inflated. Consequently, his ability to delegate actions and solicit input is compromised and the organization suffers.
June 18, 1971 Scandal
To give you a sense of the issues with the Command Center let me recall a recent scandal that rocked our Ministry and resulted in quite a mess for everybody. A high ranking party member discovered that a distinguished employee of the Command Center for a number of years was spending a huge numbers of hours praying loudly in his office and performing other strange religious rituals. Mind that our society is very tolerant of any religion and most manifestations of it are allowed in the privacy of one's home. However, praying in public is just too much! Colleagues were incensed by noises coming from the room, correspondence with members of several churches, including some outfits in Asia, and general lack of proper action on the part of the management. The Command Center job that was supposed to be a harmless sinecure led first to boredom and then to an insatiable religious obsession that exposed serious weakness in the system!
June 29, 1971 140% of the norm
One of the features of the supreme social system is that it aims at exceeding all targets in a consistent and predictable manner. In our case it means that the Party wants us to grow 70% of things in the first six months of the year. Since the stuff grows all the time one might think that this means that we need to do 140% of the norm every time. This is not so, and in fact the requirement is not without merit. Yet it is somewhat arbitrary and it creates a period of hectic activity just before the due date. Needless to say quality suffers. Dobroslawa is a chief enforcer of this rule and this is not a laughing matter. She takes making the 70% cut very seriously. She cracks the whip and prods and pushes to make it happen. In the end, it is not particularly hard to make this goal so we good-naturedly comply.
Yet, by doing so we perhaps hide and obfuscate the genuine problems of our unit - understaffing, poor working conditions, irrational workflow and more. Yet again capitalist pigs beat us with their pragmatic approach to the workplace!
July 2, 1971 Ideological purity
We have strict rules on the ideological makeup of the members of our working teams. There is an elaborate screening process and lot of attention is given to trying to make sure that nothing inappropriate comes out. This used to be done by Dobroslawa but later four more people were added to the group. It is a lot of work - proper documentation must be entered, all documents have to be screened for signs of questionable activities, and so on. Sometime one little code indicating improper ideological upbringing can wreak havoc in our accounting. Dobroslawa keeps track of all of it and she is driven not to let even a small mistake slip out. Lately our new director declared that he wants to do all of this work by himself. This is probably not possible and Dobroslawa is quite grumpy about it. She stealthily checks everything herself somewhat obscuring the size of the problem.
Continued here.
