Communist Daze: The Many Misadventures of a Soviet Doctor

by Vladimir A. Tsesis, Deborah A. Field

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253025869
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	02/13/2017
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Vladimir A. Tsesis, MD, was born and grew up in the Soviet Union, and became a pediatric doctor there. In 1974 he emigrated to the United States, where he continued to practice for another thirty years. Presently he is retired and lives in River Forest, IL. His books include Children, Parents, Lollipops: Tales of Pediatrics and Who's Yelling in My Stethoscope?

Read an Excerpt

'A woman walked into a food store. 'Do you have any meat?' she asked.
'No, we don’t.'
'What about milk?'
'Comrade, we deal only with meat here. Across the street there is a store where they have no milk.'

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface: September 1964
Beginnings
Potemkin Profession
Hard Lives and Few Choices
Just One More Drink
Secrets
The Party's Party
The Longest Shortest Parade in the Soviet Union
How Much Do You Really Want That Vacation, Vladimir?
Windmills
Milk
The Wanderers
Death in a Family
The Great Chase
KGB Daughters, and Why Not to Treat Them
The West Meets the Best
The Incredibly Shrinking Crop
A Frosty Farewell
One Joke Too Many
Endings

What People are Saying About This

"In this memoir, a pediatrician describes his work in a Moldovan village; Vladimir A. Tsesis's stories are darkly funny and reveal much about the poverty, drunkenness, political corruption, anti-Semitism, and fundamental absurdity of rural life in the Soviet 1960s. "

Michael Medved

To understand the confusing reality of Russia today, it helps to recall the 'bad-old-days' of the late, unlamented Soviet Union. This warm, touching and occasionally hilarious book can assist those recollections.

Deborah A. Field

In this memoir, a pediatrician describes his work in a Moldovan village; Vladimir A. Tsesis's stories are darkly funny and reveal much about the poverty, drunkenness, political corruption, anti-Semitism, and fundamental absurdity of rural life in the Soviet 1960s.

Deborah A. Field]]>

In this memoir, a pediatrician describes his work in a Moldovan village; Vladimir A. Tsesis's stories are darkly funny and reveal much about the poverty, drunkenness, political corruption, anti-Semitism, and fundamental absurdity of rural life in the Soviet 1960s.

Michael Medved]]>

To understand the confusing reality of Russia today, it helps to recall the 'bad-old-days' of the late, unlamented Soviet Union. This warm, touching and occasionally hilarious book can assist those recollections.

Editorial Reviews

"To understand the confusing reality of Russia today, it helps to recall the 'bad-old-days' of the late, unlamented Soviet Union. This warm, touching and occasionally hilarious book can assist those recollections."—Michael Medved, nationally syndicated radio show host

"In this memoir, a pediatrician describes his work in a Moldovan village; Vladimir A. Tsesis's stories are darkly funny and reveal much about the poverty, drunkenness, political corruption, anti-Semitism, and fundamental absurdity of rural life in the Soviet 1960s."—Deborah A. Field, author of Private Life and Communist Morality in Khrushchev's Russia

From the Publisher

2018-11-20

A physician recounts three years of service in a small Soviet village and the horrors of the communist medical system.

In exchange for tuition-free medical school, Tsesis (Why We Remain Jews, 2013) was obligated to perform three years of service as a doctor in an "underserved area"—in his case, Gradieshti, a farming village of 5,000 inhabitants in rural Moldova. The author was almost forcibly pushed into military service—he was threatened with academic failure—but saved from that fate because he was a pediatrician, a specialty dangerously underrepresented in the Soviet Union, which was plagued by terrifyingly high infant mortality rates. When he arrived in Gradieshti, he encountered remarkably primitive conditions—few homes enjoyed the unreliably delivered electricity or had indoor plumbing; poverty was crushing; alcoholism was "rampant"; and the sanitary conditions were appalling. In short, it was a woeful microcosm of the Soviet Union at large, vividly captured by the author. And the health system itself was nothing like the "grandiose global show" theatrically staged by the government—in fact, there were chronic shortages of basic medicines, including penicillin; undertrained doctors deprived of the best equipment; and ubiquitous corruption, all masked by mendaciously contrived data. In his memoir, Tsesis also chillingly describes his unfortunate encounters with an all-too-common anti-Semitism—in one recollection, he's nearly ousted from a neighborhood tavern for being a "dirty kike." And just as Soviet authorities disseminate false information to the outside world, they shield their own from exposure to more successful alternatives. Tsesis was denied permission to use his vacation time to take a cruise to the Mediterranean, the desire to travel considered inherently suspicious. The author's remembrance is an edifying look at the wages of authoritarian rule, which resulted in the routine deaths of young children from easily treatable conditions like dehydration. His account is unflinching and often moving: The story a tearful wife shared with Tsesis captures the heart of this book. Her husband had to beg an official to give their sick child the proper medicine. She lamented: "I am a law-abiding citizen, but I ask you, is it fair to go through all this humiliation?"

A historically eye-opening memoir told with insight and wit.

Kirkus Reviews