Communist Daze The Many Misadventures of a Soviet Doctor [Paperback]

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 Tsesisinestimable Soviet doctor and irrepressible jesterwas 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 worlds smallest, motley parade became the countrys 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, Vladimirs tales of Gradieshti are unforgettable. Sometimes hysterical, often moving, always a remarkable and highly entertaining insiders look at rural life under the old Soviet regime, they are a sobering expos? of the terrible inadequacies of its much-lauded socialist medical system.

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.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.

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 YellinglÓ/