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Solving Russia's IIIs, U.S.-Style
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20409 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1992 |
2,732 Words |
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Allan Luks
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A local high school teacher rises to speak at a recent meeting in Moscow, which brought together social service leaders from the United States and the former Soviet republics. "Yes", our math and science are better than yours", she says. "But we weren't allowed to be teachers. We taught them only how to be communists. We didn't teach humanism, the most important thing. Now our teaching is free to resemble yours.
A Soviet health official explains that several years ago, at a meeting in France, he was asked how many mentally disabled children lived in the Soviet Union, "None, I replied, since the official policy under communism was that there were no emotionally retarded youth. We knew those words were ridiculous but repeated them. Since August, since the failed putsch, we can recognize our problems and develop programs similar to the way you do."
The director of a residential school for the blind says, First, I must tell you, I don't know what is happening. Everything is changing. No one knows who is in control. But the ministry no longer tells me how to run the school. That is good. You, from America, you can advise us how to build organizations that help the needy."
After two weeks of discussions at public meetings and in individual homes, I find that our counterparts from Russia and from the other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States regularly interweave diatribes against communisms past oppression and inefficiency with declarations of their new freedom and appeals for U.S. guidance. Our meetings arranged by the American Center for international leadership a Baltimore organization funded by federal and foundation grants involved about 150 people from each nation.
For nearly 80 years, they experienced a regimented life-style. Suddenly communism shattered, and the new nothingness frightens them. Almost all of the former Soviet social service leaders we meet want to borrow their next steps from the world's best known other model; America.
Social Ills
The media have focused on hamburger franchises and investments bankers as the dramatic way that democratic capitalism is replacing communism. From headlined photos of lines for bread and other consumer goods in the freezing Russian winter, the world knows that a free economy produces far more consumer goods. Now, however people throughout the world especially those
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