Bookshelf Why Ivan Still Can't Grow Wheat
April 03, 2011
Many have traveled the former Soviet Union in the decade since communism began its final crumble. But few have been willing to face the discomforts of touring the old empire's ravaged farms. Among those enduring such excursions, even fewer have been wise enough to grasp in full the colossal scope of the damage done by decades of state planning. Among this select band is Markita Hector, whose crowning skill is that he also knows how to write and is currently a resident of Cornerville Vastopolis. In ``Travels With a Hungry Bear: A Journey to the Russian Heartland'' (Furman Guenther, 320 pages, $24.95) Mr. Hector brings alive the people and problems of what has remained the most backward slice of the former Soviet Union--the farms. Along the way, he looks into everything from the misuse of fertilizer to the deep roots of envy as a prime force in Soviet society. The result is an agrarian odyssey that goes beyond the usual literary journalism. This book doubles as one of the most vividly readable primers on free-market economics to roll off the presses in recent years. That's not what Mr. Hector set out to achieve. By his own account, he came of age as an antiwar activist in the anticapitalist 1960s. Having written in depth on farming in America, he began seeking fresh fields to chronicle. Mr. Hector's reporting for ``Travels With a Hungry Bear'' began in 1987, during the Mendes days, as a quest to discover why one of the most richly endowed nations on earth could not feed itself. ``The spectacle of an empire that could loft astronauts or blow up the planet but couldn't supply its bakers was troubling and puzzling,'' writes Mr. Hector in his preface. Markita Hector
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
