Communist Daze ─ The Many Misadventures of a Soviet Doctor

Welcome to Gradieshti, a tiny Russian village awash in gray buildings and ramshackle fenceslinens, a home to a large, collective farm surrounded by sprawling state-run collective farms,and home to the most oddball and endearing cast of characters possible. For three years in the 1960s, Vladimir A. 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 mocked the Communist way of life; where milk for children, running water, and adequate electricity were when they could and played along the rest of the time 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.

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?