Who, after all, still believed that a new “epoch of human progress” began in October 1917? Certainly not the farmers of southern Russia humping hay on their backs while their tractors lay rusting in the mud. Who believed this was a “higher form of social organization”? Certainly not the workers and patients at the hospital in Krasnoyarsk, where the head physician said that the only way to get needles was to “scrape the rust” off the old ones and use them again.
