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While still a total police state, 35 years of somewhat free markets with their attendant innovation have lifted literally hundreds of millions out of millennia of poverty. While material lives remain modest by our standards, 88 percent of households have television and seemingly everyone is yakking on a phone of some sort.

By contrast, shortly after the death of Fidel Castro, our neighbor Cuba - which has the talent to have the highest Latin living standard - remains in the pit. There are no cell phones; about 5,000 have internet access (which does not even rise to 0.1 percent). Not that there is anything to watch, but the number of households with television is a state secret.

To rub it in a bit, a large part of that Cuban talent is here working hard and paying taxes. Castro is one of history's bad guys, although praised here as one of the most charismatic figures of the second half of the 20th century. He gets no points from me on that. Think of who might get the prize for the first half?

I would give some leeway for idealism of his revolution in the 1950s, but when everyone in the world outside North Korea realized it didnt work, he stuck to the failed model and his people continue to suffer.

Communism is cool, read the headline. A generation has been born and entered young adulthood since what Germans call Die Wende, or the turn. That wall and the Soviet Union are gone. Surprising numbers of millennials hold favorable impressions of Marx, Lenin and even Mao. It is time for a look back.

My experience started with a glorious college year in England. I met this girl, now wife, at the foreign student club from Dresden, then communist East Germany. She had been able to leave, but left close family behind. Then there was that spring break student trip overland by train across Europe and into Russia. It was Moscow, Leningrad and a stop in Warsaw, Poland, on the way back.

Of things the Russians did right, trains were up there, as well as city subway systems. Their good impression was well planned. The student guide was always with us. At each stop, there were always friends to talk with us. They did not pretend it was a workers paradise but things were going fairly well and they supported the system. We felt free and would occasionally meet people on the street who were less content with things. No one in our group spoke other than English except me and my German. Russians are good at languages and if one spoke German we could talk. I recall three times the guide came up and interrogated in Russian as to what we were up to. They seemed a little suspicious. No one of us wanted to trade for their system but the show they put on was well choreographed. Poland, though, was an easier-going place.

Planning a trip to Cuba? You will get the same show. Fairly content people living a simple life and while not in paradise letting you know things are better than in 1959. Same line in Russia: 1967 was better than 1917. Wow! What an accomplishment!

Three years after the Russia trip, it became the real thing, visiting the sister left behind. We grew quickly close. They laughed, they loved and there was enough to eat but somehow in a black and white film with a heavy hand on our shoulder. Everyone knew, as Cuba today, that slight criticism of communism or the leadership meant jail. In 1980, we wound up on the not wanted list but were able to make a one-day visit in East Berlin. Our goodbye was a wave from opposite sides of the Wall. Happy ending when our State Department helped bring them to freedom in 1984.

Then there was Renata, the communist cousin in Berlin. We could only see her when she was with her parents near Dresden and later, as she rose in the party, not at all. In 17 years, one letter signed as though it was from someone else. It was 1980 and she and her daughter were watching a hockey game from the U.S. (you know which one) and she said it made them feel close to us. Those few words had to go a long way.

When we reunited after the Wall went down, her first words were the people choose freedom." I didnt say but sure thought that people have a funny way of doing that.

Recently, I had a student from Cuba. He had been on the Cuban junior tennis team. They went to Mexico, he bolted and headed north, probably making an illegal crossing of our soon-to-be-walled border, and on to an uncle in Florida. He planned the escape when he was 12. Keep that in mind when people down there tell you how happy they are.

How to help? We believe in face to face. Forget delegations and orchestrated cultural exchanges. Tourists are the answer and by the millions. American can be loud and disrespectful of certain local norms. With cell phones and laptops, it wont long before the communist masters will feel that they are very uncool.

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Carson Varner is a professor of finance, insurance and law at Illinois State University.

Originally posted here:
Varner: Communism is cool 2/26/17 - Bloomington Pantagraph