snips:
Reinventing Collapse
The Soviet Example and American Prospects
by Dmitry Orlov
Well, first of all, it's funny. Really. I don't mean it's filled with jokes, but Dmitry Orlov has a very humorous and biting style. This humorous approach serves two important purposes:
1. It makes the book enjoyable to read.
2. It helps the reader develop a certain healthy detachment from the subject matter. If you can see the humor in the situation, it can lessen the melodrama of the Cold War in the past, and the collapse of both the Soviet Union (past) and its mirror twin the United States (very current).
For the American reader, however, it is the differences in preparedness for collapse that are most important. It's not that the Russians intentionally prepared; it's that their society's condition inadvertently prepared them.
The book is filled with useful information, but I think the most important is the need for "social capital". This is the good will and trust built up among people over time as a result of frequent social and cooperative contact. Orlov describes how the people in Russia who got by best were those who networked with friends and neighbors, giving when they had something, receiving when they didn't. This seemed to be even more essential than the barter system, which was also very important and heavily used.
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