(3 of 3)
Bulgaria. Radio Sofia found industry suffering from a "barbaric attitude towards machines." Wrote the Communist Rabotnichesko Delo: "In the Balchik tractor station, combines were left in such condition that wheat began to grow in them." The Minister of Agriculture abjectly confesses that the 1952 tobacco and wheat crop has been cut down by drought to 79% of last year's harvest. The Ministry of Electrification limited every household in Sofia to one light bulb.
Rumania. A cold and hungry winter is in prospect. To "remedy ... the shortage of fuel," the Communist Council of Ministers ordered the peasants to "make full use, as fuel, of agricultural waste, sedge, and other materials."
KOMEKON's statistical charts report that East Europe's coal and steel production is booming. But it has no room, and feels no need to footnote the human strains and suffering.
† Short for Komitet Ekonomicheskoy Vzaimopomoshchi, or Council for Economic Mutual Assistance.