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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Bear Hunting With the Politburo 

Several PARANOIA fans have recommended Bear Hunting With the Politburo: American Adventures in Russian Capitalism, by A. Craig Copetas. Copetas, an American journalist, lived and worked in Soviet Russia for three years. Simon & Schuster published the first edition of this nonfiction account in 1991; Madison Books published an updated version in 2001.

Oddsod Blok'd, of RPG.net, tells why Bear Hunting should be added to the PARANOIA bibliography: "It deals directly with Soviet cooperators -- men and women who were some of Russia's first free marketeers. In between anecdotes about insane Soviet antics -- including a man delivering a spiel based on 30 seconds of videotape while standing in an office that's being actively demolished while he's in it -- there's a lot of stuff about the first freely available newspaper and information service. This could be good material for 'the economy of Just Barely' that goes on in Alpha Complex."

Today, perhaps serendipitously, Matthew has posted an RPG.net review of Bear Hunting With the Politburo. Specifically discussing the book's relevance to PARANOIA, Matthew quotes from page 94:
"One of my chores while working at Fact [a burgeoning free-market 'cooperative'] in 1988 was to help unpack and set up new office equipment. When I started to uncrate a small photocopier that had been collecting dust in a corner, I was stopped by Roman Kudriavstev, Fact's twenty-three-year-old computer technician. 'No!' he screamed. 'We haven't yet taken care of the bureaucrat in charge!' Kudriavstev said we would all go to jail if the machine were unpacked prematurely, and his explanation, delivered in a nonstop staccato, was an anthem to the Soviet bureaucracy. 'For us to use that machine we need to build a room with a special metal door that has a specifically sized window that only opens on an approved set of hinges.' Brief pause. 'The state must sanction the door and the window and the person who will run the machine with special state documents that allow him and him alone to operate the machine, but only when the door is locked and the copy person is sitting in the room alone.' Another pause. 'The door must always be locked and what we wanted copied must be handed to him through the window and an official record of what's being copied must be made to prevent the machine from distributing subversive material.'"

Works for me!
Posted by: Allen Varney / 6:48 PM

Comments:
Shame on you, Allen - that very quote was placed on the forums at P-Live on the 30th of January!

http://www.paranoia-live.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3723

Who would've thought it, a high-clearance citizen showing favouritism for some other Paranoia community over ours... ;)
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : February 10, 2006 4:01 AM
 
Dang, I knew I'd seen that somewhere. But if I apologized to P-L.net every time I ripped off a post there, this blog would be nothing but weepy self-recrimination.
# posted by Blogger Allen Varney : February 10, 2006 8:40 AM
 
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