Friday 6 August 2004

Those crazy Soviets.

Yeah, yeah, they killed people, but they still knew how to give us all a good laugh. In Mongolia, for instance, they banned surnames. Apparently, this was to try to break the old clan-based power system of the Mongols, but to me it sounds as if Lenin just wanted to see how crazy an order he had to give before someone refused to obey it. Bastard. Anyway, the new government is forcing people to adopt surnames to stop what must be horrid & almighty daily confusion, and the people are responding by all picking the same surname.

Similar thing happening in China, though for different reasons. Is Communism incompatible with surnames? Could this, in fact, be one of its inherent contradictions? Hmm.

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