How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed Chapter Summary & Analysis - Chapter 14: Some Doubts about Fur Coats and Chapter 15: That Sunday like an Empty Red Balloon Summary

Chapter 14: Some Doubts about Fur Coats and Chapter 15: That Sunday like an Empty Red Balloon Summary and Analysis

Slavenka decides to buy a fur coat. It looks wonderful on her. However, her conscience reminds her that she is a vegetarian, animal lover and ecologist. She ignores her inner voice from her Eastern European background, urging her to take what she can get. Slavenka recounts a story where a young girl wearing a mink coat in Beograd is chased out of a public bus due to resentment of the coat. A mob forms and tries to burn her coat off. To Slavenka, this illustrates the awful "egalitarian syndrome" that often sparks up due to communist propaganda. The glory of the fur coat is not the fur, but the ability to "buy an image" that will protect you from the gray you must wear under communism.

Slavenka recalls hearing a Castro speech in 1987 in which he declares that the Cuban people cannot even have one car per person....
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