Word: communed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...when most kids are off at college discovering the pleasures of the mind and of the senses, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison started scrubbing toilets in a Jehovah's Witness commune. Ten years in the twisted cult convinced her that "my intelligence was some kind of tricky, predatory animal, which if not kept firmly reined, would surely spring on and destroy...
...when seven of them piled into a friend's car heading south for an antiwar demonstration and got detained by some suspicious police in Secaucus, N.J. They never got to Washington, but they had a lot of fun calling themselves the "Secaucus Seven." Now, ten years later, they commune again for a weekend of charades and basketball and nostalgia, some skinny-dipping, lovemaking and soul searching. They're turning 30, jogging toward the compromises of early middle age -Updikescent- and out of the corner of their minds they wonder how much fun that will...
Indeed, only 100 miles to the southwest of Jin Ma, in one of the province's many hilly regions, the picture is far different. On the remote Long Chi (Dragon's Pond) commune, perched on the lower slopes of 9,000-ft-high Mount Emei, the soil is rocky and dry. Farming is confined to low-yielding terraces that have been carved out of the hills and planted primarily with corn. Peasant incomes are one-third of those on the wealthy Jin Ma commune; they average $44 a year, more than half of which is distributed in grain...
...pattern of such poverty remains widespread; in many regions farm life is even harsher than on Long Chi commune. The most startling revelation in a series of remarkably candid press stories in recent months is that in three decades of rule, the Communist regime has barely begun to improve the lot of a vast number of its peasants. Some regions in the chronically poor provinces such as hilly Guizhou, arid Gansu or often flooded Shandong have not had a single good year since collectivization began in the late 1950s. According to one article, a quarter of the rural population...
...propounded by Hua following his accession to power in 1976 are being discredited. His much publicized slogan, "Speed up socialist modernization," has been replaced by "Haste makes waste." Earlier goals set by Hua for rapid agricultural growth have been revised or abandoned. A model work brigade on a Shanxi commune that he had so zealously promoted has been exposed as having faked production figures (see following story...