Iron Curtain: Onions, Frogs & Corpses

Acting as a sort of Art Buchwald of the Communist world, Czech Humorist M. Honzik recently imagined himself standing outside a Prague grocery. "What are they selling?" asked a passerby. "Onions," replied Honzik. A queue grew at once, and in an hour cleaned the store out of onions. Realizing that he was "on to the greatest discovery of the century, " Honzik hired a crew of old-age pensioners and started a "Rent-a-Queue" business. Wherever the Rent-a-Queue gathered, business immediately soared. Honzik's biggest victory was for "Beastexport," a store that had been stuck with 40 giant praying mantises from Brazil. He called in his ready-made queue, soon sold all the mantises.

Slow Delivery. This bitter satire of Eastern Europe's consumer market is not just a product of imagination. Junketing through Hungary last week, Nikita Khrushchev seemed to dwell more on the muddles than on the marvels of the Communist economic system.

He chided aides, prodded local factory heads to do better, even publicly decried slow deliveries from the Soviet Union to other Red nations. Khrushchev knows whereof he speaks. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe last week reported that the rate of economic growth in the Satellite nations has again slowed—and no wonder. Communist dominated Eastern Europe, where the laws of supply and demand are often in suspension, is a weird eonomic land of gluts in some places, shortages in others, and confusion almost everywhere.

So many Hungarians flocked to Czechoslovakia to buy lingerie and razor blades, which were almost unattainable in Hungary, that the Czech government was forced to slap spending restrictions on the Hungarians to prevent a shortage of the same items in Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakian retailers last year had to return nearly $70 million worth of goods that their customers did not need and would not buy, while neighboring Poland overproduced 9,000 washing machines even though retailers clamored for scarce enamel pots. Queues even form for vegetables in rich Bulgarian farming country because bureaucrats have not received orders to disburse their produce.

Wigs & Skins. Honzik's parable of the praying mantises, in fact, is even more apt in many parts of the Communist world. Communist China is busily shipping Peking ducks to Havana, and in return is importing giant Cuban-bred bullfrogs for the few Chinese gourmets who can still afford them. Red China's trade may become even more exotic. A French medical journal reported last week that Red China will export, in addition to hair for wigs and skins for sausages, " 'parts of human anatomy,' vulgarly known as 'stiffs.' " The journal did not comment on the reasons for an oversupply of corpses in Red China.