There’s Maduro’s key mistake right there: even in the worst depths of 1950’s Soviet planned-economy communist privations, the apparchitiks made sure there was a steady supply of vodka in the USSR, sliwowice in Poland and beer in East Germany & Czechoslovakia. You have to give the proles some means of escape from their misery. It’s the lack of beer that will bring this situation to a head.
From “One, Two, Three”
Peripetchikoff: No formula, NO DEAL!
C.R. MacNamara: OK, NO DEAL!
Borodenko: We do not need you! If we want Coca-cola, we invent it ourselves!
C.R. MacNamara: Oh, yeah? In 1956 you flew a bottle of Coke to a secret laboratory in Sverdlosk. A dozen of your top chemists went nuts trying to analyze the ingredients. Right?
Mishkin: No comment!
C.R. MacNamara: And in 1958, you planted two undercover agents in Atlanta to steal the formula. And what happened? They both defected! And now they’re successful businessmen in Florida packaging instant borscht. Right?
Peripetchikoff: No comment!
C.R. MacNamara: Last year you put out a cockamamie imitation “Kremlin-Kola!” You tried it out in the satellite countries, but even the Albanians wouldn’t drink it. They used it for SHEEP DIP! RIGHT?
Mishkin: No comment!
C.R. MacNamara: So either get down to business or get off the pot!