Wow, I was just saying to a friend that I couldn’t understand people risking their jobs to steal stationery or toilet rolls from the workplace.

I guess if it’s your moral obligation to steal from the workplace it reframes it somewhat.

The slogan of the Russian Revolution of 1917 was: "Factories to the workers, land to the peasants."

If the factory is yours, then everything inside is yours ;)

But it's funny how low wages under the broken Soviet economic system turned such things into a semi-official, informal work perks, allowing people to make ends meet.

This is not false but totally an oversimplification.

I don't think communism is a good form of government and I don't think the soviet union was marching the right way.

But the biggest blunts came from other much more serious mistakes caused by politicians ignoring science, like the big famine and many others, including the Chernobyl connerie

It was less the low wages and more the general unavailability of things (shortages). Lots of things you couldn't just buy but you had to know somebody who knew somebody.

I wouldn't call it "funny" though. It ws quite sad and I'm glad it's over.

As I mentioned in another commebt, I don't even consider anything related to that to be a viable government system.

That said, the general unavailability of everything was caused by an incompetent government rather the the system itself but the system itself caused the government. My point is that it was a succession of demagogueries hiding personal interests that caused the recurring and unrecoverable tragedies of that state. Being controlled and misguided is not exclusive to any particular government or political system.

System consistently produced an incompetent government that had lots of power.

The general unavailability of everything was caused by the system.

Hmmmmm

In Poland, factories' light installations ran on non-standard voltage, so that, if you stole the lightbulb, it'd be useless in your household. Unfortunately, they couldn't figure out similar solution for toilet paper and many other household items.

As for motivation, beyond the obvious one, people also stole because many items were not available in stores (having a guy who has a connect on toilet paper was a thing back then), and also, since Communism in Poland was actually a Russian dictatorship, the idea was that if you steal from communist factories you're fighting the system and making it fall faster.