I’m in the middle of grading finals, which also means for the first time I get to grade IDs and essays that come straight out of my own field. While it’s refreshing to have all the knowledge at the front of my head, it can also be a bit more difficult to grade answers dealing with my own area of expertise, partly because I have to keep in mind that students aren’t specialists like me, but also because some of my students mistakes strike me as particularly egregious (though only because I’m a specialist).
For instance, I have one ID on the exam for “goulash communism,” which is a term used to refer to the kind of materialistic social contract introduced in Hungary by János Kádár after the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. The idea is that instead of repression (“gulag communism”), the Communist regime would provide a better standard of living in exchange for social peace. It’s termed “goulash” communism because goulash is, after all, Hungary’s national dish.
Perhaps not.
Writes one student:
[Goulash communism] is coined in order to describe the Polish version of communism experienced from 1945-1989.
OK, a bit wide of the mark, especially because the Polish economy was generally not good enough to made good on promises of better material conditions, but it’s possible to use the term “goulash communism” to describe the more general attempt to promote political stability through consumerism.
Just like their [Poles'] national dish, goulash [good grief!] ….
I’m guessing this student hasn’t been to Poland. Or to the Polish House near downtown. I’m guessing it’s news to all those Poles that they gave the world goulash.
Then there’s my favorite candidate for a future in writing PR materials chock-a-block full of purple prose:
Asia and Latin America grabbed communism as a shovel in the hope of digging themselves out of a ditch, a ditch filled with economic hardship, agricultural shortage and foreign abuse, and political oppression.
Not bad. I can enjoy a nice, over-the-top metaphor, being an aficionado of the Gene Wilder/Donald Sutherland classic “Start the Revolution without Me.”
And, you have to appreciate how my student didn’t just leave the metaphor at that.
For European nations, the shovel of communism dug only further down into the big ditch [of] continuing and exacerbating economic crisis and political oppression until it was voluntarily thrown down in most cases or, if not removed it was reformed whereas Asia and Latin America held onto communism like a babe onto a nipple.
Yowza! I’ve never seen anyone describe the persistence of communism as a case of a country suckling at the teat of Marx.
The same student offered more amusing observations about the Soviet Union and Poland in the second essay:
Communism began there [in Eastern Europe] with WWII ending and the Soviet Union looking [like] a knight in shining armor. Poland was a bit of [a] bitch to begin with, as saddling a cow would have to be.
The “saddling a cow” quip is actually from Stalin’s description of what it would be like to impose communism in Poland. The “bit of [a] bitch” remark is all my student’s.
