Difference between revisions of "Kombinacja (Poland)"

To counter this oppression, the Polish worker, ‘wandered around Łódź for entire days, submerged only in kombinacyas that sought to harm the manufacturer’<ref>Reymont, W.S. 1899. Ziemia Obiecana (Promised Land). Warsaw: Nakład Gebethnea i Wolffa.</ref>.

To counter this oppression, the Polish worker, ‘wandered around Łódź for entire days, submerged only in kombinacyas that sought to harm the manufacturer’<ref>Reymont, W.S. 1899. Ziemia Obiecana (Promised Land). Warsaw: Nakład Gebethnea i Wolffa.</ref>.

In the 1920s, Soviet literature reframed the kombinator as a bourgeois capitalist. The Velikii Kombinator (‘Grand Schemer’) Ostap Bender was the antihero of Ilia Ilf and Evgenii Petrov’s seminal novel The Twelve Chairs (1928). Ostap, whose dream was to become a millionaire and move to Rio de Janeiro, ‘effortlessly squeezes information out of people, slips in and out of roles, and penetrates through situations’ <ref>Pesmen, D. 2000. Russia and Soul: An Exploration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.</ref>. He was a chameleon who played by his own rules in a collectivist landscape that attempted to assign class and economic function to each citizen. His transformations and ability to artistically manipulate language and political discourse made him an ‘economic wrecker’ of the Soviet command economy. Yet ironically, this form of ''kombinacja'' became ‘the prerequisite for understanding Soviet life,’ because the command economy itself suffered from shortages, corruption and red tape, and individuals had to find innovative strategies in order to access basic resources <ref>Pesmen, D. 2000. Russia and Soul: An Exploration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.</ref>.

In the 1920s, Soviet literature reframed the kombinator as a bourgeois capitalist. The Velikii Kombinator (‘Grand Schemer’) Ostap Bender was the antihero of Ilia Ilf and Evgenii Petrov’s seminal novel The Twelve Chairs (1928). Ostap, whose dream was to become a millionaire and move to Rio de Janeiro, ‘effortlessly squeezes information out of people, slips in and out of roles, and penetrates through situations’ <ref>Pesmen, D. 2000. Russia and Soul: An Exploration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.</ref>. He was a chameleon who played by his own rules in a collectivist landscape that attempted to assign class and economic function to each citizen. His transformations and ability to artistically manipulate language and political discourse made him an ‘economic wrecker’ of the Soviet command economy. Yet ironically, this form of ''kombinacja'' became ‘the prerequisite for understanding Soviet life,’ because the command economy itself suffered from shortages, corruption and red tape, and individuals had to find innovative strategies in order to access basic resources <ref>Pesmen, D. 2000. Russia and Soul: An Exploration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.</ref>.