| MASTERTON: Sergei Guroff celebrated his 75th birthday with a banquet for friends and relatives at his family home yesterday. Mr Guroff who has lived in Masterton since 1991, worked as a telephone-engineer in Bulgaria for 35 years before immigrating to New Zealand. Yesterday was a time for reminiscing with friends and family about his life, and talk soon turned to life and times under the Bulgarian Communist Government.
Mr Guroff's job involved installing underground telephone cables throughout Bulgraia's capital of Sofia. With over 30 years experience Mr Guroff experienced countless episodes of socialist inefficiency first hand. "It was crazy our department would go and dig up the busiest road, install our cables and then reseal the road while another government department was waiting ready to dig up the road again! We could have left the hole as it was, but that would have been against policy." Despite being highly experienced Mr Guroff was paid very poorly while working. "I would get paid the equivalent of $20 for working a 60 hour a week, while the board members of our department, who were all members of the Party would get paid 20 times that amount, for meeting once a month!" Party members were also afforded many privileges that many workers were unable to dream of, such as brand new motorcars, overseas travel and occasionally luxury items such as new television sets and stereo appliances. "I remember when we got our first TV in 1985, there were only four TV channels and each would show very bad, very boring programs imported from other communist country's - many were so bad that they did not even feature actors, just people going about their day to day activities." Mr Guroff a keen soccer fan also recalled that he could never watch his favourite teams play live, "Sports matches were specially encoded so that only Party members with special set top decoding devices got to see them. This is what I hated most." Many of Mr Guroff's friends worked in factories that would produce products that nobody really wanted, forcing the government to develop propaganda campaigns to manipulate people into buying the unnecessary items. The factories were also encouraged to produce items for the cheapest possible prices, which often led to pollution and massive environmental damage being inflicted on those living in surrounding areas. Mr Guroff will be celebrating this evening with friends and family before returning to Bulgaria in a week's time to visit his Mother and Grandmother, who both still live in Sofia. He has no plans to return for good however, as "New Zealand is the greatest country on earth and I am glad to call it home.  Sergie Guroff with wife Helka. |
| Communist era inefficiencies recalled |
Sunday, 01 July 2001 12:00
