Communist candy... U/L?

Factual Questions
1

While perusing the CNN message board a few days ago, someone posted a story which will soon follow. The message board in question was dedicated to the Elian case, so please forgive me for not providing a direct link, as it is now insanely huge, and i’m unable to find the original post in question. But, it went something like this:

A woman who was opposed to the boy being returned to Cuba (and please, don’t respond with your opinions on this matter, I’m only interested in the UL aspect of this), related the following story, which i will attempt to relay by memory:

A schoolteacher in Cuba told her class to close their eyes, and think about delicious candy. They were to put their arms out, cup their hands, and pray to God asking for candy. The schoolteacher then instructed them to open their eyes. The children found no candy in their open palms.

The teacher then told them to close their eyes again, and ask Fidel Castro to give them candy. The teacher then went down the isles and put candy in each child’s hands.

She told them to open their eyes, and said something about how Fidel gave them candy, while god did not deliver.

Now, after initially thinking “well, at least fidel delivered on the candy promise”, I read further posts, in which other posters claimed that they had heard this same story, except the candy-provider/godless communist in question was joseph stalin/a former drill seargent/daniel ortega, and a few others.

I checked snopes and didn’t find anything on this, and personally I’ve never heard this story before.

Have any of you? Is this an UL?

2

I’m not sure of the truth of this, 'cuz my parent wouldn’t let me Trick or Treat in Havana. :smiley:

Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.

3

Um–I heard this exact same story in Baptist Sunday School about, oh, 40 years ago, only the other way around, that the Candyman was God, not <<<substitute name HERE of sitting President or other politician>>>.

I love the Internet.

:smiley:

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

4

I don’t think this is an urban legend. Although I don’t have a cite, I’m pretty sure I’ve read more than one first-hand account of this happening in the USSR under Stalin. And it would be a pretty effective, if crude, anti-religious exercise in a totalitarian state.

Other stories I’ve heard is that in Poland they used to run the most popular TV programs on Sunday mornings, so, in those pre-VCR days, you had to choose between church and your favorite shows. Also, again in the Soviet Union, quietly restricting religious attendance to the elderly, so they could claim that 1) there really was religious freedom, but 2) only the old folks were interested in relgion anymore.

5

Wouldn’t surprise me if it were all of them. I’m sure that education manuals in (Soviet-orbit) communist countries were inspired by those in the USSR, or actually supplied by the USSR.

Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@kozmo.com

“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective

6

Were all of these kids wearing heavy gloves? And none of them peeked?
C’mon, kids are gullible, but they’re also very inquisitive. I don’t think that this one would fly. The children would feel the candy being put in their hands, and at least a few would see the teacher going around the room.
Kids might believe the story (UL), if told to them about other kids, but I doubt that it could actually happen.
Peace,
mangeorge

Teach your kids to bungee jump.
One them might have to cross a bridge someday.

7

I distinctly remember reading the exact same story some 10-15 years ago in Reader’s Digest, except that it was in a Latin American country (El Salvador comes to mind) and the benefactor of said confections was the FMLN.
Given the input I’ve seen on this thread and given the reputation for integrity and truth our old friend the RD enjoys, I’d not be surprised if we found the Mark of the Beast (a big fat red UL) on this one if we parted its hair in the right place.

All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…

8

This scene occurs in the movie “Europa,” about a Jewish boy from Poland who flees to the USSR at the time of the division of Poland, and is educated in a Soviet school.

The movie itself is based on a true story (the boy’s autobiography), but I’ve not read the book to see if he mentions this episode or it was added by the filmaker for effect.

Thanks for doing your bit to advance the cause of human knowledge.
 
  – Cecil Adams

9

The point of this exercise is to illustrate that the average Cuban has a higher quality of life than his counterparts in Latin America. It wasn’t always so. Cuba was once run by people like the gusonos who have kidnapped Elian Gonzales. It was, in Fidel Castrao’s words, “the whorehouse of imperialism”.

Since the Revolution, Cuba has become an example to other third world countries what can be accomplished, despite the hostility and subversion of the most powerful force on the planet, U.S. Imperialism.

And god has not been responsible for the positive changes. Religion seldom is. In our own country, for example, it is the hard work, dedication, and principled struggle of millions who are responsible for raising the quality of life for all. The struggles of the 30’s and 40’s to build the CIO, mostly led by the Communist Party by the way,laid the base for the development of a broad middle class in our society. God simply had nothing to do with it except to be used by right-wing preachers and politicians to attack the progressive movement.

I realize that many politically illiterate but smug people, steeped in decades of Cold War propaganda, will find this post disturbring, but history doesn’t exist to conform to their predjudices.

10

It’s from a powerful, scary little book called “The Children’s Story”.
Clavell, James.
The children’s story / James Clavell.
New York : Delacorte Press/Eleanor Friede, 1981.
[96] p. ; 22 cm.
CALL NUMBER: PS3553.L365 C5 1981

It’s written like a little kid’s primer, with only 1-3 sentences per page. Premise: the commies take over in America and today the New Teacher is taking over. The new teacher is not coercive and does not directly tell the kids what to believe, but instead leads them to question what they have been taught.

“I’m new here so tell me what we do first”
“We say the 'Pledge Allegiants”
“So why do you say this every morning?”
“Huh? Why? It’s ‘Pledge Allegiants’. You’re s’posed to say it.”
“What does it mean?”
“Mean? It’s ‘Pledge Allegiants’…”

By 10:30 of the first morning, the class has decided that Our Leader is more likely to supply what is prayed for than God, although he does it through plain old earthly behavior of his hired teachers; that their patriotic parents, although good people, occasionally did naughty things just as kids could do and needed to be helped; that patriotism is about loving a piece of cloth called flag, so if we cut it into pieces, each kid can take home a piece of their own to love; and so on.

The author is inserting a well-deserved knife into blind memorization and superficialities based patriotism.

Disable Similes in this Post

11

Yeah, but it’d be easy enough for the teacher to say that Castro provides candy (as Castro is leader over the government including schools) and God does not. It smacks of UL to me since it’s a small enough event that I doubt word of it would seep out globally, but on the other hand there’s no saying that some Cuban teacher never heard the story and thought “Hey, good idea.”

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

12

I remember hearing a similar story once in hebrew school. In the old days rabbis would give young kids honey “to remember the sweetness of god” or something like that (I wondered why they didnt give us any NOW). So I think this is a pretty old one making the rounds.

13

I found a first-hand reference, dating back to the period of the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland during WWII, at the Alexander Kimel Memoirs page.