CALF News Aug./Sept 2018

47 CALF News • August | September 2018 • www.calfnews.net R ecollections BY BETTY JO GIGOT PUBLISHER REREADING ARTICLES FROM INTERVIEWS WITHW.D. FARR IN 1990 makes me realize just how astute he really was. He was reflecting on the changes in Russia at that time and predicting the demise of the Soviet Union, which happened in December of the next year. Shades of today’s news, he was also interested in what was going on at NATO and in China. Nothing has changed much I think. flew around in a C-141 cargo plane to military installations, sitting in the back in a chair that was tied down to the floor. It was awfully noisy and cold, but I got things out of that that I’ve never gotten before or since.” W.D. had been in Russia on rural country trips where he was able to com- municate and see what was going on. “Russia was just always structured improperly, and it was only a question of time until Communism had to fall because of the way Russia had struc- tured itself. “It was the worst type of bureau- cracy that you could think of. On the surface of it, it looked awfully smart and it worked beautifully for a while. But things went wrong. The children grew up, they put them in school, good schools, and they did a good job with them. They measured their I.Q.s and their desire to learn and those things. “These children went on to college and became part of the top administra- tion, and these people lived very well. They had lots of perks. They had very comfortable, good jobs for life, they were secure … and the rest of the people didn’t have very much. “They kept picking these intelligent people and schooling them, both in basics plus the party system. If you do that over a period of time, you get a superiority complex in people’s minds that they are a chosen few. They can plan and do these things … and they get lazy. “So, they plan their farming and their manufacturing and everything with com- puters while sitting at their desk. They were too good and too smart to go out and get their hands dirty work- ing in the factory, you see. And that’s exactly what happened. They tried to manage everything from up here and nothing down here and it collapsed on them. “Russia’s history was atrocious. They never won anything. They always lost the wars and, really, they had lost again in World War II, you see, but for bad weather, they would have lost again. Germany just wasn’t able to capture Russia or the whole thing would have turned out differently. “In the paper this morning, the Russians were discussing throwing the Communists out of Russia, and they decided not to. I think they were wise. All of these peripheral countries are throwing them out, but Russia itself doesn’t have any form of govern- ment, and Gorbachev is smart enough to know that these things have got to come in steps.” NEXT ISSUE: W.D., ONE MORE TIME, ON CHINA.  W.D. belonged to a group out of Colorado called the “30s Group” that was a liaison between civilians and the military.“A couple times a year, some group would visit some of the military installations around the country at our expense, and we would, in turn, go see what they were doing. We were told a lot about what was going on,” he explained. “We went to Europe to the Naval headquarters and spent two weeks out there. We rode around to differ- ent places, about 23 or 24 of us. We