This quote has been kicking around in my head for a while…

“One can assume that a significant portion of the Soviet metallurgical industry is devoted to producing barbed wire … For the matter does not end with the wiring of borders! How many thousands of kilometres of wire were used to fence in the gulag archipelago? … If one were to multiply all this by the number of years the Soviet government has been in existence, it would be easy to see why, in the shops of Smolensk or Omsk, one can buy neither a hoe nor a hammer, never mind a knife or spoon: such things could simply not be produced, since the necessary raw materials were used up in the manufacture of barbed wire.”

— Ryszard Kapuściński on the Soviet economy