A few years before the fall of Communism, a joke was going around Moscow about two workmen with shovels.

One worker would dig a hole every 20 feet along the street. The second worker would come along behind him and fill up the hole, and the process was repeated.

A man watching them shouted, “Comrades, what are you doing? You dig a hole, then the other fellow fills it up. You’re wasting the Party’s money!”

“You don’t understand,” one of the workers replied. “Usually we work with a third fellow, Mikhail, but he’s home drunk today. I dig the hole, Mikhail sticks in the tree, and Dimitri here puts the dirt back in the hole. Just because Mikhail is drunk doesn’t mean that Dimitri and I have to stop working.”