My grandma who had lived under both also said so. She used to tell me stories about aristocrats riding their horses through peasants fields, and destroin th ecrops in that process, while hunting game for pleasure. The hatred of aristocrats was great and universal. She rememberd as one of the hunters once fell off the horseback and that was the last time he was seen in one piece. His quartered body was found a few days later.
The revolution brought progress, education, health care, ended pogroms, and made the life decent for the downtrodden masses. My grandma always reminded me that when I was bitching about 'red bourgeoisie.'
This
>nostalgia for the quaint and the privileged is beginning to piss me off. It
>is so nauseatingly American. By that I mean it comes from a position of
>material privilege.
Ditto. But I would trace the roots of that nostalgia to nouveau riche, petty bourgeois mentality (which thoroughly permeates America) than Americanism per se. Nouveau riche are infatuated with ancient feudal privilege (cf. the railroad tycoon Vanderbilt and his Biltmore Estate which is a carbon copy of French chateaux). During my recent visit to Poland I was apalled to see the new priviligentsia, whose parents still lived in the countryside, boasting their aristocratic 'lineage.' It was nauseatingly pathetic.
Regards,
Wojtek