- -A truth that?s quite offensive to right wingers. - -I read an article in The New Republic denouncing - -Sheyla Fitzpatrick as a charlatain because he - -wrote there was upward mobility in the 30?s. - -This is quite obvious, since industrialization - -and high growth rates led to a demand for qualified - -professionals, and if there is a expanding educa- - -tional system, so people get a lot of opportunities. ---------------------------------- My experience is that Western writers can get away with writing virtually anything about the USSR, no matter how it of whack with reality it is.
Just in the last month, I read a review of a book by Kagarlitsky -- by a man who is purportedly writing a book on Russia and should therefore know something -- saying that one of the benefits of the fall of the USSR is that know Russians can own dogs and cats, and an article in the London Times I think it was describing "crumbling statues of Lenin and Brezhnev."
Believe it or not, you would not get sent to the Gulag for owning a cat, and there are in fact no statues of Brezhnev, crumbling or otherwise. (Actually, keeping pigeons was quite trendy in teh 60s and 70s).
Chris Doss The Russia Journal