--- joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> wrote: Chris Doss wrote:
>
>the
>Soviet ideology was above all Russian peasant
populism
>writ large.
>
>---
>
>
Can either of you guys elaborate on this with a few
examples. I'm not
disagreeing, I'm just curious and want to hear more.
Joanna ---
I ws thinking of the general tone of life, the peasant morality (I think it was Deutscher who said the Soviets had "bourgeouis Puritanism" -- WRONG! It was peasant Puritanism), the cult of the leader, the "levelling down" nature of some of the attitude, even the style of art.
All the Soviet leaders after Lenin came from very simple families, you know. Stalin was a cobbler's son. Khrushchev was a factory worker. Brezhnev was from a family of factory workers. Andropov was a Cossack by ethnicity, but his family were railroad workers, not part of the jannisary caste. Gorbachev was a peasant.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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