Posted by William Mandel on April 05, 19101 at 10:54:37:
In Reply to: Why No Student Upheaval? posted by Quee-Young Kim on March 09, 19101 at 10:49:03:
: Do you have any explanation about the absence of
: revolutionary upheaval by the students in the
: former Soviet Union during the last hours of its
: existence? Had they been over-socialized into the
: communist doctrine or co-opted and dulled into the system
: that provided the stipends and comfort?
MANDEL RESPONSE: Quite the opposite. They had learned
about the capitalist West from films permitted to be shown in the USSR, and
from the propaganda of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, etc., much more
sophisticated than Soviet propaganda. They felt constricted by the discipline
imposed by Soviet society. They bought into the very long-standing myth,
going back to prerevolutionary times, of the U.S. as the country whose
streets were paved with gold and where one was free. In consequence, they
are the most pro-capitalist and, until the Kosovo War, most pro-American
segment of Soviet and subsequently Russian society. Today (2001) they have
begun to think that not everything in the old days was bad.