Stalinism

[Alina Israeli]

>Why, then, did the Soviet Union have any credibility among certain Western
>academics of the post-World War 2 era ?


>Was it disenchantment with the perceived materialist West?

Or whatever other problems the West had. It is convenient to have a
"utopian state" and to believe it to be a model. You have to study
mythmaking and the desirability of a mythical or utopian places, a kind of
Shangri-La.

Bernardo Bertolucci went as far as to state in an interview that he cried
when the Berlin wall fell, because that meant the end of a dream. I also
cried but for completely different reasons.

You should also look at the propensity of denial, for the facts were there
for everyone to see, except some chose not to notice them. But the
perceptual prizm is not a new phenomenon, the first drawings of rhinoceros
resembled the unicorns rather than the animal we can now see in most zoos.

You could also look at the travalogues of those who visited Stalin's
Russia, Feuchtwanger and André Gide come to mind. BTW their accounts are
quite different, so this is not the area where reading one means you've
read them all.

**************************************************************
Alina Israeli
LFS, American University                phone:  (202) 885-2387
4400 Mass. Ave., NW                     fax:    (202) 885-1076
Washington, DC 20016

aisrael at american.edu

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