Changes

====More on Solzhenitsyn====

====More on Solzhenitsyn====

After reading the revelations of Solzhenitsyn in the 1970s, the problems it presented to understanding and teaching about the World War affected everyone in the East and [[the West]]. I was only a student, but it affected even more the people who lived through the events, and provided great eyeopeners that their understanding of events during the war and next 30 years were based on lies. My Slovak speaking grandmother who lived through two world wars and could understand much Russian, helped me.

After reading the revelations of Solzhenitsyn in the 1970s, the problems it presented to understanding and teaching about the World War affected everyone in the East and [[the West]]. I was only a student, but it affected even more the people who lived through the events, and provided great eyeopeners, that their understanding of events during the war and next 30 years after were based on lies. My Slovak speaking grandmother who lived through two world wars and could understand much Russian, helped me.

One problem was the equation of "Russia" and "Russian" with "communism" in the Angelo-American world, make the terms synonymous. Solzhenitsyn taught us that Russia and Russians were not communist. The Nobel Prize in Literature put an official stamp on that basic premise from the West. But you can't undo 30 years of [[fake news]] and [[propaganda]] in popular culture overnight, if ever.

One problem was the equation of "Russia" and "Russian" with "communism" in the Angelo-American world, making the terms synonymous. Solzhenitsyn taught us that Russia and Russians were not communist. The Nobel Prize in Literature put an official stamp on that basic premise from the West. But you can't undo 30 years of [[fake news]] and [[propaganda]] in popular culture overnight, if ever.

The term "Soviet" means "workers council", and was always somewhat abused to mean all sorts of other things. I recall a conversation with a teaching assistant on this subject who understood the problem. And I asked, "so what do we do if we can't use the term 'Russian' anymore to denote Soviet Communism, because of popular prejudices  in the public imagination? Russians aren't communist. it's quite the opposite. They are victims of communism.' We concluded that the term 'Soviet' should henceforth be applied to all people, individuals - communist and non-communist, as well as national groups, living under the Soviet system. This was a fundamental change in idiom and meaning of the term "Soviet" from the mod-1970s onward. I'm not saying me and the TA invented the new meaning, but we understood the new direction American media, the educational system, and propaganda sources would have to take.  Fortunately, we were correct in our assessments, and others in the academic world and media likewise must have been having the same conversations at the same time.

The term "Soviet" means "workers council", and was always somewhat abused to mean all sorts of other things. I recall a conversation with a teaching assistant on this subject who understood the problem. And I asked, "so what do we do if we can't use the term 'Russian' anymore to denote Soviet Communism, because of popular prejudices  in the public imagination? Russians aren't communist. it's quite the opposite. They are victims of communism.' We concluded that the term 'Soviet' should henceforth be applied to all people, individuals - communist and non-communist, as well as national groups, living under the Soviet system. This was a fundamental change in idiom and meaning of the term "Soviet" from the mod-1970s onward. I'm not saying me and the TA invented the new meaning, but we understood the new direction American media, the educational system, and propaganda sources would have to take.  Fortunately, we were correct in our assessments, and others in the academic world and media likewise must have been having the same conversations at the same time.