Quote Originally Posted by Basil77 View Post
When I was a little kid in the early 1980s they used two show homeless people in USA on TV news sleeping on benches in parks covering with newspapers. I thought something like "How lucky I am to born in the country where there are no homeless people. I could be one of them". The bitter irony is that in less than 10 years I could see such things and even worse right in my home town.
They did that in my country too, so it was not unique for the USSR. And the pictures were real. You don't have to look very hard in the USA to find that, I think.

But you are right, and no doubt, people with a socialist/communist political agenda exaggerated the problems in the USA.
But there IS homelessness in the USA, and there IS/WAS hard for black people (another issue that they made a big fuss over).

I don't approve of propaganda either way. Back then, it was too much of the other side of the coin, I think, and it was tiresome, once you became aware of it.

So I think they should have showed a more nuanced picture back then. At least in Sweden, we had the TV show "Dallas" and a few others. to counterweigh, back in those days.. lol I guess that kind of perspective on the USA was not available in the Sovet Union.

(Just a very schizophrenic view of the USA... and it is a country of huge contrasts really, isn't it. It's very impressive, in so many ways too - and I'm sure it's somewhat easier to become wealthy there)

But, on the other hand: I met lots of Russians in the 1990s, when I happened to be in Israel for a while - they had a totally unrealistic view of the USA and seemed to expect that once they made it there, everything would be fabulous in their lives. Me and some friends tried to warn them, because we thought they'd be better taken care of in Israel. However language problems etc prevented any deep conversation. Even though they officially left the USSR to go to Israel, they were convinced that the USA was much better and were trying to get there...