Quote Originally Posted by Боб Уайтман View Post
Considering the revolution:

In Soviet times they taught us at school that the revolution was undoubtedly a good thing. Note: Under the "revolution" the Socialist Revolution was always assumed.

There's an interesting fact.

One of the top Soviet officials (if I don't mistake, it was Щёлоков Щёлоков, Николай Анисимович — Википедия but maybe I am wrong) came to visit the US in 1980's. His public speech there was shown on TV.

I was too young that time to watch political news, but I saw that piece of reporting later, in a Russian documentary about Brezhnev's epoch.

So, he was talking about the advantages of the Soviet system: no unemployment, free education, free health care etc. Then he smiled to US journalists and said something like this: "Вы тоже можете всего этого достичь. Но для этого вам надо совершить социалистическую революцию". - "You are also able to achieve all of that. But you need to make a socialist revolution then".

I tried googling to find any infomation on that interesting press conference on the Net, but I failed to find any
Growing up in the US, I do not recall ever hearing Russians openly talk about the Soviet Union on TV. The only people I remember speaking candidly were those who defected and told of all the bad things there. In the 80's, cable was still relatively new. We could not get cable where we lived, so we only had the three networks of the time: ABC, CBS and NBC. We were fed a constant stream of "US is good and everyone else who doesn't agree with us is evil"... But even at a young age, I suspected that this was bullshit. I remember watching coverage of the Soviets in Afghanistan and thinking, "they look just like us, why are they evil but we're good?"

I became fascinated with the USSR, trying to find out all that I could which was not easy in those days. My friends laughed at me and called me a "communist" just because I was curious. They all thought that "russkies" were evil and they enjoyed movies like "Red Dawn." I read Solzhenitsyn and bought books on Russian grammar which made me even less popular.

Eventually I came to the USSR to test my theory that Russians are people just like we are, and I learned first hand that I was right.

There were terrible things which happened during Soviet times, of that I have no doubt. But terrible things also happened here in the "land of the free" -so when people brag about how great America is, I remind them that we are no better than everyone else.

This sad world has too many divisions, too much nationalism and patriotism dividing us, keeping us apart, making enemies of us.

Some day ALL of the people are going to grow tired of the various governments which use us like pawns and turn us on each other. I dunno if this will turn into a revolution of force, or a revolution of thought.