My only direct experience with Russia is a month during the summer of 1990. Walking around the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, almost every street corner

My only direct experience with Russia is a month during the summer of 1990. Walking around the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, almost every street corner a small table set up, someone selling old books they had kept hidden for decades. People crowding around, seeking words written before Stalinist purge. Living with friends that summer, I would ask about these books (my grasp of Russian became sufficient to find my way around the organized city center, but I couldn't read much of the books, although some were engineering texts). They would smile and say. "Well, we are re-writing history once again." Noam Chomsky makes it abundantly clear that US culture is no different in regard to historical narrative. But I haven't had that pervasive sense that there is no such thing as a true story, not in the US, not until these past few years.