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I do not know any truthful books about Soviet history, especially in English. We lost the cold war and winners always write the history. So even in contemporary

I do not know any truthful books about Soviet history, especially in English. We lost the cold war and winners always write the history. So even in contemporary books in Russian there's all kinds of nonsense about Soviet history. I was a teenager when USSR collapsed so I can only guess from my own short experience living in USSR and from tales of my parents and grandparents. It's radically different from anything you can find in any book. Memories of horrible years of "freedom" are brighter though. We had nothing to eat (millions died because of hunger but nobody cares, there's no Amnesty International to punish somebody for this), but were inundated in a flood of all kinds of bullshit. Soros-published books for the schools that contained nothing but lies about history and economics. Good and enlightening Soviet science shows were replaced with gross shows showing nudity and all kinds of fake science (psychics, UFO freaks, etc). Academics running the old shows said that they were closed specifically by request from the very top. Same for education: it was deliberately destroyed by direct guidance of US advisers. But we're still struggling... But I do not know if there's a book about it. It's a taboo theme both here and especially on the West. Everybody just reinforces the same old meme how "repressive" was Soviet society and how everybody was happy to become free (just conveniently omit the ending: "free from education, free from having work, free from having enough food, free from having self-esteem"). Regarding news: I simply avoid consuming any news. I do not want to receive anything from news. I don't need it. I work as a developer, in my job it's not necessary to know the "news". They doesn't affect my life much and even if they does, there's nothing I can do about it. All the news I consume against my will (by browsing social media where it's almost impossible to avoid seeing shared articles). So my ultimate goal is to stop consuming social media as well, but I lack the willpower. I also believe that it's good to know what is happening around IT (new languages, frameworks, etc) but all IT sources also publish lots of news about current politics (e.g. witch hunt against Huawei), so it seems as almost impossible to avoid news.

FillardMillmore 7y ago
Thanks a lot for taking the time to share your experience. There's probably not many better ways to learn about the realities of a foreign country than by chatting with someone who actually lived there and can tell stories from first-hand experience. It's also somewhat curious that the ties of our professions (programming, development, IT) can serve as the channel by which this information is shared - as always, my appreciation of HN in this regard is immense. > Good and enlightening Soviet science shows were replaced with gross shows showing nudity and all kinds of fake science (psychics, UFO freaks, etc). Academics running the old shows said that they were closed specifically by request from the very top. Same for education: it was deliberately destroyed by direct guidance of US advisers. This bit in particular intrigued me. What would be the point of steering science and public academia in this way? To lower the level of public discourse to the advantage of the US? I did not realize such things were so tightly guided by US advisers after the collapse, though I hold no illusions that Boris Yeltsin was lobbied for and supported by the US (it might more accurately be described as 'election meddling' - which made it ironic during the investigation into Russian meddling in US elections that very few news outlets were brave enough to address the actions of the US in other countries' elections and in Russia's in particular). > Everybody just reinforces the same old meme how "repressive" was Soviet society and how everybody was happy to become free (just conveniently omit the ending: "free from education, free from having work, free from having enough food, free from having self-esteem"). Many here in the US claim that Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost and Perestroika contributed to the momentum of the collapse. I've heard it said before that while many here in the US hail Gorbachev as a kind of unwitting hero (due to this contribution and his affectations and coordination with Reagan), many who lived through his time in power view him more as the one who ruined everything his forebears had worked to build and achieve. Just for my own edification and curiosity, can you speak to how he's commonly viewed by former citizens of the Soviet Union? Your take on news consumption is cogent and refreshing. Many of us probably pay more attention to it than necessary. As for social media, if you use it responsibly, it can be a net benefit rather than a net detriment. I've personally excised myself from social media because I don't agree with their data privacy practices. I don't know what social media you use, but Facebook has a feature I believe where you can deactivate your account - for 30 days (or so), you can log back in and reactivate your account without losing anything. At the very least, it could be useful for a trial run if you simply want to attempt to get rid of it without the risk of losing everything if you decide you want to keep it two weeks later.
- anticodon 7y ago
  > What would be the point of steering science and public academia in this way? To lower the level of public discourse to the advantage of the US? One can only guess. For one thing, West (especially the US) needed USSR to be broken not to "free" from ourselves, but to create a new market for US goods. USA didn't need a global competitor - it needed a new market. If population is educated, they tend to create industry products instead of mindlessly consuming. If you need a new market, you just need lowbrow population extracting natural resources for the western companies and buying consumer goods produced in the West. Also, it would be harder to manipulate educated population. Almost nobody analyzed this because even to this day our education is run by agents of the West. If you read articles and interviews of people who are in charge of education in Russia now, they're very openly and aggressively pro-West, nevermind that all their efforts only lowered the quality of education. It's obvious that western influence to destroy what remains of our education still remain. I've lived for some time in some of South Asian countries and I believe it's same there. It's a part of neo-colonial politics. E.g. there's very little incentive to teach and learn mathematics and physics, chemistry, biology. There's a huge incentive to study humanities subjects and corresponding flood of US-printed books on marketing, management, "human rights", "lgbt rights", etc. But economy can't grow if everyone is a manager or lawyer - real education is needed for people to create industry products. But it's not in the West interest to allow growth of industry in Asia, Russia, Africa. > Many here in the US claim that Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost and Perestroika contributed to the momentum of the collapse. I've heard it said before that while many here in the US hail Gorbachev as a kind of unwitting hero (due to this contribution and his affectations and coordination with Reagan), many who lived through his time in power view him more as the one who ruined everything his forebears had worked to build and achieve. Just for my own edification and curiosity, can you speak to how he's commonly viewed by former citizens of the Soviet Union? I don't believe there was a momentum to collapse. It was a deliberate sabotage by Gorbachev. All the visible economical problems started on his term. USSR economy wasn't capitalist: it could survive whatever pressure. It survived WWII, it certainly could survive any sane reform or temporary crisis. It was deliberately destroyed by Gorbachev. Even some of pro-US/pro-West/pro-capitalist advocates agree that some of Gorbachev's decisions were caused economical disaster and it was very likely deliberate because any sane person could foresee that. I don't know what everybody thinks about Gorbachev, but many people around me consider him a traitor (and they're probably right, there're some conspiracy theories that he was recruited by the West long time ago). People do not speak about him usually, but everyone understands that he destroyed huge a powerful country to pieces and every piece now lives much worse than before (at least economically). I'd say that significant part of population hates him for his crime, and even part of the population that is pro-West doesn't like to talk about him because he definitely betrayed his country and his people and there's little doubt about it. Also, there's a constant pressure to tear remaining pieces even further (especially Russia which is still too big to be a tame colony for providing natural resources without any geopolitical ambitions). So, there're endless "revolutions" and coups in former USSR republics and attempts to stage such a coup in Russia. We're flooded with anti-Russian propaganda in our media, especially social networks. USA has created many institutions before and after USSR collapse to disseminate fake news. When Internet had become ubiquitous in Russia, it greatly helped these institutions. Every day on every social network under every post you can find comments how bad is Putin, how useless we're as human beings, that our history is full of violence and all other kinds of fake news. It feels futile to resist this pressure - US troll factories are working full power 24 hours a day. They throw a lot of resources into that and there's little we can do. US propaganda was always the most powerful and well-funded. Hollywood itself is a powerful weapon (one obvious giveaway is that almost every villain in US movies is Russian, sometimes Arab). It's very hard to counteract all this propaganda. It's literally under every YouTube video, for example. There're tons of comments in Russian under every video like "Putin is bad", "We should wake up and throw out Putin", "We Russian oppressed other nations and should repent now", "We're useless slaves, we should give up any resistance to the glorious West powers". What kind of power can counteract this?.. This is partially the reason why I don't want to consume social media. They're flooded with this nonsense.

FillardMillmore 7y ago

Thanks a lot for taking the time to share your experience. There's probably not many better ways to learn about the realities of a foreign country than by chatting with someone who actually lived there and can tell stories from first-hand experience. It's also somewhat curious that the ties of our professions (programming, development, IT) can serve as the channel by which this information is shared - as always, my appreciation of HN in this regard is immense. > Good and enlightening Soviet science shows were replaced with gross shows showing nudity and all kinds of fake science (psychics, UFO freaks, etc). Academics running the old shows said that they were closed specifically by request from the very top. Same for education: it was deliberately destroyed by direct guidance of US advisers. This bit in particular intrigued me. What would be the point of steering science and public academia in this way? To lower the level of public discourse to the advantage of the US? I did not realize such things were so tightly guided by US advisers after the collapse, though I hold no illusions that Boris Yeltsin was lobbied for and supported by the US (it might more accurately be described as 'election meddling' - which made it ironic during the investigation into Russian meddling in US elections that very few news outlets were brave enough to address the actions of the US in other countries' elections and in Russia's in particular). > Everybody just reinforces the same old meme how "repressive" was Soviet society and how everybody was happy to become free (just conveniently omit the ending: "free from education, free from having work, free from having enough food, free from having self-esteem"). Many here in the US claim that Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost and Perestroika contributed to the momentum of the collapse. I've heard it said before that while many here in the US hail Gorbachev as a kind of unwitting hero (due to this contribution and his affectations and coordination with Reagan), many who lived through his time in power view him more as the one who ruined everything his forebears had worked to build and achieve. Just for my own edification and curiosity, can you speak to how he's commonly viewed by former citizens of the Soviet Union? Your take on news consumption is cogent and refreshing. Many of us probably pay more attention to it than necessary. As for social media, if you use it responsibly, it can be a net benefit rather than a net detriment. I've personally excised myself from social media because I don't agree with their data privacy practices. I don't know what social media you use, but Facebook has a feature I believe where you can deactivate your account - for 30 days (or so), you can log back in and reactivate your account without losing anything. At the very least, it could be useful for a trial run if you simply want to attempt to get rid of it without the risk of losing everything if you decide you want to keep it two weeks later.

anticodon 7y ago
> What would be the point of steering science and public academia in this way? To lower the level of public discourse to the advantage of the US? One can only guess. For one thing, West (especially the US) needed USSR to be broken not to "free" from ourselves, but to create a new market for US goods. USA didn't need a global competitor - it needed a new market. If population is educated, they tend to create industry products instead of mindlessly consuming. If you need a new market, you just need lowbrow population extracting natural resources for the western companies and buying consumer goods produced in the West. Also, it would be harder to manipulate educated population. Almost nobody analyzed this because even to this day our education is run by agents of the West. If you read articles and interviews of people who are in charge of education in Russia now, they're very openly and aggressively pro-West, nevermind that all their efforts only lowered the quality of education. It's obvious that western influence to destroy what remains of our education still remain. I've lived for some time in some of South Asian countries and I believe it's same there. It's a part of neo-colonial politics. E.g. there's very little incentive to teach and learn mathematics and physics, chemistry, biology. There's a huge incentive to study humanities subjects and corresponding flood of US-printed books on marketing, management, "human rights", "lgbt rights", etc. But economy can't grow if everyone is a manager or lawyer - real education is needed for people to create industry products. But it's not in the West interest to allow growth of industry in Asia, Russia, Africa. > Many here in the US claim that Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost and Perestroika contributed to the momentum of the collapse. I've heard it said before that while many here in the US hail Gorbachev as a kind of unwitting hero (due to this contribution and his affectations and coordination with Reagan), many who lived through his time in power view him more as the one who ruined everything his forebears had worked to build and achieve. Just for my own edification and curiosity, can you speak to how he's commonly viewed by former citizens of the Soviet Union? I don't believe there was a momentum to collapse. It was a deliberate sabotage by Gorbachev. All the visible economical problems started on his term. USSR economy wasn't capitalist: it could survive whatever pressure. It survived WWII, it certainly could survive any sane reform or temporary crisis. It was deliberately destroyed by Gorbachev. Even some of pro-US/pro-West/pro-capitalist advocates agree that some of Gorbachev's decisions were caused economical disaster and it was very likely deliberate because any sane person could foresee that. I don't know what everybody thinks about Gorbachev, but many people around me consider him a traitor (and they're probably right, there're some conspiracy theories that he was recruited by the West long time ago). People do not speak about him usually, but everyone understands that he destroyed huge a powerful country to pieces and every piece now lives much worse than before (at least economically). I'd say that significant part of population hates him for his crime, and even part of the population that is pro-West doesn't like to talk about him because he definitely betrayed his country and his people and there's little doubt about it. Also, there's a constant pressure to tear remaining pieces even further (especially Russia which is still too big to be a tame colony for providing natural resources without any geopolitical ambitions). So, there're endless "revolutions" and coups in former USSR republics and attempts to stage such a coup in Russia. We're flooded with anti-Russian propaganda in our media, especially social networks. USA has created many institutions before and after USSR collapse to disseminate fake news. When Internet had become ubiquitous in Russia, it greatly helped these institutions. Every day on every social network under every post you can find comments how bad is Putin, how useless we're as human beings, that our history is full of violence and all other kinds of fake news. It feels futile to resist this pressure - US troll factories are working full power 24 hours a day. They throw a lot of resources into that and there's little we can do. US propaganda was always the most powerful and well-funded. Hollywood itself is a powerful weapon (one obvious giveaway is that almost every villain in US movies is Russian, sometimes Arab). It's very hard to counteract all this propaganda. It's literally under every YouTube video, for example. There're tons of comments in Russian under every video like "Putin is bad", "We should wake up and throw out Putin", "We Russian oppressed other nations and should repent now", "We're useless slaves, we should give up any resistance to the glorious West powers". What kind of power can counteract this?.. This is partially the reason why I don't want to consume social media. They're flooded with this nonsense.