4 ms·

> The conventional narrative of Eastern European communism is one of technologically backward states that failed to enter the information age, locked behind an

> The conventional narrative of Eastern European communism is one of technologically backward states that failed to enter the information age, locked behind an impenetrable Iron Curtain that prevented both people and ideas from circulating. Yeah. That's typical Western Russophobia for you.

qsort 5y ago
Is any of those points wrong, though?
- yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  …Well, yes? Of course? How else do you explain a supposedly "technologically backward" society beating even the Americans in the space race? I mean, even this very article immediately refutes that narrative.
  - Igelau 5y ago
    I think you're mistranslating "conventional narrative" as "we think this is a rock-solid fact". It doesn't mean that.
    - yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
      I'm not sure why you think that. I certainly don't think "fact" has anything to do with this, as this is all about narrative. What I'm taking issue with is that this narrative is being characterised as conventional, which means in accordance with what is generally done or believed. I think this is only generally done or believed in Western society, which I already alluded to.
  - qsort 5y ago
    Dude, are you literally trolling right now? The space race did not end the way you think it did. And no, the article does not refute that "narrative" at all, if you're reading carefully. The 80s were the years of the microcomputing revolution in the West, by that time most of the computing products of the Eastern block were knockoffs of the western counterparts. They were objectively lagging behind at that point.
  - nanna 5y ago
    Ok, but you're talking 1950s, when this article is talking about the '70s and '80s. The US got so far ahead of the USSR in computing because of the military-industrial-academic complex that channelled vast public resources and knowledge into projects that had both military/state ends as well as commercial ones too. Especially after the launch of Sputnik and the subsequent sense that the US was trailing the USSR in a 'cybernetics gap', which triggered a huge amount of funding in the US for technical developments. This is the story of how the personal, graphical, interactive and internetworked computer was invented. In the USSR the military did its own thing without sharing its knowledge and inventions with the wider society, especially with such cutting edge inventions like computers. As such outside of the military (even this is debatable), the USSR as a whole did fall significantly behind the West in terms of technological progress. Who knows, if it hadn't it might still be around today. See Slava Gerovitch and Benjamin Peter's writings, for example: InterNyet: https://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterNyet.pdf https://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterN...
    - yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
      I'm not really refuting any of that, and I think your point is orthogonal to the one that I'm making. As far as I'm aware, Western sentiment with regards to technological capability in the USSR didn't radically shift in those two or three decades. In fact I believe popular sentiment remained fairly static all throughout the Cold War which encompasses the decades you named.
  - pid-1 5y ago
    > How else do you explain a supposedly "technologically backward" society beating even the Americans in the space race? Invest in a small elite and let the rest of the country starve. That's old as civilization.
    - artem247 5y ago
      That's very unfair. The education was free for all, there was significant investment in education, 90% of schools in my rather ancient city were built during Soviet time, not before, not after. Same for university campuses and hospitals. That systemic investment into education along with state-wide industrialisation eventually paid-off. There were wide-spread programs how for example factory worker can get a higher education while still being able to provide for his family. Invest in a small elite and let the rest starve was more of a motto of Russian Empire, where most of people couldn't read, yet there were some technological achievements nevertheless.
      - soco 5y ago
        I argue that the ways of the Russian Empire weren't that much different from the Soviet Union ways - both internally and with its vassal states.
        tristor 5y ago
        "New boss... same as the old boss." as they say. This is true for most regime changes in history. Those in power change, and their motivated reasoning may change, but the net effects on those down the stack is pretty much the same.
        thriftwy 5y ago
        Russian Empire was very different, like South Korea - North Korea different.
        artem247 5y ago
        I would say that Russian Empire and USSR were similar in the methods of achieving their goals — a lot of rigid hierarchical structures, top-down management, a certain level of brutality. But the goals were very different.
  - flerchin 5y ago
    Russian boots on the moon when?
  - aaron-santos 5y ago
    The propagandist wants the opponent to be strong enough to be a threat but ideologically weak enough to defeat. That should be enough for anyone to pause and think hard about what's really going on.
teekert 5y ago
For sure, but it's also the other way around, I read RTV for some time (everybody should), same news, very different angle. The fear and contempt of the west (the NATO) is palpable. I imagine it is the same the other way around, but I am just used to it. Edit: A nice example: EU: https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-gas-pipeline-what-is-the-controversy-about/a-44677741 https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-gas-pipeline-what-is-the... RT: https://www.rt.com/business/476844-eu-russia-us-sanctions/ https://www.rt.com/business/476844-eu-russia-us-sanctions/
- yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  Yes, I absolutely recognise that. I've spent enough time in both Sweden and Russia (and Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, etc, etc, etc) to recognise the same stories and military expeditions being told from different angles. It is absolutely true that each nation tells their citizens their own stories. The point I took issue with was in the excerpt I pulled, which describes the Western perspective as the "conventional" one, which seems a rather Americentric thing to write.
- teddyh 5y ago
  This is literal whataboutism.
  - markenqualitaet 5y ago
    It is not, I think, if it's the _exact same relation in reverse.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      It is still whataboutism. Do two wrongs make a right? Does an accusation of hypocrisy nullify any original criticism, no matter how true?
      - markenqualitaet 5y ago
        No, I get what you mean, but I still think it's a different argument in nature. It's not two wrongs, it's one and the same. For me typical fallacy would be something like "You did A. A is bad." "So what? You did B. B is bad." This tries to dismiss A , while "Both did A." tells us something about A.
bufferoverflow 5y ago
You need to learn some history instead of propaganda. Both people and ideas were highly filtered in circulation. That's a fact.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >You need to learn some history instead of propaganda. Just don't trust the history of your national side -- or the winners, in most cases.
  - randomeat 5y ago
    WW2, for example
    - coldtea 5y ago
      Especially that. What with provoking the Japanese before Pearl Harbor to get an excuse to join the war, the propaganda over decades to dismiss the importance of USSR in the fall of Nazi Germany, Dresden, the reasoning behind hitting Hiroshima and Nagashaki, the cozying up with "ex" Nazis in West Germany (now an ally), and tons of other dirty laundry... What, you expected at least this to be a clear cut "pure good vs pure evil" affair, the way "sanctioned" national histories retell it? Here's but an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis#The_%22Voyage_of_the_Damned%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis#The_%22Voyage_of_... https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/06/american-nazis-in-the-1930sthe-german-american-bund/529185/ https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/06/american-nazis-in-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers-willing-business-partners/303146/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers...
      - randomeat 5y ago
        Minor in comparison to the larger propaganda over that war
      - reducesuffering 5y ago
VictorPath 5y ago
It's great that Bulgaria was so technologically forward in 1945! If the Warsaw Pact allowed people and ideas to circulate, they might have launched satellites and men in space before the West!

qsort 5y ago

Is any of those points wrong, though?

yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
…Well, yes? Of course? How else do you explain a supposedly "technologically backward" society beating even the Americans in the space race? I mean, even this very article immediately refutes that narrative.
- Igelau 5y ago
  I think you're mistranslating "conventional narrative" as "we think this is a rock-solid fact". It doesn't mean that.
  - yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
    I'm not sure why you think that. I certainly don't think "fact" has anything to do with this, as this is all about narrative. What I'm taking issue with is that this narrative is being characterised as conventional, which means in accordance with what is generally done or believed. I think this is only generally done or believed in Western society, which I already alluded to.
- qsort 5y ago
  Dude, are you literally trolling right now? The space race did not end the way you think it did. And no, the article does not refute that "narrative" at all, if you're reading carefully. The 80s were the years of the microcomputing revolution in the West, by that time most of the computing products of the Eastern block were knockoffs of the western counterparts. They were objectively lagging behind at that point.
- nanna 5y ago
  Ok, but you're talking 1950s, when this article is talking about the '70s and '80s. The US got so far ahead of the USSR in computing because of the military-industrial-academic complex that channelled vast public resources and knowledge into projects that had both military/state ends as well as commercial ones too. Especially after the launch of Sputnik and the subsequent sense that the US was trailing the USSR in a 'cybernetics gap', which triggered a huge amount of funding in the US for technical developments. This is the story of how the personal, graphical, interactive and internetworked computer was invented. In the USSR the military did its own thing without sharing its knowledge and inventions with the wider society, especially with such cutting edge inventions like computers. As such outside of the military (even this is debatable), the USSR as a whole did fall significantly behind the West in terms of technological progress. Who knows, if it hadn't it might still be around today. See Slava Gerovitch and Benjamin Peter's writings, for example: InterNyet: https://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterNyet.pdf https://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterN...
  - yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
    I'm not really refuting any of that, and I think your point is orthogonal to the one that I'm making. As far as I'm aware, Western sentiment with regards to technological capability in the USSR didn't radically shift in those two or three decades. In fact I believe popular sentiment remained fairly static all throughout the Cold War which encompasses the decades you named.
- pid-1 5y ago
  > How else do you explain a supposedly "technologically backward" society beating even the Americans in the space race? Invest in a small elite and let the rest of the country starve. That's old as civilization.
  - artem247 5y ago
    That's very unfair. The education was free for all, there was significant investment in education, 90% of schools in my rather ancient city were built during Soviet time, not before, not after. Same for university campuses and hospitals. That systemic investment into education along with state-wide industrialisation eventually paid-off. There were wide-spread programs how for example factory worker can get a higher education while still being able to provide for his family. Invest in a small elite and let the rest starve was more of a motto of Russian Empire, where most of people couldn't read, yet there were some technological achievements nevertheless.
    - soco 5y ago
      I argue that the ways of the Russian Empire weren't that much different from the Soviet Union ways - both internally and with its vassal states.
      - tristor 5y ago
        "New boss... same as the old boss." as they say. This is true for most regime changes in history. Those in power change, and their motivated reasoning may change, but the net effects on those down the stack is pretty much the same.
      - thriftwy 5y ago
        Russian Empire was very different, like South Korea - North Korea different.
      - artem247 5y ago
        I would say that Russian Empire and USSR were similar in the methods of achieving their goals — a lot of rigid hierarchical structures, top-down management, a certain level of brutality. But the goals were very different.
- flerchin 5y ago
  Russian boots on the moon when?
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  The propagandist wants the opponent to be strong enough to be a threat but ideologically weak enough to defeat. That should be enough for anyone to pause and think hard about what's really going on.

teekert 5y ago

For sure, but it's also the other way around, I read RTV for some time (everybody should), same news, very different angle. The fear and contempt of the west (the NATO) is palpable. I imagine it is the same the other way around, but I am just used to it. Edit: A nice example: EU: https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-gas-pipeline-what-is-the-controversy-about/a-44677741 https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-gas-pipeline-what-is-the... RT: https://www.rt.com/business/476844-eu-russia-us-sanctions/ https://www.rt.com/business/476844-eu-russia-us-sanctions/

yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
Yes, I absolutely recognise that. I've spent enough time in both Sweden and Russia (and Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, etc, etc, etc) to recognise the same stories and military expeditions being told from different angles. It is absolutely true that each nation tells their citizens their own stories. The point I took issue with was in the excerpt I pulled, which describes the Western perspective as the "conventional" one, which seems a rather Americentric thing to write.
teddyh 5y ago
This is literal whataboutism.
- markenqualitaet 5y ago
  It is not, I think, if it's the _exact same relation in reverse.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    It is still whataboutism. Do two wrongs make a right? Does an accusation of hypocrisy nullify any original criticism, no matter how true?
    - markenqualitaet 5y ago
      No, I get what you mean, but I still think it's a different argument in nature. It's not two wrongs, it's one and the same. For me typical fallacy would be something like "You did A. A is bad." "So what? You did B. B is bad." This tries to dismiss A , while "Both did A." tells us something about A.

bufferoverflow 5y ago

You need to learn some history instead of propaganda. Both people and ideas were highly filtered in circulation. That's a fact.

coldtea 5y ago
>You need to learn some history instead of propaganda. Just don't trust the history of your national side -- or the winners, in most cases.
- randomeat 5y ago
  WW2, for example
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Especially that. What with provoking the Japanese before Pearl Harbor to get an excuse to join the war, the propaganda over decades to dismiss the importance of USSR in the fall of Nazi Germany, Dresden, the reasoning behind hitting Hiroshima and Nagashaki, the cozying up with "ex" Nazis in West Germany (now an ally), and tons of other dirty laundry... What, you expected at least this to be a clear cut "pure good vs pure evil" affair, the way "sanctioned" national histories retell it? Here's but an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis#The_%22Voyage_of_the_Damned%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis#The_%22Voyage_of_... https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/06/american-nazis-in-the-1930sthe-german-american-bund/529185/ https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/06/american-nazis-in-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers-willing-business-partners/303146/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers...
    - randomeat 5y ago
      Minor in comparison to the larger propaganda over that war
    - reducesuffering 5y ago

VictorPath 5y ago

It's great that Bulgaria was so technologically forward in 1945! If the Warsaw Pact allowed people and ideas to circulate, they might have launched satellites and men in space before the West!