5 ms·

I tried to find the source for this claim, and all the internet posts point to one article written in 2008 that tells the story. That article sources it to two

I tried to find the source for this claim, and all the internet posts point to one article written in 2008 that tells the story. That article sources it to two books, a New York Times article, and some email. The first book, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt is from 1958 and is on the Internet Archive, and searching it brought no mention of "grape" or "Steinbeck." "Wrath" came up a few times in different context. The second, "Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States" by Kenneth T. Jackson is from 1989 available on Google Books. It does tell the story, adding that every character having shoes was also part of the ban. It doesn't provide a source for the claim, but the footnote given says the film wasn't a hit in the US either. The film won several Oscars and is on numerous "best film ever" lists. I can't check a personal email. I don't subscribe to the NYT, so can't check the article. Maybe someone else can. https://www.nytimes.com/1955/04/13/archives/foreign-affairs-america-seen-through-a-glass-darkly.htm https://www.nytimes.com/1955/04/13/archives/foreign-affairs-... So at best it looks like the source was some article in the NYT from the height of the Cold War about a somewhat related topic. Possibly happened, possibly made up.

pessimizer 4y ago
Post-fact era. To be fair, the claim that was made in the fake headline by the submitter is stronger than the one made in the article, although the article has Stalin taking a personal interest in the film.
- themitigating 4y ago
  I'm not sure why you are being down voted. If the submitter submitted a conclusion that isn't supported by the article the fault lies with that person. I do wish Dang noted these transgressions
maegul 4y ago
I mean, this tracks with the experience of anyone who has gone citation/source tracking ... soooo much stuff is just not substantiated, and it's honestly really bad because it turns the mere existence of a citation into some sort appeal to authority fallacy. A formative experience for me as a student was working (voluntarily) for an academic journal where the job was to check that a) all cited sources actually supported the supported claim, and, b) that all factual assertions had a source. It's funny how most people don't quite get how wrong it really is to not care about sources and truth/facts this much. Sometimes you have to see the fallacies transpire yourself to truly appreciate how much it enables outright lying.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Lying, sloppy research, or trust it's it all depends on the author of this article.For example if I cite a NYtimes article that has their own research I'm not going to check into their sources (depending on my later point). I also wouldn't fault someone for doing this because it's a generally reliable paper in my opinion. Of course does it matter for something like this? The importance of the information should dictate the thoroughness of research. Whether or not a film was banned in the USSR because it showed citizens had cars doesn't really matter except in discussions like this. Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? Not much. What's the value of deception here? The USSR is gone. So I don't agree with your last statement.
  - eduction 4y ago
    > Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? The loss is the truth. And in this context the truth about our prosperity relative to another nation. If this anecdote is false then the effect is simply to tell ourselves something flattering - that even the poorest of the poor Americans in the Great Depression were prosperous compared to people in the USSR. Delusional thinking is not healthy. The effects tend to compound. As people who lived under monarchies knew, which is how we ended up with a Constitution that tends to encourage adversarial confrontation and an open frank exchange of views. The USSR may be dead but correctly understanding why it failed is an ongoing and very much living project with relevance to the future ways in which we choose to reshape the prevailing capitalist order (particularly w/r/t industrial investment and planning and benefit schemes that might be compared to socialism like minimum basic income, universal health care, government provided housing etc)
    - themitigating 4y ago
      "If this anecdote is false then the effect is simply to tell ourselves something flattering - that even the poorest of the poor Americans in the Great Depression were prosperous compared to people in the USSR. Delusional thinking is not healthy." You're assuming that after someone hears that anecdote they form or change a view. I also pointed out it matters what you do with the view. People in the US being better off compared to the USSR is subjective and could be true even if this information isn't true. So it may not matter. ", you absolutely should not take the NYT at its word." It's not "trust or not trust", it's a probability combined with what the information is being used for. If I see that it's going to be 75f outside I'm not going to double check that because the probability they are wrong is extremely low and the negative effects are minimal. Since every person, business, whatever has lied at least once using that as a bar makes no sense.
rcme 4y ago
The last line in the NYT article seems to confirm the anecdote, at least partially: > The Russians managed to obtain a print of "Grapes of Wrath" and displayed it widely behind the Iron Curtain hoping to convey a harsh impression of the United States. But the main reaction, reported by our embassies, was: "In America, even the tramps have cars."
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  Thank you. The entire thing boils down to a remark some embassy worker may have said at some point. Nothing about Stalin personally ordering the showing or the censorship, which is what made me look for the source.
  - rcme 4y ago
    I will say, based on purely anecdotal experience, the story could be plausible (although maybe not a personal order from Stalin). My wife was born in the USSR just before its collapse and grew up in a post-Soviet country. Her family was pretty poor, and they didn't get their first car until the late 90s. My wife was a young girl then, so only has vague memories of needing to hitchhike to grandma's, but that means her parents went almost 40 years without a car. And their story is not unique. Pretty crazy.
  - eevilspock 4y ago
    Yeah but what's the likelihood that an order like that by Stalin would be documented so explicitly if at all? What one would want to corroborate is the "the main reaction", which I presume to be the general public reaction, which back in those times would more likely be word of mouth, especially in such an information suppressing society?
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      > Yeah but what's the likelihood that an order like that by Stalin would be documented so explicitly if at all? That's what makes it look suspicious when stated as fact. I could imagine it being in someone's memoir, though, but the anecdote wasn't attributed to a person.
sjm 4y ago
Yeah, the NY times article[1] actually says it was the US embassy in France that requested it was banned "on the grounds it might assist Communist propaganda efforts". The last paragraph says: "The Russians managed to obtain a print of "Grapes of Wrath" and displayed it widely behind the Iron Curtain hoping to convey a harsh impression of the US. But the main reaction, reported by our embassies, was: "In America even the tramps have cars." [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1955/04/13/archives/foreign-affairs-america-seen-through-a-glass-darkly.html https://www.nytimes.com/1955/04/13/archives/foreign-affairs-...
- pessimizer 4y ago
  The claim that the Russians schemed to find a print and showed it widely as anti-US propaganda (with mixed results) is almost the opposite of the headline from the submitter.
emodendroket 4y ago
Based on what you found, "possibly happened" seems charitable.
sjkdfkjdsfhjkhs 4y ago
The Times article you've linked says the following (it has an earlier reference to the Grapes of Wrath, as well, so you need to read to the end for the relevant part): > The Russians managed to obtain a print of "Grapes of Wrath" and displayed it widely, behind the Iron Curtain hoping to convey a harsh impression of the United States. But the main reaction, reported by our embassies, was: "In America even the tramps have cars"
nl 4y ago
It's not unlikely that Stalin would personally have been involved. Steinbeck traveled to the USSR just prior 1948, writing A Russian Journal[1] which portrayed the Soviet Union in a moderately positive light. Given Steinbeck's fame and the extremely limited amount of travel US Citizens did the US at this time it's likely Stalin knew about it, and was aware of the showing of the film. If you are looking for a document that says "Stalin ordered X" it's very unlikely it ever existed. That's not how dictatorships worked - instead someone in his circle would have quietly ordered it to stop being shown. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Russian_Journal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Russian_Journal
- ordu 4y ago
  It is not unlikely. Why? Because it supports our view of USSR and Stalin. But if this story was fabricated to support our view, then it doesn't add weight to our view. Moreover the possibility of a fabrication makes me want to reject all the story. The appeal to "our embassies" adds some weight though. Undergraduate math education teach students to track all statements to axioms and definitions, because to do serious math one must be able for example to catch loops in reasoning. There is a logic term for that "circular reasoning": A->B->A. It is a fallacy from logic standpoint. And in a practice a loop can be much longer: A->B->C->...->Z->A. To catch them all mathematicians needs to know all about statements they refer in their proofs, how they can be inferred from definitions and axioms. In a world of uncertainty "circular reasoning" is a sin also. It can lead to unlimited buildup of belief in statements in a loop, when they start to support each other. And to fight it we need to track how statements were inferred. It is "A->B" or "B->A"? Is it our knowledge of Stalin and USSR conceives the nice story in the article discussed, or the nice story is based on facts and therefore adds something to our knowledge about USSR? But the trouble is all this tracking of sources must be done before you decided to accept story as truth, because if you decided to accept as a truth something it would be used in your reasoning afterwards. And if it was not truth, then you can get all the consequences of a false statement in your priors. It is not as bad when you reason under uncertainty as it might be if you used logic with the law of the excluded middle, but bad nevertheless. Mind works this way, any slip from truth leads to spoiled reasoning which adds even more untruths to your worldview. I personally rarely remember my night dreams, but when I do it is a disaster, because it takes some time to notice that it was just a dream and all the conclusions are continuations of the dream, so they must be tracked and purged. You are trying to justify the claim of the article based on our understanding of Stalin's regime, and if you are successful it doesn't add anything to our understanding of Stalin's regime because if was inferred from it. In this case it is a fiction. At the same time the appeal to "our embassies" is fundamentally different. It may be a not very convincing but it might be based on facts. It can support other claims about USSR.
gcanyon 4y ago
In the end, most history is < 100% certified factual, and > 0% anecdote. The rigor we should expect, and the skepticism we should employ, should scale with the importance of the historical "fact", and this is a pretty trivial, unimportant fact.
msrenee 4y ago
I'm having trouble believing someone claiming that the Soviet citizens were jealous of the relative prosperity of the family in the story has read the story in the past 20 years. They've got a car, but it's the last thing the bank didn't take when they repo'd the farm. It was presumably required for their work on the farm. Then everyone dies of either starvation or violence. There's heartless employers trying to squeeze out every scrap of profit and literally starving their workers to death. There's corrupt cops working as enforcers for the employers. I know Soviet times were hard, but the situation in the story isn't any better. I've only read the book. Unless the movie is much brighter and cheerier though, I'm having a hard time believing this articles claims. References or no references honestly; the US does propaganda too.
woobar 4y ago
What makes this story even less plausible is that this movie never had a wide release [1]. Very few people would see it. After the WW2 the USSR got a lot "trophy" movies from Germany. Soviet censors selected a bunch of them for a wide release. These movies were dubbed. Another subset of these movies was approved for literally "closed screenings". This subset was subtitled. Here is a copy of CP decree from August 1948 [2] (Use Google Translate) "1. Permit the USSR Ministry of Cinematography to release the following 50 foreign films from the trophy fund: ... b) on a closed screen: "Notre Dame Cathedral", "Les Misérables", The Jew Suess, The Prince and the Pauper, The Grapes of Wrath, ..." [1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BC%D1%8B,_%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%BF%D1%83%D1%89%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%B2_%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%82_%D0%B2_1948_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%83 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B1... [2] http://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/191477-postanovlenie-politbyuro-tsk-vkp-b-o-vypuske-na-ekran-zagranichnyh-kinofilmov-iz-trofeynogo-fonda-31-avgusta-1948-g http://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/191477-postanovlenie-...

pessimizer 4y ago

Post-fact era. To be fair, the claim that was made in the fake headline by the submitter is stronger than the one made in the article, although the article has Stalin taking a personal interest in the film.

themitigating 4y ago
I'm not sure why you are being down voted. If the submitter submitted a conclusion that isn't supported by the article the fault lies with that person. I do wish Dang noted these transgressions

maegul 4y ago

I mean, this tracks with the experience of anyone who has gone citation/source tracking ... soooo much stuff is just not substantiated, and it's honestly really bad because it turns the mere existence of a citation into some sort appeal to authority fallacy. A formative experience for me as a student was working (voluntarily) for an academic journal where the job was to check that a) all cited sources actually supported the supported claim, and, b) that all factual assertions had a source. It's funny how most people don't quite get how wrong it really is to not care about sources and truth/facts this much. Sometimes you have to see the fallacies transpire yourself to truly appreciate how much it enables outright lying.

themitigating 4y ago
Lying, sloppy research, or trust it's it all depends on the author of this article.For example if I cite a NYtimes article that has their own research I'm not going to check into their sources (depending on my later point). I also wouldn't fault someone for doing this because it's a generally reliable paper in my opinion. Of course does it matter for something like this? The importance of the information should dictate the thoroughness of research. Whether or not a film was banned in the USSR because it showed citizens had cars doesn't really matter except in discussions like this. Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? Not much. What's the value of deception here? The USSR is gone. So I don't agree with your last statement.
- eduction 4y ago
  > Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? The loss is the truth. And in this context the truth about our prosperity relative to another nation. If this anecdote is false then the effect is simply to tell ourselves something flattering - that even the poorest of the poor Americans in the Great Depression were prosperous compared to people in the USSR. Delusional thinking is not healthy. The effects tend to compound. As people who lived under monarchies knew, which is how we ended up with a Constitution that tends to encourage adversarial confrontation and an open frank exchange of views. The USSR may be dead but correctly understanding why it failed is an ongoing and very much living project with relevance to the future ways in which we choose to reshape the prevailing capitalist order (particularly w/r/t industrial investment and planning and benefit schemes that might be compared to socialism like minimum basic income, universal health care, government provided housing etc)
  - themitigating 4y ago
    "If this anecdote is false then the effect is simply to tell ourselves something flattering - that even the poorest of the poor Americans in the Great Depression were prosperous compared to people in the USSR. Delusional thinking is not healthy." You're assuming that after someone hears that anecdote they form or change a view. I also pointed out it matters what you do with the view. People in the US being better off compared to the USSR is subjective and could be true even if this information isn't true. So it may not matter. ", you absolutely should not take the NYT at its word." It's not "trust or not trust", it's a probability combined with what the information is being used for. If I see that it's going to be 75f outside I'm not going to double check that because the probability they are wrong is extremely low and the negative effects are minimal. Since every person, business, whatever has lied at least once using that as a bar makes no sense.

rcme 4y ago

The last line in the NYT article seems to confirm the anecdote, at least partially: > The Russians managed to obtain a print of "Grapes of Wrath" and displayed it widely behind the Iron Curtain hoping to convey a harsh impression of the United States. But the main reaction, reported by our embassies, was: "In America, even the tramps have cars."

boomboomsubban 4y ago
Thank you. The entire thing boils down to a remark some embassy worker may have said at some point. Nothing about Stalin personally ordering the showing or the censorship, which is what made me look for the source.
- rcme 4y ago
  I will say, based on purely anecdotal experience, the story could be plausible (although maybe not a personal order from Stalin). My wife was born in the USSR just before its collapse and grew up in a post-Soviet country. Her family was pretty poor, and they didn't get their first car until the late 90s. My wife was a young girl then, so only has vague memories of needing to hitchhike to grandma's, but that means her parents went almost 40 years without a car. And their story is not unique. Pretty crazy.
- eevilspock 4y ago
  Yeah but what's the likelihood that an order like that by Stalin would be documented so explicitly if at all? What one would want to corroborate is the "the main reaction", which I presume to be the general public reaction, which back in those times would more likely be word of mouth, especially in such an information suppressing society?
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > Yeah but what's the likelihood that an order like that by Stalin would be documented so explicitly if at all? That's what makes it look suspicious when stated as fact. I could imagine it being in someone's memoir, though, but the anecdote wasn't attributed to a person.

sjm 4y ago

Yeah, the NY times article[1] actually says it was the US embassy in France that requested it was banned "on the grounds it might assist Communist propaganda efforts". The last paragraph says: "The Russians managed to obtain a print of "Grapes of Wrath" and displayed it widely behind the Iron Curtain hoping to convey a harsh impression of the US. But the main reaction, reported by our embassies, was: "In America even the tramps have cars." [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1955/04/13/archives/foreign-affairs-america-seen-through-a-glass-darkly.html https://www.nytimes.com/1955/04/13/archives/foreign-affairs-...

pessimizer 4y ago
The claim that the Russians schemed to find a print and showed it widely as anti-US propaganda (with mixed results) is almost the opposite of the headline from the submitter.

emodendroket 4y ago

Based on what you found, "possibly happened" seems charitable.

sjkdfkjdsfhjkhs 4y ago

The Times article you've linked says the following (it has an earlier reference to the Grapes of Wrath, as well, so you need to read to the end for the relevant part): > The Russians managed to obtain a print of "Grapes of Wrath" and displayed it widely, behind the Iron Curtain hoping to convey a harsh impression of the United States. But the main reaction, reported by our embassies, was: "In America even the tramps have cars"

nl 4y ago

It's not unlikely that Stalin would personally have been involved. Steinbeck traveled to the USSR just prior 1948, writing A Russian Journal[1] which portrayed the Soviet Union in a moderately positive light. Given Steinbeck's fame and the extremely limited amount of travel US Citizens did the US at this time it's likely Stalin knew about it, and was aware of the showing of the film. If you are looking for a document that says "Stalin ordered X" it's very unlikely it ever existed. That's not how dictatorships worked - instead someone in his circle would have quietly ordered it to stop being shown. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Russian_Journal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Russian_Journal

ordu 4y ago
It is not unlikely. Why? Because it supports our view of USSR and Stalin. But if this story was fabricated to support our view, then it doesn't add weight to our view. Moreover the possibility of a fabrication makes me want to reject all the story. The appeal to "our embassies" adds some weight though. Undergraduate math education teach students to track all statements to axioms and definitions, because to do serious math one must be able for example to catch loops in reasoning. There is a logic term for that "circular reasoning": A->B->A. It is a fallacy from logic standpoint. And in a practice a loop can be much longer: A->B->C->...->Z->A. To catch them all mathematicians needs to know all about statements they refer in their proofs, how they can be inferred from definitions and axioms. In a world of uncertainty "circular reasoning" is a sin also. It can lead to unlimited buildup of belief in statements in a loop, when they start to support each other. And to fight it we need to track how statements were inferred. It is "A->B" or "B->A"? Is it our knowledge of Stalin and USSR conceives the nice story in the article discussed, or the nice story is based on facts and therefore adds something to our knowledge about USSR? But the trouble is all this tracking of sources must be done before you decided to accept story as truth, because if you decided to accept as a truth something it would be used in your reasoning afterwards. And if it was not truth, then you can get all the consequences of a false statement in your priors. It is not as bad when you reason under uncertainty as it might be if you used logic with the law of the excluded middle, but bad nevertheless. Mind works this way, any slip from truth leads to spoiled reasoning which adds even more untruths to your worldview. I personally rarely remember my night dreams, but when I do it is a disaster, because it takes some time to notice that it was just a dream and all the conclusions are continuations of the dream, so they must be tracked and purged. You are trying to justify the claim of the article based on our understanding of Stalin's regime, and if you are successful it doesn't add anything to our understanding of Stalin's regime because if was inferred from it. In this case it is a fiction. At the same time the appeal to "our embassies" is fundamentally different. It may be a not very convincing but it might be based on facts. It can support other claims about USSR.

gcanyon 4y ago

In the end, most history is < 100% certified factual, and > 0% anecdote. The rigor we should expect, and the skepticism we should employ, should scale with the importance of the historical "fact", and this is a pretty trivial, unimportant fact.

msrenee 4y ago

I'm having trouble believing someone claiming that the Soviet citizens were jealous of the relative prosperity of the family in the story has read the story in the past 20 years. They've got a car, but it's the last thing the bank didn't take when they repo'd the farm. It was presumably required for their work on the farm. Then everyone dies of either starvation or violence. There's heartless employers trying to squeeze out every scrap of profit and literally starving their workers to death. There's corrupt cops working as enforcers for the employers. I know Soviet times were hard, but the situation in the story isn't any better. I've only read the book. Unless the movie is much brighter and cheerier though, I'm having a hard time believing this articles claims. References or no references honestly; the US does propaganda too.

woobar 4y ago

What makes this story even less plausible is that this movie never had a wide release [1]. Very few people would see it. After the WW2 the USSR got a lot "trophy" movies from Germany. Soviet censors selected a bunch of them for a wide release. These movies were dubbed. Another subset of these movies was approved for literally "closed screenings". This subset was subtitled. Here is a copy of CP decree from August 1948 [2] (Use Google Translate) "1. Permit the USSR Ministry of Cinematography to release the following 50 foreign films from the trophy fund: ... b) on a closed screen: "Notre Dame Cathedral", "Les Misérables", The Jew Suess, The Prince and the Pauper, The Grapes of Wrath, ..." [1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BC%D1%8B,_%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%BF%D1%83%D1%89%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%B2_%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%82_%D0%B2_1948_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%83 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B1... [2] http://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/191477-postanovlenie-politbyuro-tsk-vkp-b-o-vypuske-na-ekran-zagranichnyh-kinofilmov-iz-trofeynogo-fonda-31-avgusta-1948-g http://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/191477-postanovlenie-...