Below are few trivial notes (which, apparently, is big news to self-praising “humanists”), copied from this thread, so they’ll not disappear in the ocean of chatter. Subject to further clarification and stylistic improvement.
..I and all immigrants from former SU who came here share similar stories of barely conceived contempt we discovered; it is a common knowledge that upon arrival to the country of our dreams we met here unexpectedly large number of Americans who do not differentiate between those of us with firm anti-Soviet, pro-capitalist and enthusiastically pro-American principles, and the people and system we ran from. In any slight conflict – say, debate with a neighbor over dividing strip of grass, or an altercation in a subway car with a crazed bum – these close-to-surface convictions immediately come out. Somebody will hiss “commie” at you, or scream “go back to Russia!”. The image in collective American mind, generally, is formed by insanely stupid suspense movies and sensationalist press: first that comes to mouth of an average co-worker (an educated engineer or architect, mind you, not a garbage collector) when they hear my accent is “or, yes, Little Odessa! Russian Mafia! Borcsht! KGB!” It was funny the first 10 times, but I’m hearing it for over 17 years and the amusement tends to wear of.
In workplace situations people tend to follow decorum, but here on internet the impulses come unchecked. I’ll talk about my own experience, but I read about the same things on LiveJournal every day.
So, the favorite “argument” from opponents in any discussion is to call me a comrade, or a “natasha”, or even “communist Russian bitch”. There is a woman who actually set up a fake spoof blog with stolen part of my URL, where she mixes up all things Soviet – as she understands the concept – to “mock” me – Stalin, Tolstoy, improbable RRRussian manner of speech, etc. She actually thinks herself very clever comic genius – well, the reaction from her dumbscull posse justifies it – and these are Californian leftists, btw, who should know better if they studied their homework. There is also a paleo-conservative guy commenter on AlarmingNews who proclaimed in all seriousness that since my blog is bilingual, I must be not only a communist, but a KGB spy at that. He was very proud for unmasking me. Here, on this very blog, I was enlightened by a visitor that my atheism, surely, comes from my childhood brainwashing in SU. An online fellow libertarian friend who had known me and my views for 3 years all of a sudden equaled me with leftism of Ayers and Obama – I can’t explain it with anything other than deep-seated distrust to people of my origin.
I can go on and on.
Funniest part is that general Americans’ vision of SU is so schematic and black/white, it never enters their mind that the terms they use just like a senseless labels mean something very different to ex-SU citizens. They don’t understand, for example, that communists circa 1980 were not the same as communists of 1936. That to become a member of the Party for millions of people was just a career move, not an ideological statement: there was NO other party in the country for 80 years! And if you wanted to become a manager of any sort, or simply to advance in your chosen profession, even on the lowest steps of the ladder, your best bet was to send in an application to KPSS. Yes, you’d be required to sit at the meetings and sometimes to do a lip-service to official line, and engage in double speak, but that was the extent of it, generally, and there was no other way for the ambitious to succeed. Hundreds of millions people habitually called each other “comrade” giving the meaning not a 1/100th of a thought – it was just a formal way of addressing someone. There are numerous other realities of life in SU, all shades of gray, that average American does not understand. And that would be absolutely fine, nobody expects them to do otherwise – if they wouldn’t harbor this broad-brush indiscriminate hatred that comes out at the slightest [often wrongly perceived] provocation.
No, an average Russian during Reagan era didn’t feel him/herself a prisoner. People lead their lives as an average American does: worrying mostly about money and health, and family, and meeting with friends, and listening to music, and telling jokes. It’s just the money was sparse, political jokes could bring you much unpleasantness in form of jailtime and it was impossible to buy an apartment legally. Actually, it was more dangerous to joke if you were member of nomenklatura or intelligentsia – you had more to lose, not necessarily materially. We lived in one set of everyday realities, and Americans – in another, but both sets were rather trivial and definitely not “evil”. I meet incredulous glances here, when I say that most of the dissidents were members of privileged class. That doesn’t seem to fit the average American cliche-ed picture of the world. And in all of this, we grew gradually understanding the utter wrong of that system and made our own conclusions, despite almost total lack of information and despite the “iron curtain” , and despite very real danger to our job or studying prospects, we talked among friends – some were braver than others and actually paid with their freedom and health – and we learned, from our life experience, to hate collectivism with all our might.
What am I saying, “average American”…look at Condi Rice and her Russian thesis! Look at “Slavic” departments in most of the universities of this country!
When I meet here Americans who can speak a little Russian (much funnier than my English, if you can believe it possible – but trust me, “terpenya” is a not as bad compared to what I heard from people with Russian majors) do you know what they answer when I ask – “why Russian in particular? what attracted you to this language?” 80% of answers is “I wanted to study the language of Lenin”, or variations of it.
When I heard it first, I was shocked and insulted. Then, hearing the same stupid nonsense received in Marxists-infested American universities, I came to recognize it for what it is: the other side of the medal, an opposition against as widely-spread hatred of “communists”. This duality, a set of complementary ignorance, persists – and it doesn’t matter that either side of that medal is irrelevant even to Russia of 1990s, let alone a contemporary situation there. It is a thing in itself, connected to American reality and American set of terms and ideas – not to Russia .
Oh, and then there are Americans who are outraged at my lack of “correct attitude” towards socialism and communism, the way they’ve been taught – in that sense there is no difference between the most radical lefties and stringent [often religious] conservatives. In rather amusing naivete, some of them even try to correct me on various points, and teach me “the way things were in the USSR”. Just like that Palestinian-American guy in my former office, telling me with admirable confidence that “in Russia under Brezhnev everyone had received a government-paid-for automobile. All had guaranteed work and free healthcare that was the best in the world. What, you say you lived there and that all is not true? M’dear, don’t try that propaganda on me – I know the truth!” On the other hand, here is Andrea Harris [link], lecturing me about evils of collectivism – from the conservative talking points perspective…
[the post is unfinished. I left it as is and marked “private” after a string of spammy comments from usual suspects]