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HOW RUSSIA AS IT IS WAS WRITTEN
I was born in 1958 in Moscow, USSR and immigrated to the United States in 1979. I arrived in New York, and in 1984 graduated from Columbia University. At the time, the Communist system was a real contender for world domination, and a world war seemed possible. In America, the Soviet system was presented as uniformly bad, common people were seen as suffering under it, but, because of the Communist tyranny, they were seen as unable to change the way they lived, to bring about American-style democracy that they surely were dreaming of. As much as I hated the Communist system, I knew that such a description of it was very inadequate.
That was the time when Italy and France had huge Communist parties, and indeed, most of my professors in Columbia were left-leaning, unable to understand why did I leave the Soviet Union. As moths are attracted to fire, people were drawn to the Communist ideals (and it was not at all clear what those ideals were) only to be destroyed by them. I felt that we needed to formulate what was the cause of this attraction.
Another related topic was that of envy Yet, you can open any economics textbook, and you would hardly ever find the discussion of an immense area of universally occurring economic activity that is meant to impede, deny, put under control, impose a tribute, destroy, dispossess, mislead, falsify, enslave, or kill. I am convinced that without understanding envy no intelligent discussion of the Communist system is possible.
HOW RUSSIA AS IT IS WAS WRITTEN
I was born in 1958 in Moscow, USSR and immigrated to the United States in 1979. I arrived in New York, and in 1984 graduated from Columbia University. At the time, the Communist system was a real contender for world domination, and a world war seemed possible. In America, the Soviet system was presented as uniformly bad, common people were seen as suffering under it, but, because of the Communist tyranny, they were seen as unable to change the way they lived, to bring about American-style democracy that they surely were dreaming of. As much as I hated the Communist system, I knew that such a description of it was very inadequate.
That was the time when Italy and France had huge Communist parties, and indeed, most of my professors in Columbia were left-leaning, unable to understand why did I leave the Soviet Union. As moths are attracted to fire, people were drawn to the Communist ideals (and it was not at all clear what those ideals were) only to be destroyed by them. I felt that we needed to formulate what was the cause of this attraction.
Another related topic was that of envy Yet, you can open any economics textbook, and you would hardly ever find the discussion of an immense area of universally occurring economic activity that is meant to impede, deny, put under control, impose a tribute, destroy, dispossess, mislead, falsify, enslave, or kill. I am convinced that without understanding envy no intelligent discussion of the Communist system is possible.
My observation is that when someone is envious and hateful, they refuse to tell their victim their true motive because #1 they know its petty and embarassing #2 they don't want to clue their victim in.
Related: Russia As It Is (As low as $7.51) Amazon link; Russia As It Is (pdf link)
P.S. The Amazon comments are quite interesting.
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