Soviet brainwashing redux

The Shark tips me off to the tragicomical story of former Russian professor and refusenik Tatiana Menaker. In an effort to bring her written English up to par for a professional career in her new home country, she enrolled in a creative writing course at San Francisco State University (well known to me from the days I used to visit my girlfriend two blocks away). Read her observations for yourselves.

Comments

[Wim]

Reading her story makes me feel bad about the time she wasted listening to those deluded, pretentious jerks. I could have told her! But maybe some good will come of it - with her unique background she could be an effective anti-left columnist. Even though her sentences still have traces of that Russian wordiness.

For a good perspective on the deplorable state of history scholarship, read John Haynes and Harvey Klehr's "IN DENIAL - Historians, Communism & Espionage". (Encounter Books, 2003) The mental contortions and intellectual shams that most American history "scholars" employ is breathtaking. But they need the entire repertoire; the realization that Communism was nothing but a cruel hoax, a totalitarian confidence trick, might kill them. It would shatter the pretentious identities they have built so carefully ever since they were unwashed sixties radicals. I can still see those spoiled idiots sitting around the campus, raising their fists: POWER TO THE PEOPLE! The trouble is, at least to Lenin they were useful idiots. Now that Lenin's dynasty is gone, what DO we do with these people?