My experience was that nany post Woodstock “radical hippies” took conversational Russian classes for several reasons, mostly “c’est chic”.
>>took conversational Russian classes for several reasons, mostly “c’est chic”.
I went to a research school, so everyone I knew who took Russian or Chinese wanted to be able to read the research in their field - like Ancient Chinese Art. There was very little recitation. Thank goodness! Chicago also wasn’t a hotbed of radicalism. The joke was that we were too busy arguing about Robert’s Rules of Order to actually foment any revolution. When they did, finally, take over the ad building, the administration just left and ignored them until they left, too.
It was a scary time. But at least back then I never thought that our whole way of government might be in danger of collapsing, as I do when I look at the radical idiots who actually got elected by massive numbers of people.