And how do you think they came to be questionable? The same people who read them began to question them. And then they began to talk about those questions. Then they began to write against them.
When you read something it touches on a whole different level then just hearing or seeing. Reading forces thinking. It is not possible to read even the most mindless of books without thinking where it is quite possible to half hear or half watch something. If you can get them to talk and write about it you move up even higher on the thinking scale to critical thinking and analyst. Once you reach that point the questionable parts are quickly discarded.
Yahbut, first you got to order it...
Quickly? Seventy-five years of communism was a long time for many people. Sometimes a lot of pain and bloodshed happen before defective ideas are discarded.
I'm not against reading, learning, and thinking. But it does look like today's TV and computer games kids may end up doing less damage than the intellectuals and enthusiasts of a century ago.
Today's short-interest spans may repel many, but don't underestimate just how persistent an earlier generation was in clinging to ideas and illusions that were wrong and destructive. In totalitarian states, for every person who learns the truth through print there's at least one who's kept from the truth by the reading material that's available. I don't know that one can draw any sort of general lesson from comparisons, but it's at least plausible to me that newer media did more to bring down tyrannies than print could.