Posted on 06/28/2004 5:27:09 PM PDT by qam1
The Economist put it most succinctly. After Ronald Reagan died, the magazine placed a photo of him on its cover with the words: "The man who beat communism." Others said much the same.
Now in Sunday's Outlook section, James Hershberg, a Russia expert at George Washington University, says: Wait a minute. It's a lot more complicated than that. If you were to pick one person who ended Soviet communism, it would be Mikhail Gorbachev. If you were to pick a few more, you'd add the Beatles and the counter-culture they represented to a generation of Russians. And then you'd have to mix in all the other factors that led to the stagnation, and ultimately to the unraveling, of the Soviet empire from within. Moreover, while Reagan uttered some stirring lines about the Soviet bloc, he fundamentally did not break with the policy of containment followed by every previous president since Harry Truman.
Hershberg says the exaggeration of Reagan's role reflects a dangerous American habit of neglecting the world's complexity in favor of a sentimental, simplistic and self-centered portrait of a vast, important phenomenon.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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So many nuances, so little time.
Let me know what Mr. Hershberg the "Russia Expert" predicted in the 1980s about the future of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Then I'll decide whether to take him seriously.
You might enjoy the comments making excuses for the Soviet Union from someone from Ithaca about 3/4 of the way down in the article.
The self-styled "expert" Herschberg conveniently ignores the opinions of those much closer to the issue and who know it best: every president of the former Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe attended Reagan's funeral as did Lech Walesa. Ask Alexander Solzehnitsyn, who credits REagan for the fall of communism. I travel to Russia and every intelligent Russian I've met says the same thing: but for Reagan, the old system would still be in power. Of course, this "anecdotal" evidence can't stand against a brilliant desk-bound intellectual from GW University published in the all-knowing rag of record, the WashingtonPost.
The thing is, if Reagan were alive, his own sense of humility would allow him to give some of the credit to pop culture. He was that big a man. There was no smallness in him.
But the political left will never give him the credit he is due. They are that small.
The difficulty with his thesis is that it was not a cultural victory, and that those that he proposes overwhelmed the ossified nomenklatura in fact were largely in sympathy with them or at the very least made great efforts to promote the idea of moral equivalence between a parent society that indulged and defended them and a Soviet Union that, were it victorious, would have crushed them. It wasn't the Beatles, it wasn't peace, love, and dope, and it certainly wasn't "we are the world."
What it was defies efforts to overintellectualize or to see in multitudinous shades of gray. It was this: "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: 'We win and they lose.' What do you think of that?" -- Ronald Reagan, to future National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen, 1977.
Hershberg and his will go to their graves denying this simple proposition because of its simplicity. Pity them.
Don't take the brown acid...
I think they like the "complicated" scenario because they are cowards and this gives them cover from taking a clear stance on anything. It's always...then again...on the other hand...they hate absolutes because they are cowards.
By recognizing that absolutes exist, the kid earned the right to be respected as a human. Most Leftists aren't there yet.
The Beatles' "counter-culture" revolution in America ushered in Communism, Marxism, and Socialism. It may possible that rock and roll helped generate a youthful rebellion against the Soviet Union but those "rebelling" in America EMBRACED the USSR.
Well yeah, It was John Lenin's song "Image" which extols the virtues of American capitalism that softened the commie's heart.
But popular culture did help bring down the Soviets and it was Reagan who used it to do it by just take Gorby around and showing how great the average American lived.
BTW. Do know what happened to BC2? Why did he get banned?
It is an intricate and fascinating story, but the conclusion is relatively simple: the "left" as we know it today is little more than an advertising gimmick run amok. This, according to Frank, is the real reason for the prevalence of left-wing ideology in popular culture and its associated media and advertising industries.
The scales fell from my eyes when I read Conquest of Cool. I think it is the most important book of the last 10 years.
Thank you - I shall. Interesting idea. It has long been an item of curiosity to me why the contemporary left is so eminently bankable. You wouldn't reckon it on the face of things, would you? Its principal adherents aren't, after all, old-line lefties who have read Marcuse and Proudhom and Bakunin. Not even Marx, most of 'em. Yet the stuff sells...
ha ha ha Woodstock fair warning ha ha ha
Good one, I had forgotten that. Too bad they didn't put it into the water. No, not really. There were good people there too. But so many smelly hippies. And now they are in the universities as professors, and Clinton was in the WH.
Oh sure, Gorbachev would have ended Communism without Reagan pushing him -right, and the Hippies and Beatles helped end it? Puuhhhleeze...... The author needs to roll another one and smoke it. What a fantasy.
I don't know if "enjoy" is the correct word, but I am certainly not surprised:
Ithaca, N.Y.: In the early 20th century, the U.S. was fairly industrial, whereas Russia was basically an undeveloped peasant society. Then, within a single generation, Russia industrialized and modernized so fast that by mid-century it had become a world power. Ultimately, its economy collapsed for various reasons. Western orthodoxy says that the Soviet Union failed because it couldn't keep up economically with the US. But isn't that a ridiculous comparison to make given that in 1910, Russia was basically 3rd-world, and the US was more or less 1st-world? Why don't people compare Russian economic development through the 20th century with a country like Brazil, which had comparable resources and potential at the time?
Well yeah, It was John Lenin's song "Image""Imagine" which extols the virtues of American capitalism that softened the commie's heart.
But popular culture did help bring down the Soviets and it was Reagan who used it to do it by just take taking Gorby around and showing him how great the average American lived.
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