1. In the prescient novel, "1984," George Orwell's sort-of hero, Winston Smith, has the job "to overwrite the truth, to replace the history of what happened with a revised version. Winston enjoys his work and is good at it, yet at the same time he worries about the rewriting of history, and wants to know 'what really happened'." Winston Smith's role in 1984
2.Lest one think that the position isn't a real one, you should become acquainted with Victor Kravchenko, metallurgist, engineer, executive, and captain in the Red Army. And the first Soviet defector. . On April 1, 1944, Victor Kravchenko left Washington for New York, where, at a press conference arranged by the NYTimes, he revealed the truth about the Soviet Union. Two years later he published I Chose Freedom, which played a crucial role in the formation of public opinion in the formation of the incipient Cold War. Defectors like Kravchenko faced the same sort of barrage that McCarthy did later and for the same reasons.
3. Kravcheko revealed that the Communists did in reality what Smith did in the novel.
"Shamelessly, without so much as an explanation, it revised half a century of Russian history. I don't mean simply that it falsified some facts or gave a new interpretation of events. I mean that it deliberately stood history on its head, expunging events and inventing facts. It twisted the recent past--a past still fresh in millions of memories--into new and bizarre shapes, to conform with the version of affairs presented by the blood-purge trials and the accompanying propaganda... The roles of leading historical figures were perverted or altogether erased.... More than that, living witnesses, as far as possible, were removed. The directing staff of the Institute of Marx, Engels and Lenin in Moscow, repository of ideological truth, were removed and the more important people among them imprisoned or shot.
a. The new history" became possible. To brand the shame more deeply on our minds, "study" of the new version was made obligatory for all responsible Party people. History classes met nearly every night in this period and lecturers from Sverdlovsk came to our town to help hammer home the lies, while most of us fumed inwardly. Whatever human dignity remained in our character was humiliated...
But even the most gigantic lie, by dint of infinite repetition, takes root; Stalin knew this before Hitler discovered it. As I looked on I could see terrible falsehoods, at first accepted under pressure, become established as unquestioned "facts," particularly among younger people without personal experience to the contrary to bother them." Text collection
b. Kravchenko's defection was front-page news and prompted debate at the highest levels of government, up to and including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Stalin demanded that he be turned over as a traitor--an automatic death sentence. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover urged FDR to let him stay. On April 13, 1945, the day after Roosevelt died, Kravchenko received notice that his application for asylum had been granted. Searching for Tato - latimes.com
Wonder why said asylum was withheld during FDR's lifetime?
4. "Something very much like it did happen here, and is still happening, from the schoolroom, where 'political correctness' dictates curriculum, to the workplace where 'sensitivity training' conditions behavioral and thought patterns that didn't take hold back in the schoolroom."
West, "American Betrayal," p. 73-74.
5. The federally funded National History Standards for elementary schools were released in 1994, cemented a revisionist view of American Communism for schoolteachers, as the guide mentions McCarthy over twenty times, while Edison and the Wright Brothers got no mention.
It repeatedly condemns McCarthyism as an unmitigated evil [but] the Hiss-Chambers and Rosenberg cases, the two dominant controversies of the anticommunist era, are described with bland, neutral language crafted to keep from implying guilt while not being quite so foolhardy as to actually assert innocence..National Standards implies that the cases are part and parcel of the McCartyite horror.
From In Denial, by Haynes and Klehr, pg. 151
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana
Is it too late?
2.Lest one think that the position isn't a real one, you should become acquainted with Victor Kravchenko, metallurgist, engineer, executive, and captain in the Red Army. And the first Soviet defector. . On April 1, 1944, Victor Kravchenko left Washington for New York, where, at a press conference arranged by the NYTimes, he revealed the truth about the Soviet Union. Two years later he published I Chose Freedom, which played a crucial role in the formation of public opinion in the formation of the incipient Cold War. Defectors like Kravchenko faced the same sort of barrage that McCarthy did later and for the same reasons.
3. Kravcheko revealed that the Communists did in reality what Smith did in the novel.
"Shamelessly, without so much as an explanation, it revised half a century of Russian history. I don't mean simply that it falsified some facts or gave a new interpretation of events. I mean that it deliberately stood history on its head, expunging events and inventing facts. It twisted the recent past--a past still fresh in millions of memories--into new and bizarre shapes, to conform with the version of affairs presented by the blood-purge trials and the accompanying propaganda... The roles of leading historical figures were perverted or altogether erased.... More than that, living witnesses, as far as possible, were removed. The directing staff of the Institute of Marx, Engels and Lenin in Moscow, repository of ideological truth, were removed and the more important people among them imprisoned or shot.
a. The new history" became possible. To brand the shame more deeply on our minds, "study" of the new version was made obligatory for all responsible Party people. History classes met nearly every night in this period and lecturers from Sverdlovsk came to our town to help hammer home the lies, while most of us fumed inwardly. Whatever human dignity remained in our character was humiliated...
But even the most gigantic lie, by dint of infinite repetition, takes root; Stalin knew this before Hitler discovered it. As I looked on I could see terrible falsehoods, at first accepted under pressure, become established as unquestioned "facts," particularly among younger people without personal experience to the contrary to bother them." Text collection
b. Kravchenko's defection was front-page news and prompted debate at the highest levels of government, up to and including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Stalin demanded that he be turned over as a traitor--an automatic death sentence. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover urged FDR to let him stay. On April 13, 1945, the day after Roosevelt died, Kravchenko received notice that his application for asylum had been granted. Searching for Tato - latimes.com
Wonder why said asylum was withheld during FDR's lifetime?
4. "Something very much like it did happen here, and is still happening, from the schoolroom, where 'political correctness' dictates curriculum, to the workplace where 'sensitivity training' conditions behavioral and thought patterns that didn't take hold back in the schoolroom."
West, "American Betrayal," p. 73-74.
5. The federally funded National History Standards for elementary schools were released in 1994, cemented a revisionist view of American Communism for schoolteachers, as the guide mentions McCarthy over twenty times, while Edison and the Wright Brothers got no mention.
It repeatedly condemns McCarthyism as an unmitigated evil [but] the Hiss-Chambers and Rosenberg cases, the two dominant controversies of the anticommunist era, are described with bland, neutral language crafted to keep from implying guilt while not being quite so foolhardy as to actually assert innocence..National Standards implies that the cases are part and parcel of the McCartyite horror.
From In Denial, by Haynes and Klehr, pg. 151
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana
Is it too late?
