wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Comments

• [1] listener November 13, 2008 - 01:29PM

  i wonder if leonard's guest thinks anything of the sometimes heard theory that there is something in the so-called national psyche of the russian people that favours a "strong-man" type of ruler?

  
  
• [2] Matthew from Astoria from Astoria November 13, 2008 - 01:39PM

  Question for Nina Khrushcheva:

  Recently President Medvedev gave a speech calling for an end to censorship.

  (see http://tinyurl.com/5uxmec)

  Is this anything more than lip service?

  Should we take this seriously?

  
  
• [3] R J from Grinnell, IA November 13, 2008 - 01:43PM

  I was listening to this before I realized it was Nina Khrushcheva - unbelievable! Unfortunately her name gives her actual credibility, which is extraordinarily unfortunately. It's no surprise she loves Nabokov, who hated his own country.

  Your speaker is playing to the same tired fear-mongering language as most present-day so-called "Russian experts" who find it so easy to reduce Russians to these belligerent people waddling in their ignorance of history and, ludicrously, "never change." Please consider that statement on it's face: it's quite racist. Who never changes?

  Anyone who goes to Russia today can see with their own eyes how much the country has changed, never mind if you take into account pre-Soviet history. Even the political apparatus, which you, granted, cannot really observe in a meaningful way, is a far cry from the Soviet model - it's still corrupt, but in an extremely different way. But your speaker's oversimplification of the issues to an "inferiority complex" is both ignorant and racist. I urge any listeners to pick up a copy of Clarence Brown's 20th Century Russian Reader and you'll learn more about Russia and the Soviet Union (which are - gasp - different things), both historically and today.