The Conflicted Soul of Modern Liberalism
The New Republic
The author queries the existence of bad readers, linking causes not to illiteracy or injuries of class or the diffusion of mass culture, but to a Cold War literary trend sporting "an abundance of paraliterary works," such as memoirs, diaries, biographies, diplomatic studies, and feature reports as primers for engaging with literary texts as seemingly historically accurate yet stressing outcomes and expectations consonant with systemic social ends.
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the author takes aim at the narrative that socialism crumbled in the Soviet Union under its own weight, brought about by inherent weaknesses and contradictions of socialism. Instead the case is made that a concerted and relentless 10-year secret war by the Reagan Administration so weakened the Soviet economy and Soviet psyche, along with missteps by the Soviet leadership, that socialism was overthrown.
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