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N0KFQ > TODAY 11.12.11 22:08l 43 Lines 1869 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Dec 11
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Sent: 111211/2002Z 14929@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.0.4
Dec 11, 1969:
Soviets declare nudity a sign of "western decadence"
On this day, the secretary of the Moscow writer's union declares
that nudity as displayed in the popular play "Oh! Calcutta!" is a
sign of decadence in Western culture. More disturbing, he
claimed, was the fact that this "bourgeois" thinking was
infecting Russian youth.
Sergei Mikhailkov, best known for writing books for children in
Russia, lashed out at the Broadway show (where performers were
seen in their "birthday suits"), and pornography in general. Such
exhibitions were "a general striptease-that is one of the slogans
of modern bourgeois art." It was unfortunate, he lamented, that
even Russian youth were becoming enamored of such decadence.
Mikhailkov bemoaned the fact that young people in the Soviet
Union were more familiar with "the theater of the absurd and the
novel without a hero and all kinds of modern bourgeois
reactionary tendencies in the literature and art of the West"
than with "the past and present of the literature of their
fatherland." Speaking at the end of a conference of Russian
intellectuals, he also heaped scorn on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
whose scathing writings about the Soviet police state earned him
the enmity of the Russian government. Although admitting that
Solzhenitsyn was a "talented writer," he found it sad that the
novelist "did not want to understand his role of 'special
correspondent' of so many foreign institutions and
organizations."
Beyond the unintentional humor of many of Mikhailkov's
statements, his comments revealed the impact that U.S.
culture-theater, literature, music, and film-was having on the
Soviet Union. In the war for hearts and minds, Western
"decadence" seemed to be winning the battle.
73, K.O. n0kfq
Another old retired guy
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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