Soviet Presswatch/Surrender the Pink
Young, Cathy
SOVIET PRESSWATCH SURRENDER THE PINK by Cathy Young It is one thing to watch the Soviet shevik ideology and incitement of class press from a comfortable American hatred . . . we must free the...
...A not atypical TSN report (September 22) showed nine- and ten-year-old schoolchildren in the Northern province of Komi forced to work in the fields, pulling up beets and scraping them clean with large knives...
...And what does Mr...
...Raisa, you can rest easy...
...What better, then, than a pre-emptive strike—at the bargain price of confessing to about one percent of his sins...
...SOVIET PRESSWATCH SURRENDER THE PINK by Cathy Young It is one thing to watch the Soviet shevik ideology and incitement of class press from a comfortable American hatred . . . we must free the people distance, and quite another to be on of Russia from the stupefying poison the spot...
...Asked about the association's membership, he says that "just as Israel considers all Jews to be its citizens, we regard all Soviet homosexuals as our members"—which he estimates, more modestly, at five percent of the population...
...The genius of this is that very few people in the Soviet Union know about Pozner's past...
...Yes...
...Kalinin goes on to point out that heterosexuals are just as small a minority, whereas most people are bisexual: "A very big problem of our society is that a person cannot explore his possibilities...
...Card number State: Zip...
...There were two occasions that still cause me to feel disgust for myself...
...Even on a "Vremya" program, the anchorwoman introduced a segment about some new charitable undertaking with a comment about "our heartless, indifferent society...
...Send in your order today...
...Not only is there a paper shortage, but they're running out of newsprint as well...
...Even more heavy-handed was the editing to score emotional points: old footage of mourners trudging behind Lenin's coffin in the snow, juxtaposed with shots of wrecked monuments...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1990 41...
...However, I wouldn't want to sleep with him...
...On September 20, an official announced on the "Vremya" broadcast that in a matter of weeks, the Soviet press may have to shut down for technical reasons...
...Here, he explained that his voice was intended more for the West, via Radio Moscow, than for home consumption.] The second was the invasion of Czechoslovakia...
...a quick cut from a Bucharest crowd applauding as the city's huge statue of Lenin is being taken down, to Stalin clapping his hands on the Lenin mausoleum...
...This adversely affects a person's psychology, his work, and ultimately the life of society as a whole...
...The press, owned by the [Communist] In some ways, Soviet television can Party, was helping this partocracy kill now be said to be "freer" than ours...
...A September 22 piece entitled "Gays, Children of the Earth" made the fanciful claim that the word "gay" comes from the name of Gaia, the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth, as well as the less original but probably just as preposterous claim that "the children of the earth" represent 10 percent of the population...
...If they lose their nomenklatura jobs, they can always get a teaching job on a U.S...
...Kalinin think of Gorbachev...
...This glasnost-age version of "True Confessions" is to be a regular feature of the program: a well-known person apologizes for his sins of collaboration with the ancien regime...
...I suppose it's the best of the currently possible options...
...City...
...There were times when it was the duty of every decent man at the very least to keep silent, and probably to speak out...
...Both times I found excellent arguments to defend these actions, above all to myself...
...Now that we've beaten Communism, gay liberation is coming to Mother Russia...
...My check for $ is enclosed, payable to The American Spectator...
...Concluded the TSN reporter: "Let us finish this sad story on a happy note...
...Please rush me extra Charge my: = ^ VISA copies of the December 1990 American Spectator...
...Several articles championing that cause have appeared in the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets [The Moscow Young Communist...
...A particularly egregious example was the "Pozitsiya" [Position] program of September 15, examining the controversy over monuments to Vladimir I. Lenin (him again), which are being taken down or vandalized in many parts of the USSR, to say nothing of Eastern Europe...
...On the local Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields...
...Honcho: "It has turned a backward agricultural country into a great industrial power...
...Ghosts in the Machine Yet every once in a while, the lingering state party control over the media will rear its head...
...The July 9 issue of the Russian-language Latvian weekly Baltic Times features a back-page interview with Roman Kalinin, head of something called the Association of Sexual Minorities...
...And the first penitent was—none other than our old friend Vladimir Pozner...
...There is nothing worse than fear—fear for one's own hide...
...The anchors and reporters editorialize with a flagrant sarcasm that exceeds the worst of American liberal media negativism...
...Progressive TV, and his confession may seem a bold act of conscience with no ulterior motives: after all, he might have easily kept his mouth shut...
...The first was the campaign against Sakharov, to which I joined my voice, though not as loudly as many others...
...Signature...
...Most arguments were in a pragmatic rather than ideological vein—people should work and get the economy on its feet, not distract themselves by tilting at monuments—but the bias was blatant...
...Exp...
...Now we know why all those Soviets in the street look so glum and tense...
...Red Goes Pink Conservatives were always knocking the Soviets' Evil Empire with no proper appreciation of the fact that it was one of the world's remaining bastions of unapologetic heterosexism...
...90-12 is ^ MasterCard 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1990 terviews with local boys and girls who speak of the squalor and hopelessness of their lives and sneer at Communist youth organizations...
...The main news program, "Vremya," remains rather staid, but now it has a competitor in the more lively and irreverent TSN, or "Television Service of News" with snappy Western-style graphics...
...However, Mr...
...To them, he is Mr...
...Especially a lesson in PR...
...Asked about political pluralism, the party veteran snaps, "Frankly, I don't think a multiparty system will do anything for our country...
...In contrast to its older and duller sibling, the after-midnight TSN actually opens its broadcasts with the day's biggest event, not the one involving the Soviet Union's highest-ranking officials...
...Can the local party organization do anything about these businesses...
...and the unkindest cut of all, from an anti-Lenin rally to a deranged Moscow neo-Nazi leader ranting about "Zionists...
...Amidst the delegates' loud complaints about the "propaganda of the bourgeois way of life" and "attacks on that which is most dear to Soviet man" (i.e., Communist ideology), Izvestia quotes one true gem: "We know that already, some private businesses are engaging in exploitation...
...If you agree with some of the policy views outlined in this issue, and are interested in distributing copies to friends and colleagues, we are pleased to report that extra December 1990 American Spectators are available...
...Virtually every single person interviewed, from academics to men and women in the streets, spoke against taking down the monuments, even though a Moscow News poll published in the October 7 issue showed that one-third of Soviet citizens have no problem with such landscape beautification...
...Correspondent: "And what has the one-party system done for us...
...A variety show with everything from political and cultural commentary to friendly spoofs of popular TV programs and polls gauging the popularity of various TV personalities, it ended up with a segment called "Repentance...
...Howdy, Pozner September 21 saw the premiere of a new evening news program on Soviet national TV, "Telescope...
...With such remarkable intellectual power to discern and analyze exploitation, the embattled party hacks needn't lose any sleep over their future...
...Magazines will ship out within two business days (you have our word...
...Still, the program plainly suggested that Lenin was more good than bad, and one of the panelists even said that "as long as there are rich and poor in this world, as long as there are people who are oppressed, Lenin will be perceived as the leader of the working class...
...Only a few days later, a documentary on the textile-producing town of Pavlov-Posad juxtaposed clips from an interview with a local Communist honcho who praises the working and fighting spirit of Soviet youth, and inEXTRA COPIES OF THIS ISSUE ARE AVAILABLE...
...Except that, of course, too many people in the West do know his record, and with today's easy communications, exposure would have been only a matter of time...
...dateSend orders to: The American Spectator, P.O...
...All four panelists (who included veteran Soviet TV propag—er, journalist Genrikh Borovik and Minister of Culture Nikolai Gubenko) were adamantly opposed to the destruction of monuments to the vozhd (Russian for fiihrer), though they did admit that these monuments were too numerous and that they had come to symbolize an oppressive regime...
...nightly news shows on the Moscow and Leningrad channels ("Moscow Teletype" and "600 Seconds"), crime reports feature prolonged, nauseatingly graphic shots of murder or accident victims, such as the naked body of a man found hacked to death in a park...
...A teacher supervising their labor explained that children were so employed every year, with weeks of schooltime lost: "This year, the harvest is bad so we hope that they won't have to work so much and will soon go back to their classes...
...And Finally .. . A note of warning: Unless the Soviet economy shapes up, Soviet Presswatch may soon die of natural causes...
...Cut to dismal shacks and antiquated, run-down textile factories...
...He may lead an exclusively heterosexual life without even suspecting that there is something else in his subconscious, his psyche...
...Congratulations on a bad harvest, kids...
...When you turn on the televi- of Bolshevism"--it gives you something sion in Moscow and a man sporting the of a shock, no matter how theoretical-red badge of a People's Deputy says, ly prepared you might be for glasnost...
...Every time I think of that, I get a feeling of revulsion...
...campus...
...Is it mere coincidence that this happens right after the USSR finally gets a law abolishing state censorship...
...Comrades, we know we can't, because the exploited workers, receiving much higher pay for the same or even for less work than they would at a state enterprise, are not likely to come to us for help...
...Staring manfully into the camera, he held forth roughly thus: "Everyone has his sins, and it is good to confess them once in a while...
...Box 549, Arlington, VA 22216-0549...
...the human soul [with] all this Bol- After eleven, one can see shots of a nude man and woman frolicking on a Cathy Young is the author of Growing beach on non-cable TV...
...My one hope is that others may learn a lesson from my example...
...Just how far the Soviet Union has come can be gauged by the fact that a program like this sticks out like a sore thumb...
...Alexander Cockburn's Ragtime Band Meanwhile, unreconstructed stalwarts of the Evil Empire got to say their piece at the recent founding congress of the Communist party of Russia, which received rough treatment at the hands of the Soviet press, such as the Izvestia of September 14...
...The panelists stressed that, however good or bad Lenin was, smashing or defacing statues and busts was an expression of "blood-lust" and "mob mentality...
...You can order copies at these declining marginal rates: 1 for $3 25 for $40 5 for $12 50 for $70 10 for $20 100 for $120 Additional copies dependent on availability...
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Vol. 23 • December 1990 • No. 12
