... in response to Interesting read, posted by Patrick on Jan 16, 2004[This message has been edited by LP]
I loved this part: "This will not protect women from abusive men who have either never abused before, or have simply never been caught at it." Huh? There's some serious female logic at work there...
On another topic...
Many of you are no doubt familiar with the bimonthly magazine Russian Life, now privately published. But before that it was called Soviet Life and goes way back to 1956 when it first appeared as a monthly on newstands in the USA. (Right about when it would have been best received 
The result of an intergovernmetal agreement, Soviet Life was put out by the Soviet embassy in Washinton while a magazine called Amerika was likewise published by the US in the Motherland. Soviet Life never attained much more than a 50,000 circulation in the US while there seems to be no record on how many copies of Amerika were sold in the USSR.
I was recently given a few 70's and 80s copies of this rag and they make for some interesting reading. As expected, the writing certainly has a different slant than the current version and covers all the republics. While not a hardcore propaganda vehicle it nevertheless is fascinating to see how the Soviets twisted the truth about nearly everything. Rather than blowing their own horn they expend much effort writing how other nations (including the USA) tout the benefits of socialist society.
By carefully misquoting American and European officials they make it sound like they were the envy of the global community. Remember, this was a magazine meant to be read in the USA. One has to admire them for their journalistic subtleties, as convoluted and pervasive as they are at times. I really had to laugh at some of this stuff. Two of the articles were on Chornobyl and Soviet civilian aviation, the latter being an oxymoron if I ever heard one. And although the Chorno article was written only 6 months after the event it was full of misinformation and in places, outright lies.
Still, the photos are interesting and they show the FSU in (of course) a very good light. One shows downtown Kiev and it's women to be almost as beautiful then as now. There are cultural and lanquage articles (lol, pointing out that massive numbers of Americans are learning Russian in 1976), as well as photos of the FSU's impressive natural beauty. As long as you can get past the dogma (or maybe because of it) these relics make for an interesting read. I'm told past issues of Soviet Life can be found many places online and are considered to be somewhat of collector items.
Now what I'd really like to see is a few issues of Amerika, you just know those have gotta be a hoot...
