From: "Gary Wiltshire" 

On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 09:51:09 -0500, Phil Payne
 wrote:

>> So?  You saw mere tokens left to impress tourist rubes about the freedom
>> of the wonderful USSR.
>
> I had lots of long conversations with Russians and other nationalities in
> which trhey were HIGHLY critical of theis state.  In the Asian parts
> especially about the agricultural programmes that were (and have) ruined
> their ecology.
>
> A guided tour, at one point, of hundreds of tons of cotton rotting
> because
> its quality was too poor for the world market - followed by a discussion
> of
> how the diversion of rivers to irrigate that crop had started the
> destruction of the Aral Sea.
>
> You believe too much of what you're spoonfed by the US' propaganda
> machine.
> You really ought to get out there and see for yourself.  The USSR was a
> sad
> disaster in many ways, ƒ'but it was nothing like your picture of it.
>
> (Or my father's.  He referred to it as "the worker's
paradise" up to the
> day
> he died.  Riiight.)
>
>

I WAS out there myself, Ivan, for a chunk of my grad school.

--
Gary Wiltshire

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