in time to when the Internet was decades from fruition, and unfree societies like the former Soviet Union were theoretically closed off to information. The good news is that information happily continued to flow. Even into countries going out of their way to banish truth.
For anecdotal evidence of this, please consider the very few Soviets lucky enough to get out of the prison-like country on occasion. As Hedrick Smith reported in his classic 1975 book The Russians, those able to travel to countries like the U.S. “were like coiled springs” when they arrived, “leaping at the department store cornucopias.” Translated for those who need it, the Soviet people knew. Much as their sadistic minders wanted to keep them blinded to how much better our living conditions were, much as the Soviet propaganda machine worked on overdrive to demonize the U.S. and the West, they knew. Which means that when they arrived, the prosperous reputation of the U.S. and other free nations was already well established. And many yearned for the better life they knew existed outside their “workers’ paradises.”
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