Michael Malice

You're trusting your eyes instead of reading something and learning what's in the papers.

So there was this kind of disconnect between, you know,

I forget, you probably know the joke, like, правда не правда, известие не известие, like, правда means truth, but there's no truth to be had, and правда is, like, kind of the Russian line.

The point is, it very much... And the other thing, this is, you know, my mom wasn't particularly politically motivated, but she talked about how...

you didn't have to be smart to realize how dishonest it was because one day someone is the great hero of the Soviet people.

And the next week he's been a traitor and a class enemy and the worst.

And then sometimes they reverted and it's like, okay, like they couldn't even keep their, their story straight.

And in fact, at a certain point when Gorbachev liberalized, they had to cancel tests because the history books had to be rewritten so quickly.

And the thing also with these newspapers is there was a lot of – it was very monotonous.

Because, you know, you had the same message over and over.

A lot of these papers were about kind of speaking to the lowest common denominator.

Stalin's great.

Everything's great.

Overseas bad.

So it very much was about not informing, but creating information.

a certain perspective in the public at large.

And also, you were educated as a citizen on what you're supposed to think and say.

So you have, a lot of this was this kind of

private truths, public lies situation.

So you could read the paper and at your factory, you could be like, oh my God, this guy, Karl Radek's great.