I did not feel the hook or set up was particularly well written or compelling. Either he is grasping at straws to make the review seem relevant or has some other reason to stoke “red scare” type ideas. I think the comparisons of dissent in the Soviet Union and today are made with an association of those movements and the collapse of the USSR. But that connection is not justified in the article nor in my knowledge (later in the review he says as much).
The book, however, sounds fascinating and thoughtful, and ironically seems to distance itself from this framing of “Cold War rivalry” that the article writer is taking. As mentioned, Soviet resistance was about saving the stated values of a socialist system from authoritarianism, which seems so starkly different from the modern plight of their oligarchy vs our oligarchy. We realize more and more how capitalism is incompatible with democracy. Perhaps the Soviet dissidents’ failure in the past century to save the idea of another possible reality was the downfall of our modern world.
I did not feel the hook or set up was particularly well written or compelling. Either he is grasping at straws to make the review seem relevant or has some other reason to stoke “red scare” type ideas. I think the comparisons of dissent in the Soviet Union and today are made with an association of those movements and the collapse of the USSR. But that connection is not justified in the article nor in my knowledge (later in the review he says as much).
The book, however, sounds fascinating and thoughtful, and ironically seems to distance itself from this framing of “Cold War rivalry” that the article writer is taking. As mentioned, Soviet resistance was about saving the stated values of a socialist system from authoritarianism, which seems so starkly different from the modern plight of their oligarchy vs our oligarchy. We realize more and more how capitalism is incompatible with democracy. Perhaps the Soviet dissidents’ failure in the past century to save the idea of another possible reality was the downfall of our modern world.