Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir View Post
Russian humor is very dark.

Somebody used the word "consensus" in this thread. I don't know who because I discarded everything else. The author's point may not have been to put forth a serious assertion, or to rewrite history, but to challenge mainstream thought and accepted paradigms.

Consensus = Stagnation of thought. It's good to shake things up a while.
What nonsense. If you want to challenge the academic consensus, bring proper arguments. Leon Aron does not. Therefore, there is no question of "shaking things up" here, because he has nothing to shake things up with. Aron is in any case a very dodgy figure who has made outrageous and unsupported claims before, as the blog post I dredged up shows. I encourage you to read it before you make uncalled for claims about the merit of the consensus among historians.

The article's claim to "know" what nobody is held to know (the "truth" about the collapse of the USSR) goes far, far beyond what it actually proves, which is very little indeed. The fact that Gorbachev challenged the traditional Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist ideology within the Politburo is well-known and restating it here is no ground to challenge the consensus. It is important (the Politburo discussing the merits of communism is akin to the Pope asking his cardinals if god really exists, that is how poignant -- and ridiculous -- it was), but no more than an element, maybe even no more than an amusing footnote, in the whole process.

Beyond that, Aron's claims that somehow the USSR was brought down because of a small group of cultural and artistic figures is unprovable. It smacks of Wilsonian idealism. Whatever the merits of that ideology, Aron makes no attempt to actually analyze it, to the detriment of his article. One is left disappointed, both at Foreign Policy for headlining the article with claims it cannot back up, and with Leon Aron for being a lousy scholar.