76-03-B3
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Soviet TV and America[edit]
Transcript[edit]What television series comes in nine installments, has 80 million viewers and you won't be able to see it? I'll be right back. Unless you're headed for Moscow soon, you won't get a chance to see Soviet television's latest special—really a super-special, since it involves a series of nine programs. It is a Communist's-eye view of America in her Bicentennial and Presidential election year. And, it's called "America in the '70's." Commentator Valentin (VALEN-TEEN) Zorin (ZOE-EEN) and a Soviet television crew wandered at will about the United States. (A U.S. television crew in the USSR would find a good part of the land off-limits and would have a hard time shaking the Intourist guides in the approved areas.) Zorin, not surprisingly, quotes from Karl Marx and saw the U.S. as the Kremlin would like its subjects to see it. New York City, Zorin noted, has —QUOTE—"all the problems that are tearing American apart—crime, unemployment, pollution, racial prejudice and crumbling cities."—UNQUOTE. Problems we have, but it will come as a surprise to most of you that our country is coming apart at the seams. Whether or not one likes New York City (and we know its financial problems are huge and were caused by mismanagement and bad political decisions)—it is hard to visit there without being impressed by its strength. It has assimilated countless immigrants—not a few of them from Mr. Zorin's Communist paradise—and it still builds upward with a frenzy that suggests that, despite its problems, plenty of people there have faith in the future. Zorin's comments about other cities have a lot of that quaint Marxist quality about them, too. Chicago, he says, is a center of capitalist exploitation that to an industrial worker who has his kids in college, two cars in the garage, and a camper in the driveway. Standing by the Hudson River, Zorin makes his last comment, and it’s a lulu. "America," he says, "has accumulated many riches, but have these riches made the people any happier, any more confident of their future? No they haven't, because the riches of a few can't bring happiness to the whole of society, because money can't replace justice, spiritual happiness, joys of human warmth, great ideals or noble aims."—UNQUOTE. This television series is probably all that most Soviet citizens will ever see of America. It might as well have been titled "Uncle Valentin's Fairy Tales of America", for if it were true it is hard to believe that Alexander Solzhenytsyn and thousands of others would have wanted to trade their Communist paradise for what we have to offer. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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