LONELY IDEAS: CAN RUSSIA COMPETE?/RED FORTRESS: THE SECRET HEART OF RUSSIA'S HISTORY

摘要

When I was growing up in the USSR, Soviet propaganda was characterised by both inferiority complex and megalomania. Starting from kindergarten, we were led to believe that our country was the greatest, the most free and the largest in the world (the latter was true, by the way). At school we were taught that Russia always conducted only 'just' wars; that everything - from the wheel to the electric bulb - had been invented by the Russians. So the first powered aircraft was plagiarised by Wilbur and Orville Wright from the Russian scientist Zhukovsky; wireless telegraphy was invented not by Guglielmo Marconi, but by Alexander Popov; the first steam engine was a creation of Ivan Polzunov's genius and James Watt simply nicked the idea. And so on. By the age of 12, a Soviet child could be forgiven for thinking that there was no real life west of Kaliningrad and east of Khabarovsk.