In such cases, the thought, if such it can be called, seems to have been that to seek or promote truths would be harmful to international understanding as though world peace could be successfully based on a foundation of falsehoods or, in Orwell s words, that Anglo-Russian relations are more likely to prosper if inconvenient truths are kept dark. Nineteen Eighty-Four was meant as an attack on Stalinism. The memory hole, doublethink, facecrime, faked confessions, rewriting of history these are all Soviet phenomena. These anti Cold War irregulars do not seem to have been aware of the way the West or any noncommunist attitudes anywhere were regarded in the Soviet Union itself. My favorite image of the Cold War appeared in the Soviet magazine Perets.
Cold War sits, an icy figure, in the back of a cart.
She is clasping a hydrogen bomb, and her nose is the barrel of a machine gun. Microphones labeled Voice of America and Radio Liberty are stuck behind her. A note explains that Zionists and Ukrainian nationalists have formed a bloc. The illustration is exceptional, though not unique, only in its overt anti-Semitism. As to Uncle Sam and John Bull, they seldom appeared except with bayonets for teeth, dripping blood and threatening death.