Русские здесь: Фильм, помогающий Андропову
- Автор: Глезер Александр, Бокштейн Борис
- Год: 1983
- Язык: русский
- Год: Третья волна
- Жанр: Публицистика
Электронная книга - «Русские здесь: Фильм, помогающий Андропову». Краткое содержание книги:
Мы призываем всех эмигрантов поддержать Антидиффамационную лигу, созданную по инициативе Владимира Буковского. Всю информацию об этой Лиге вы найдете на последней странице обложки.
Most of these 100,000 “Russians” are Jews, and those who are not are usually heroic fighters against the Soviet regime. Tb associate them with the “Russians” in the sense of Soviet invaders is not only a stale joke, but a bad one.
But is the title of the PBS “documentary” just a joke? Not at all.
The ‘enemy’
“We think of them as an enemy,” Jessica Savitch begins her narration. And flashed on the screen are the “Russians” — in the totalitarian regime of Russia. The recurrent theme is that the “Russians” who are “here” — that is, Jews who fled from anti-Semitic tyranny or heroic fighters against it — are mentally and psychologically the same as the Soviet KGB and the military.
Scenes of the goose-stepping Soviet military are flashed on the screen — and the narrator says about the “Russians” who are “here” that they are “children of another [that is, the goose-stepping Soviet KGB-military] system ... which made them what they are.”
Naturally, the “children” of this “system” are not fit for the West and turn into drunks, public charges, derelicts and embittered cranks.
This does not mean that the producer of the “documentary” regards the Soviet regime as evil.
Quite the contrary, its many advantages — like “free medicine”—are extolled even in the narrator’s text.
Thue, at the beginning, the narrator says: “We know very little about them [the Russians in the regime and outside].” So one may ask. “Ladies and gentlemen of PBS, if you know very little about them, how the hell do you presume to know about their free medicine in Russia?”But such questions are impertinent. Those in charge “know very little” about the “Russians” and yet know everything. Here, then, is the omniscient message of the "documentary" ;
Both the American and Soviet “system” have their good and evil aspects. “Children" of the Soviet “system” value its good aspects and are used to the evil ones, while in the West they feel lost and miserable because they resent the evil aspects of America and fail to understand its good ones, such as freedom. So the emigration of “Russians" from their “system” was'a mistake, as is any attempt to deprive them of their “system” or try to change it.
From the message of the film, it follows, incidentally, that America shouldn't worry about Soviet global expansionism. The “Russians” have created their Russian “system” in which they are happy, but this “system” cannot be imposed on the Americans, for the “Russians” are, mentally and psychologically, an entirely different race. Thus, the Bantu tribe cannot impose its tribal system on England.
As soon as the showing of the “documentary” was over, I received telephone calls from several involuntary “stars” of the “documentary,” as well as from other victims of its racist hatred, such as Vladimir Bukovsky who had seen the program in California. The “stars” believed they had been taken advantage of. The indignation raged from coast to coast. The consensus was that the “documentary” was a crude racist concoction.
“If such a vicious slander were released about American blacks or those American Jews who came here from Russia before 1917, it would be branded, sued and removed as racist and anti-Semitic,” one of the callers, a Russian emigre artist, said. “But we are a tiny minority. So we can be stereotyped, caricatured and slandered with impunity as much as the Nazis stereotyped, caricatured and slandered Jews — or more, if some PBS hack wishes so. We are like blacks in America a half a century ago.”
Not quite. When blacks were denigraded as a group a half a century ago, they were not linked to any aggressive totalitarian superpower. The sinister racist overtone of the “documentary," on the other hand, is that these Jews and fighters against the Soviet regime who are in the United States, Europe or Israel do not differ mentally and psychologically from the “Russian” KGB and military in Poland, Cuba, Nicaragua, South Yemen or Afghanistan.
During WWII, President Roosevelt deported over 100,000 Americans of Japanese extraction. The racist propaganda of the PBS “documentary” is conducive not only to the loss of jobs by victims of this propaganda and the deterioration of their sociocultural status, but also to a possible future deportation of all Americans of Russian extraction. ІУие, Jessica Savitch herself may even be deported, for her parents came, reportedly, from an “enemy country.” But as the saying goes, those who sow a wind will reap a storm, and those who spread racist or class hatred may turn out to be its victims.
About the producer
As it turns out, I had a first-hand opportunity to meet with the producer of this “documentary,” Ofra Bikel, since I was one of those emigres she interviewed and filmed for the program:
• Ofra Bikel, I found, is not an American and speaks English worse than many recent emigres from Russia. Nor does she speak any Russian.
• Her knowledge of Russia, the Soviet regime, its inmates or fugitives from it residing in America seems to be nil, and not just “very little,” as the announcer’s text says.
• She struck me as a person whose mental scope and educational background are below the average in the emigration from Russia.
• According to professional television producers among emigres from Russia, her “documentary” is inept, amateurish, poorly written and poorly filmed.
So why did PBS choose her, a totally irrelevant and poorly qualified amateur, to produce a documentary about emigres from Russia in America? Why didn’t PBS choose a gifted, well-educated, competent emigre who is an American citizen, knows America and Russia, and speaks English and Russian?
Because the numerous Ofra Bikels have become a part of the media establishment. And they want to keep their jobs, lb them emigres are a threat — more gifted, more intelligent and better qualified rivals. They want to represent these rivals as savages and derelicts, misfits of a racially different and inferior wild tribe, who are only able to drink, sing, dance and miss their beloved.Soviet regime, including the KGB. Yes, this is what one “star” in the “documentary” proclaims: “I actually miss the KGB.”
How can PBS (or any other institution or individual) employ such wild tribesmen who can only drink, sing, dance and miss the KGB? Never do that. Instead, always employ Ofra Bikel, a 100-percent American — gifted, intelligent, sophisticated.
Ofra Bikel struck the Russian emigres as being leftist, while she regards them as rightists. So what? Some people are more to the left, while others more to the right. However, Ofra Bikel regards her political views as standards of absolute truth, while those even a jot to the right of hers are wild aberrations of Russian savages. Here is a snippet from the “documentary”:
Emigre: Tbo much freedom [in America] for criminals, too much freedom for young people. Interviewer: Why have you come here?
To produce the show, why did PBS choose Ofra Bikel
— a poorly qualified amateur
— and not a gifted, well-educated competent emigre?
From 60 to 80 percent of Americans believe that there is too much freedom in America for criminals and — in a different sense — for young people. For Ofra Bikel this is a wild aberration of a Russian savage: "Why have you come here?”
The emigre, who is by now an American citizen, could have asked Ofra Bikeclass="underline" ‘‘Why have you come here?”
The fact that emigres from post-1917 Russia tend to support American views more to the right than those that Ofra Bikel supports accounts for another source of her hatred for the group.