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Join us on Sunday, July 20, for the Desk Book Club–Salon Series conversation with Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, National Dish, and much more author Anya von Bremzen. Members can find the code for free access on this page or can reply to this email.
In Reinaldo Arenas’s memoir Before Night Falls—which tells the story of his upbringing and persecution in, as well as exile from, Cuba—he writes toward the end, “The difference between the communist and capitalist systems is that, although both give you a kick in the ass, in the communist system you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you can scream.”
I thought of this many times while reading the second half of Anya von Bremzen’s Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, but especially when she chronicled jokes around the time of glasnost:
“Glasnost,” explained a Soviet mutt to an American mutt in a popular joke, “is when they loosen your leash, yank away the food bowl, and let you bark all you want.”
Authoritarianism, regardless of its political guise, has this effect of locking up tongues. What might happen, I actually wonder, if I write that it’s very clearly happening to us in the U.S. now? And anyway, is the best we can hope for just the freedom to scream?
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