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Independent, Reader-Supported Publishing
Joel Schatz
Joel Schatz is a writer and photographer and citizen diplomat who lives in San Francisco, California. The cover photograph is of a mother and daughter sharing a picnic on the first day of spring in the woods outside Moscow.
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Through The Eyes Of A Citizen Diplomat
Russians are better informed about Americans than Americans are about Russians. They study this country more systematically than we do theirs. There’s much more news on Soviet television about life in the U.S. than there is news in the U.S. about life in the Soviet Union. A lot of it comes through the propaganda filters of the Soviet bureaucracy, but that’s offset by the direct experience that Russians have when they meet Americans. They may be told in political cartoons that the American system is out to get them, but they make a distinction between the American government and the American people.
January 1987
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