“America is out to destroy us,” mentioned Maria, my 92-year-old mother-in-law. She was in her Moscow kitchen. I used to be in Connecticut.
Maria survived Stalin, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lack of two youngsters and an alcoholic, abusive husband. I really like her, however she is a tragic instance of how weak human beings may be to propaganda.
I moved to Russia as a brand new faculty graduate in 1991. I used to be desirous to grasp the language, turn out to be a overseas correspondent and higher perceive our Cold War enemy. What was meant to be a six-month jaunt become marriage and kids. It additionally tied me to Maria.
We communicate continuously as a result of my spouse loathes
Vladimir Putin.
She can’t have a dialog together with her mom with out it shifting into open battle. Maria treats me with a level of restraint Russians typically afford foreigners. I ask in regards to the climate. Most days Maria is glued to Russian state TV, her unique supply of data.
“Kids are dying,” I mentioned. “Russian kids, younger than your grandson.”
“That’s war,” she mentioned, flatly.
“If 50,000 die, will your opinion change?”
Vesti, Russia’s flagship information program, is stuffed with weird claims. Maria isn’t educated and the information is slick. The deeper Russia is submerged in lies, the extra Maria lashes out at those that communicate the reality—even household. Maria’s older sister, Zhenya, lives in Ukraine.
“Maria, they are shooting us,” Zhenya lately informed Maria. This is especially stunning on condition that Zhenya’s deceased husband was a profession Soviet navy officer.
“They should,” Maria replied.
Propaganda outweighs precise expertise, like Stalinism or what Maria herself noticed and felt when she visited the U.S. She got here once I was in graduate faculty within the mid-Nineteen Nineties. I took her procuring at a Star Market in suburban Boston. Her eyes widened at cabinets laden with recent greens and fruit throughout winter. While our graduate faculty scholar life was lean by American requirements, it was over-the-top luxurious by Soviet requirements.
“They lied to us,” she mentioned, angrily.
“Who?” I requested.
“They,” she mentioned, nodding her head.
“The Kremlin?”
She nodded. On Soviet TV, the U.S. was portrayed as a wasteland of AIDS, homelessness and civil unrest, much like how it’s portrayed at this time.
Now that second of self-reflection is forgotten. The sanctions affirm to her what she is being informed, which is that the “special military operation” in Ukraine isn’t a couple of sovereign state defending itself towards unprovoked aggression, however as an alternative that Ukraine is a puppet being directed by the evil U.S. If Zhenya, my spouse and I can’t persuade Maria she is being fed lies then I believe nothing can.
“We will win,” she mentioned to me, “definitely.”
The solely factor that may shift this considering is defeat, unambiguous complete defeat. Mr. Putin doesn’t exist in a vacuum, he displays a broad swath of individuals like Maria.
Mr. Podolsky is writer of “Raising a Thief” and the Things I Didn’t Learn in School publication.
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Appeared within the May 27, 2022, print version as ‘My Russian Mother-in-Law Believes Putin.’
Source: www.wsj.com”