Blissful Blindness

Soviet Crimes Under Western Eyes

Dariusz Tołczyk, Jarek Garliński

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English

Indiana University Press
03 October 2023

Genocide & ethnic cleansing; War crimes

"Unlike their condemnations of Nazi atrocities, contemporary Western responses to Soviet crimes have often been ambiguous at best. While some leaders publicly denounced them, many others found reasons to dismiss wrongdoings and to consider Soviet propaganda more credible than survivors' accounts.

Blissful Blindness: Soviet Crimes Under Western Eyes is a comprehensive exploration of Western responses to Soviet crimes from the Bolshevik revolution to the Soviet Union's final years. Ranging from denial, dismissal, and rationalization to outright glorification, these reactions, Darius Tolczyk contends, arose from a complex array of motives rooted in ideological biases, fears of empowering common enemies, and outside political agendas. Throughout the long history of the Soviet regime, Tolczyk traces its most heinous crimes-including the Red Terror, collectivization, the Great Famine, the Gulag, the Great Terror, and mass deportations-and shows how Soviet propaganda, and an unmatched willingness to defer to it, minimized these atrocities within dominant Western public discourse. It would take decades for Western audiences to unravel the ""big lie""-and even today, too many in both Russia and the West have chosen to forget the extent of Soviet atrocities, or of their nations' complicity.

A fascinating read for those interested in the intricacies and obstructions of politics, Blissful Blindness traces Western responses to understand why, and how, the West could remain willfully ignorant of Soviet crimes."

By: Dariusz Tołczyk
Translated by: Jarek Garliński
Imprint: Indiana University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780253067081
ISBN 10: 0253067081
Pages: 416
Publication Date: 03 October 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: Escape from Truth 1. Dreaming of Russia 2. Ex Oriente Lux 3. In the Soviet Theater of Life 4. Wonderland 5. Stalin Presents 6. A Black-and-White Western 7. The Curtain Falls, the Show Goes On 8. The Passing of an Illusion? Coda Bibliography Notes Index

Dariusz Tołczyk is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. He is author of See No Evil: Literary Cover-Ups and Discoveries of the Soviet Camp Experience and of Gułag w oczach Zachodu (The Gulag Under Western Eyes). He is editor (with Marek Jan Chodakiewicz and John Radziłowski) of Poland's Transformation: A Work in Progress.

Reviews for Blissful Blindness: Soviet Crimes Under Western Eyes

"""Inasmuch as we live in an age of historical amnesia, this book seeks to critically assess how and in what ways the crimes of the Soviet period were absolved or denied or abetted by Western political analysts, journalists, political actors of the Right and the Left, fellow travelers, members and non-members of the Communist parties.""--George O. Liber, author of Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914-1954"