I would identify two very Country Email List particular issues. One is that, as a teenager in the 1950s, I developed the kind of critique that young people of that age make of every possible aspect of their parents' lives. In that sense, I began to challenge Country Email List my father, not so much in his fundamental political beliefs –which were associated and deeply linked to the struggle for civil liberties–, but in relation to something quite peripheral for Country Email List him: his admiration for the USSR . Or at least his hope that the USSR was at some point worthy of such sentiment.
I didn't know much about that Country Email List experience, but like other people on the left I felt that the ussr probablyhe was being smeared by the capitalist press and that led to some kind of support. I considered that he did not have enough Country Email List information and that is why I peppered him a bit with my questions. However, I soon realized that it was extremely difficult to form an opinion about the USSR because the available literature Country Email List was not only sparse, but completely contradictory. These were partisan books for or against, and it was impossible to understand what had really happened or was happening there.
And that seemed like an interesting Country Email List challenge. The second thing that influenced my decision to study Russian history is that at the University of Melbourne, where I was studying History, you had to study a foreign language. I wanted Country Email List to learn German, but they wouldn't let me do it because I didn't have a background – since it wasn't offered as part of the curriculum at my high school. So my parents suggested that I study Country Email List Russian. The reason behind it was the emblematic episode of the Cold War in Australia.