This is a great comment to illustrate how ideology (especially various brands of nationalism) destroys genuine dialog. Instead of talking about the writers and their works people are now talking about which pigeonhole each writer belongs to. Not because those pigeonholes improve anyone's understanding of the books, mind you. It's a matter of taking credit for their works and applying those credits to the current meta-narrative.
Nope. We are all products of our culture. Our parents, our upbringing, education in school. Our friends. Our first experiences, and of course, the ideology that we have obtained during the process. The ideology mostly comes built into the society's culture, education and work life. So there is no such thing as 'ideologically neutral' or "I don't have an ideology". Its just that people think that the ideology that they have is 'normal', and they don't identify it as an ideology unless it conflicts with the incumbent ideology in the society.
Yes, although sometimes people feel their country is not normal. "In a normal country, this would not happen," many Russian people said, especially in the '90s between Yeltsin's US-backed coup and the 1998 collapse.
Definitely, that is the case. Sometimes societies start going down a route that is totally in contrast with what ideology that people have been conditioned to. And this is not even about USSR - at the moment, many people in places like US are experiencing the same thing, with a Randian dystopia taking over from the former center-right capitalism as capitalism in those countries finally goes back to its late 19th century roots. So the new state of the society is way too different from the state of the society that shaped these people's ideologies. And they are totally appalled.
Soviet Union's case is an exception to this: The Soviets were literally brainwashed by Hollywood movies and bootleg CIA video tapes to believe that everybody in the capitalist west lived like how the rich lived in Manhattan. They thought that they would keep all the good stuff from socialism (guaranteed jobs, reasonable pay, housing, free education, higher education, healthcare, reasonable retirement etc) but would also get the consumerism and the glamor depicted in Hollywood movies. They learned that things don't work that way.
Even until recently, there were Russians who still didn't know that there were homeless in the US. The Internet has likely changed that though...
Difference between Polish and Soviet is not tiny pidgeon hole difference. It is giving proper attribution. Not everything was done by Soviet. And for that matter, Soviet does not mean Russian automatically either.
And specifically, Poland was occupied by Soviet long enough to deserve not tonhave own art attributes to them.
Also, literature before revolutions and after them is much different. Topics, style of writing, who could get published or become famous are all much different. You can't attribute to Soviet what was done after Soviet broke up.
