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> That strongly influences, actually directly shapes, what works does the writer or the artist produces.

You're putting the cart before the horse.




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...




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