Levada was frighteningly intelligent, unabashedly passionate, and most important, he had mastered the art of thinking out loud during a lecture. He suggested that the peculiarities of everyday life in the Soviet Union could be observed, examined, and understood. In one lecture, for example, he analyzed a short story in which collective-farm workers are sitting around waiting for a Party meeting to start, complaining about their unreasonably demanding bosses and terrible work conditions. Then the meeting commences and the workers take turns lauding their collective farm’s accomplishments and
...more
This is really well observed.
