Melinda's is the most insightful comment I have yet read about this,  
and I speak from considerable direct personal experience.  From 1981  
to 1993 I went to what is now the former Soviet Union so often I  
maintained an apartment there, and have made perhaps a dosen trips  
subsequently.  I had stumbled across the WPA archives during the  
course of research to write John Warner's 1976 bicentennial address  
(he was the head of the commission) and been very struck by their  
nostalgic tone in so many instances.  Having grown up in the civil  
rights movement, and having been arrested a number of times in the  
south for nonviolent demonstrations, at the time I could not  
reconcile the discongruity. But, almost 15 years later, I saw its  
mirror, in the people of Russia and East Germany, and it gave me  
insight into the slave narratives.  Time and again I would talk to  
Russians, and East Germans and, somewhere during the conversation,  
they would compare their post-Communist world unfavorably to their  
present "free" state. This was particularly true if they had lost  
status, or been cast adrift to an uncertain day-to-day existence.

The cold truth is that many, perhaps even most, people want, above  
all else, a stable life style, with enough food, a place to sleep,  
steady work to do, and a social fabric in which they play a  
recognized role. History abounds in examples of this truth, even  
though it is very hard for many of us today to swallow, not least  
because it seems so politically incorrect.  But there it is.

-- Stephan





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On 12 Jun 2007, at 08:07, Melinda Skinner wrote:

> On reading some of the WPA narratives of former slaves who recalled  
> their enslaved lives fondly, I thought of the people in the Soviet  
> Union who, after its break-up and the end of the communist regime,  
> were devastated and wanted to go back to the way things had been.   
> It was difficult for some of them to know how to live within the  
> new "freedom."  Surely, it would be hard to adjust to being  
> responsible for everything after living your entire life as the  
> property/ward of the master/state.  If your master had not been  
> cruel, it may not have seemed so bad when you looked back with the  
> perspective of trying to make it in a difficult, racist world.
>
> --
> Melinda C. P. Skinner
> Richmond, VA
>
>
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: Henry Wiencek <[log in to unmask]>
>> Kevin, thank you for your reply. For me, George Washington remains  
>> the
>> exemplar, the maximum leader. The more you study him, in almost  
>> any aspect,
>> the more you have to admire him. In researching Washington as an
>> emancipator, I was astonished to find how deeply biographers and  
>> historians
>> had buried that aspect of his life and career. It just didn't fit  
>> with the
>> received wisdom that slavery was "just the accepted system,"  
>> unchallenged, a
>> venerable practice enshrined in law, sanctioned by the Bible, and  
>> carried
>> out as much as possible on a humane basis. Washington's views and  
>> actions
>> don't fit that grid at all--"they don't compute." We like to think  
>> that
>> "they didn't know any better; we can't judge them." But if you  
>> look at what
>> Washington did and contended against, you find that he was not  
>> fighting
>> against ignorance and indifference, but against profit. The modern  
>> analogy I
>> use is: getting Thomas Jefferson to give up slavery is like  
>> getting Dick
>> Cheney to quit pumping oil.
>>
>> Henry Wiencek