Political Correctness and Communism

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is true that what was not 'correct' politically was repressed in the Soviet Union, but to confuse this with the American language politics that became known as 'political correctness' in the early 90s is utterly absurd. For one thing what was 'correct' politically in the Soviet Union changed all the time; this is why it was such an insidious and socially corrosive tendency. If one wished for a career in certain fields (academia or the arts for instance) then one had to be prepared to change every view held and principle espoused in an instant, quite often to a view or a principle diametrically opposed to the one that had previously been ideologically acceptable. In the arts what was deemed as Progressive (and thus good) one day was often deemed as Formalist (and thus 'bourgeois' and thus bad) the next. Whereas whatever one thinks of the language politics of American liberals, it is nothing if not consistent in its general tone, emphasis and direction.