![]() She is slighting of 'cheering on the place where you happened to be born', but there is more to be said for it. People unsettled on the inside are often drawn to the appearance of strength in others. ![]() Though if you’ve been brought up to think of an unseen land as your own, it can feel small-minded just cheering on the place where you happened to be born." Why did I feel the need to latch on to somewhere new? I’m not entirely sure. I transferred my affections to (the State of) Israel. However, her restlessness did not end with her success as a writer: Why couldn’t I be snatched away from my parents and stuck in an academy of writing excellence? At 17, I escaped through a job at the New Musical Express instead." As a smart working-class girl at a provincial Seventies sink school, the most I could hope for was teacher training college. "But what I most approved of about the gymnasts was the way Soviet children who showed a particular talent were snatched away from home at an early age - Olga Korbut was in full-time training from the age of eight - and sent to work in academies of excellence meritocracy at its rawest.I wasn’t scared of hard work, but I was scared of going nowhere. I still remember when Nadia Comăneci, the most gifted Romanian girl of all, was named the youngest ever Hero Of Socialist Labor by the dictator Ceausescu." "it was impossible not to be bewitched by the beautiful Communist gymnasts. Anyone who has loved a parent will recognise the urge to be part of their world, included and approved of.ĭiscontented, she had more than was needed for her available opportunities, and didn't want to miss out on achievement and recognition: Because it all belongs to them - the people.” Never religious, the USSR was his Promised Land." "I was his little comrade, always happy to stay up late cheering for the USSR during the Olympics." Their subways stations are immaculate - you could eat your dinner off the floor. “It’s very cold, very clean… and everybody’s happy. Her father, "handsome and witty, generous and kind", "A clever man from an illiterate, poverty-wracked home", "idealised the Soviet Union in a manner that reminds me of the images on the cover of The Watchtower, the Jehovah’s Witness magazine people wandering beatifically unharmed among wild animals, the lion and the lamb making eyes at each other.He was, for example, obsessed with the cleanliness of the Moscow underground stations in a television film I wrote about him, Prince, a young Sean Bean tells his daughter about Russia: ![]() ![]() She describes how her working class father was an uncritical disciple of Soviet communism, and, as a child, she took on his attitudes to be close to him. As well as being an intense, rather sad, glimpse into her early life, it touches on the challenge of making something of your life in a culture and economy under constant strain. Julie Burchill, whose writing was once so full of spunk, recently published a compelling article in Unherd - the link is below. ![]()
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