‘I’d Like to Understand Why This Ignorance’ : Soviet Commentator Talks Politics at UCSD

For a while Wednesday, Vladimir Pozner wore a different hat than the one by which most Americans know him, and for which some intensely dislike him.

The best-known Soviet journalist in the United States--by virtue of numerous appearances on American television--escaped the normal peppering of questions about Soviet determination to bury the United States, about Soviet misdeeds in Afghanistan, about any of the we-versus-you arguments common to Soviet-United States relations that he encounters on his usual travels in this country.

Instead, the Soviet television commentator spent the afternoon at UC San Diego in a role akin to a graduate student, throwing as many questions out as he received in an informal get-together with professors from the school’s department of communication.

Pozner was with a sympathetic group, the result both of close friendships with two department professors and the faculty’s tendency to be more critical of their own society than the average American.

‘Shocked’ by Ignorance

“I’m shocked at the degree of ignorance I’ve found when addressing most of the college audiences” on his lecture tour, Pozner told the group of about 20 department members. “And not just about the Soviet Union, but also in discussion of history, literature, geography--I am frankly puzzled by this ‘tableau rosa,’ where they know little about American history and literature, let alone international topics. . . . I’d like to understand why this ignorance.”

Pozner found little disagreement from the American professors.

“We, too, are also puzzled why our students don’t show (interest) on their own but often wait for assignments to be made,” one professor said. “The apathy, the lack of interest, it’s elsewhere besides just world affairs.”

Another professor said he believes that Americans--college students and older adults--are not necessarily ignorant but simply more confused today about America’s role on the world stage as a result of the Vietnam War, conflicts in Central America, and other overseas issues where the good-guy role of the United States versus bad-guy Soviet communism has not always been clear.

A faculty member said that Americans have little understanding of the world scene because anti-communism remains a “cardinal word” that poisons attempts to paint a realistic view of American foreign-policy actions, including actions that the professor said could be called “imperialist.”

The American Myth

That word often functions for Soviets as a code word for bad American actions, Pozner said, just as “anti-communism” does for Americans. But no, Soviets would never call an individual American an imperialist the way an American might call a Russian a communist, he said.

Other professors told Pozner of what they called the American myth that economic class differences do not exist in this country, that American students learn a selective history that often leaves out discussions of contributions made by labor unions, that Americans refuse to face up to the fact that their wealth comes only at the expense of other countries, and that many embraced Ronald Reagan for President because he promised continued prosperity.

To all those points, Pozner conceded that parallel situations in the Soviet Union exist, although he did not acknowledge that the reasons for or consequences of the Soviet shortcomings differ fundamentally from those in the United States.

There has been selective rewriting of Soviet history, Pozner said, noting how entire peoples and events were written out of Soviet textbooks depending on the particular decade and ideological view of the people in power. Some young Soviet students today do not recognize the name of Stalin, the dictator who shaped so much of today’s Soviet society during his almost 30 years of power.

“So I believe we have a lot in common,” Pozner told the group. The commonality even extends to an increasing desire on the part of many Russians for greater consumerism, Pozner said, adding half-jokingly that his country has its own version of “yuppies” in the form of the Young Communists League. But he argued that the average Russian still has a more pronounced sense of social justice than do Americans, and still bridles against ostentatious displays of wealth.

Fears of Disorder

On a personal note, Pozner said that moves toward glasnost, or more openness in Soviet society, by the nation’s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, have benefited him greatly. The Paris-born, New York-raised Pozner said that not all Soviet citizens are enthusiastic about the movement, fearing that it could lead to disorder and an unraveling of the certainty that now pervades much of the nation’s daily life.

Pozner, whose family moved from New York to East Germany and then to the Soviet Union in the late 1940s, said glasnost has expanded the limits under which he works as a television commentator, holding the title of political observer, the top journalistic honor in the Soviet Union.

For many years, he did English commentaries for the North American service of Radio Moscow and appeared as a spokesman on American television to explain actions of the Soviet Union. But until recently, he was not seen on Soviet television.

“I was seen (for a time by Soviet officials) as someone to address the West but not my own people . . . an interesting situation,” Pozner said. “I had my ups and downs and my problems.”

Banned from Commentaries

Soviet authorities refused to let Pozner do commentaries for American television for a yearlong period in 1981 and 1982 after he obliquely criticized Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan to an American correspondent in Moscow.

But that punishment is no different than what could occur to an American broadcaster, he told the faculty, again placing Soviet and American problems on an equal plane.

“Wherever you work, there are limits, and it doesn’t bother me if (the operation) is public or private, there are controls, there are limits,” Pozner said. “You can test them, like a test pilot, and go up in an explosion, or you may choose not to test them. I chose to test them and as a result I had a certain amount of problems.”

Pozner thanked the faculty for what he called an unusual chance to speak in depth on numerous issues of interest to intellectuals, something he said has not been afforded him often in the United States.

Then he was off to a Wednesday-night public speech at the university, again in the role--depending on whom you talk to--of either the smoothest English-speaking propagandist to come out of the postwar Soviet Union or the best example yet of how changes in that country have expanded the ability of Soviet citizens to speak their minds.