George Walden
Related: culture - conflict theory
Three points appear self-evident. First, there is no conflict whatever between popular and more demanding culture, and no need to choose. Second, that the majority of popular culture is commercially produced ephemera of mostly lamentable quality which needs absolutely no help or encouragement from government, still less nauseous ingratiation. Third, that there is such a thing as high art, and that some things will always remain for the privileged few - privileged not in the tired old class-conscious meaning of the word, but in the sense that by hard work and/or natural ability they are able to appreciate, eg highly refined musical forms or classical literature that it is not given to everyone to understand, even if we are given every opportunity to do so. -- George Walden in http://www.durand-gallery.com/html/lethear.html
Stalin
When asked who was the most evil figure of the 20th century, most people would say Hitler. Though Stalin killed even more millions of people, for years little detailed evidence of his crimes was available in the West, while we have all seen films of Hitler's concentration camps, and innumerable books documenting the Nazis' crimes. Today, however, a deluge of evidence about the bloody horrors of Stalin's rule is emerging from Russian archives, and a new book reveals some of the most dreadful documents from the Soviet purges of the Thirties. Here we reprint the death cell letter of one of Stalin's former acolytes, Nikolai Bukharin. --George Walden, http://www.yale.edu/annals/Reviews/review_texts/Walden_on_Getty_Ass._Newspapers_10.22.99.html
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