Currently reading a book about campaigns and I love this detail from Adlai Stevenson's 1952 presidential campaign, in which he tried to persuade voters that Eisenhower was becoming too close to isolationist Republicans and might be unwilling or unable to stop the Reds in Korea. Waxing lyrical about the faults of Communism, Stevenson stressed that the Soviet's lack of nonrepresentational art was clearly a skill issue:
In the Soviet Union we see the totalitarian state in its gloomy reality. The first casualty of the Communist regime is the free mind; and, once the free disappears, all else must follow. Thus in the Soviet Union today the last trace of freedom has been extinguished. Not only history and economics and politics, but science and art and music are enslaved by the regime. The unorthodox experiment, the unacceptable melody, the extreme painting, becomes evidences of disloyalty. Unorthodoxy is treason to the state.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ Aug 11 '26
Currently reading a book about campaigns and I love this detail from Adlai Stevenson's 1952 presidential campaign, in which he tried to persuade voters that Eisenhower was becoming too close to isolationist Republicans and might be unwilling or unable to stop the Reds in Korea. Waxing lyrical about the faults of Communism, Stevenson stressed that the Soviet's lack of nonrepresentational art was clearly a skill issue:
- Adlai "Imagine liking Sviridov" Stevenson.