I remember the anti-communist images of soot ridden grey towns next to steel works in some school book.Turns out it was an image of the future from the US, apparently. Minus the steel works I guess but all those gas turbines next to Tech oligarch data centers are not much behind that in terms of pollution.
It wasn’t US propaganda though. At most it was Austrian propaganda. Maybe I am also colouring childhood memories as well. It was just the general sentiment that Czechoslovakia is a polluted heavy industrial place and it was not entirely wrong everywhere either. But then, same could be said about the Ruhrgebiet back in the days of West Germany.
The Iron Curtain was incredibly entrenched in many minds, in some minds it is to this very day, more than 35 years after it has fallen. The funny thing is that the Iron Curtain was not nearly the unsurmountable obstacle even while it existed, at least for Austrians. You could actually visit most of these places as tourist, in the case of Hungary even fairly easy but even where the Iron Curtain still a fairly serious installation.
I remember the anti-communist images of soot ridden grey towns next to steel works in some school book.Turns out it was an image of the future from the US, apparently. Minus the steel works I guess but all those gas turbines next to Tech oligarch data centers are not much behind that in terms of pollution.
I know the US is big on propaganda, but it’s little reminders like this that blow me away.
It wasn’t US propaganda though. At most it was Austrian propaganda. Maybe I am also colouring childhood memories as well. It was just the general sentiment that Czechoslovakia is a polluted heavy industrial place and it was not entirely wrong everywhere either. But then, same could be said about the Ruhrgebiet back in the days of West Germany.
The Iron Curtain was incredibly entrenched in many minds, in some minds it is to this very day, more than 35 years after it has fallen. The funny thing is that the Iron Curtain was not nearly the unsurmountable obstacle even while it existed, at least for Austrians. You could actually visit most of these places as tourist, in the case of Hungary even fairly easy but even where the Iron Curtain still a fairly serious installation.
Oh interesting. I just assumed that an explicitly anti-communist message would be American.