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artis
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Just to give an example of what I said , I mentioned the Katyn massacre earlier.russ_watters said:
If you grew up during the USSR times you simply learned in history that Katyn was done by Germans. There simply was no way of even know the truth. Radio, TV , papers were all easily controllable media formats.
Libraries had only books approved by special commissions that had read each book before approving it for mass usage. Unless you had some aunt who directly witnessed those events and could pin point which man in which uniform did what you had no way of knowing.
You couldn't even put such information within artistic satire or a film, because those had to go through the KGB special commission on arts etc too, there was a special branch of KGB that only focused on literature , others on movies and cinema, music, books, not a word uttered could escape someones mouth unless it wasn't screened.
So whenever we talk about why Russians believe in propaganda so much well part of the reason is because their system has never ever in history given them anything besides just that.
The brief years of Yeltsin were merely a drop of water within the Sahara.
If it wasn't for the internet and modern means of quick transportation and communication Russia would be effectively not much further where it was in 1917 in terms of information,Well there were people from the intelligentsia and some others that knew the truth behind many events but they could barely say it to others. The only real change came with Gorbachev and in the second half of 80's.
So much so one of our local politicians dared to speak in Moscow in the Kremlin palace of Congress in 1988 IIRC, where he read out the secret parts of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact and openly claimed that Latvia had been invaded and occupied by the USSR in 1940.
The man who said it was Mavriks Vulfsons.
When he said what he said even in 88, there was a silence in the auditorium and the shock permeated the hall, some did not even know this was historic fact, others did not want to acknowledge.
https://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/9651/
Just as a remainder, Russia hasn't admitted any of the invasions and occupations that happened during the buildup of the USSR in the 20th century till this day, there should be no illusion they will admit anything with respect to Ukraine
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) and he never gave up his veterans farm in Australia as he knew all too well that the people who starved the most in WW2 were the ones without land (in fact this was something that both he and one of my g.grandfathers both shared in common (a shared belief in the importance of farmland) and my grandfather was pretty gutted that I never got to have any land). The reason why he learned so many languages was also because after having had to escape from Nazi occupied Italy on foot, he knew the importance of knowing and being able to speak foriegn languages properly as such knowledge often made the life/death difference for many people fleeing back then (including some other relatives of mine who had Jewish ancestry and had to escape both Germany and then Russia on foot).
(which is pretty vast)
...). People are VERY interested here in trying to do something to help (a lot of people are making posters and doing fundraising efforts to help Ukrainians) but few people seem to want to face/talk about the brutalities of the war.
). My grandfather couldn't speak Lithuanian, but apparently Lithuanian and Russian are very similar languages and so initially he mistook her for possibly speaking some form of Russian. I came out of my room at this point only to see the 2 of them in the hallway trying to communicate with each other in mixture of English, Lithuanian & Russian as my grandfather tried out all his different dialects on her 
. Up until this point, I had no idea that he could even speak Russian so when I saw the 2 of them, I stood there mouth ajar for a while just watching the 2 of them go at it (my grandfather later said that he found the experience fun as he rarely came across anyone to try out his Russian on).