I love Cold War propaganda. I love the campaigns from both sides: the daydreamy technicolor pictures of Soviet factory workers enjoying ice cream by the sea, and the histrionic fervor of the US publications lamenting the Russians' lack of freedom to buy name-brand blue jeans or eat American fast food. So many subtle and sorrowful things reduced to slick trickery and slogans, the true issues glossed over by superficial images. The Cold War was a strange and frightening time to be a child, unsure of the danger facing us, dreaming of mushroom clouds, and surrounded on all sides by lies.

It's a new world now, and young adults have to hone their bullshit detecting skills in new and different ways. I look at these old photos: Russian women doctors, vegetable patches, hipsters lounging on park benches, and I have the strangest and most compelling sense of dislocation. My American dream, my god-given right to prosper more forever, seems to have vanished into a tired and hazy mass of ever-shrinking sales and a faltering feeling of insecurity. Are we really free? Would it be infinitely worse, would I do anything to escape, if I magically found myself in one of those crowded Soviet apartment blocs in these photos, poor but never to be denied a doctor or an education or a roof over my head? I don't know. I'll keep reading these missives from a land that no longer is, the country of the past, and I guess I'll keep uselessly stewing. ( )