!!! = Propaganda

His comment was “Leave your propaganda out of it!” My modern Russian History Prof made this comment when talking about me using exclamation points in an academic paper. I suppose I should know better but it was funny to me. I have never sat down with a prof before to go over a paper, except for that time when I failed a paper because I did not follow the directions. At least I got the chance to fix my mistakes so I did not fail. That was nice. With the current paper, however, we talked about content, and where, in the Russian mind, I just didn't really understand what I was talking about. To Russians, Stalinism is the prisons, gulags, killings, fear, and general terror of that era. While, yes, all of this went on, to me Stalinism was the system of government that he created, and used the above things to form it. For me, they were not as important as the government system, whereas the Russians (in general) feel that Stalinism is only about the repressions and killings. Its interesting how you can have lived in a culture for a long time, but still know so little about it. The other comment made about the paper by my prof was that it is a touchy subject anyway, even among Russian Stalin scholars. That made me feel better. I suppose it would be like talking about Hitler in Germany, or Che in South America. It was also quite interesting to find out that Russian students are vicious cheaters, and with the introduction of the Internet to Russia, this has only gotten worse. This discussion came about because I used the American system, where everything, everything, everything has to be cited. One of my poli sci profs at USM said once “When in doubt, cite.” The thing is, it is so ingrained in me now, that if I write something, I think about everything I have said and wonder, “Is that really my idea, or is it someone else's?” Oh well. Better to do that than get kicked out for plagiarizing something unintentionally. So, things to remember: !!!= Propaganda (although sometimes propaganda is a good thing), and cite cite cite! When did I turn into a nerd?