But the past is not so certain, because the past is under control of the government, and the past undego changes sometimes. The past has its blank spots, there are some unmentionable events in the past that do not make communists proud. So no one really knows what happened.
If you are interested, you might want to read Orwell's 1984, he described extreme case of such a world view.
>you should educate youself better by consuming mass media.
Is this not precisely the opposite of mass media? Marxist social critic Herbert Marcuse wrote about how, beacuse Communism is a subversive movement, and indeed the Left, it cannot gain mass media time, because of its nature as subversive; it can only be snuck in under capitalism, as capitalism is willing to accept any ideology for the sake of profit. I would recommend One-Dimensional Man on the topic of what problems Communists have with late capitalist media and production, and the hiding of information.
>If you are interested, you might want to read Orwell's 1984
I have; although it's a little funny to see Orwell used to rebut the Communist project, seeing as he was a Socialist himself who fought on the side of anarchists in Spain, there's a deeper point here that you are missing. Orwell wrote about very obvious misdirection - "war is peace", "peace is war". However, you are missing the fact that it is not this easy to see.
Nowadays, as I am sure you know, the contradiction and control is hidden not in the sentence but within the noun. In words such as "freedom", "democracy", "control", etc. the actual meaning can be discerned only by the speaker of the word and the historical time period. Please read Marcuse on this topic. I don't know where you're getting the idea that I'm in favour of rewriting the past from.
Under all existing or existed communist government mass media brings The Truth, the government's interpretation of events. If you live here you should know this interpretation, or you risk to show political illiteracy and to be critisized for that. It can damage your career, or you will be forced to attend to courses of political literacy, or both. I believe it didn't work for blue collars, they had more freedom in this sense, but for white collar political illiteracy was a real threat. It was like now in USA with microagression of white males (as I see it from other side of ocean): if you catched on some sort aggression at female, you could be fired and get a "wolf ticket" (in short, it is markings in papers that does not allow to find white collar job), or attend to some sort of training, bring public apoligies, and so on.
> Nowadays, as I am sure you know, the contradiction and control is hidden not in the sentence...
Are you trying to persuade me that USSR was not as bad as it seems from USA? I know that. And USA is not as bad as it seemed from USSR. But I have no intentions to discuss it here. It is a contraversial topic, and it is like swamp: you step there and cannot get out of it. Moreover I see no point in discussing: there is no USSR now. Was it bad, or not so bad -- it does not matter now.
> I don't know where you're getting the idea that I'm in favour of rewriting the past from.
Not you, but all communist states I know about.
This is why both the USA currently and the USSR formerly deserve the same criticism, and we need to move beyond this rationality of unfreedom, and the answer to this I belive lies firmly within the realm of revolutionary Communist movements, but only after realising exactly what inspired the controlling rationalities of the US and the USSR.
The US (as it continues) and USSR both institute(d) a policy in which the only freedom is that which you are told you are supposed to have, and that any freedom which transcends is called either "Socialist" or "capitalist". These are projected as 'bad' because they appear within their respective societies to reach 'the limits of reason itself'. To the American taken in by his 'freedom', Socialism is not only unreasonable, irrational or unjustifiable but it is impossible itself, because to him what is rational is production, the pervasiveness of technology and relentless consumption. Similar things can be said about the USSR and its descendant Marxist-Leninist states.
Within the USSR, there was no qualitative change, there was only quantitative change, and indeed due to their rationality, Socialism could only be seen as quantitative change, a sliding axis between capitalism and Socialism. This is because they were fixed by controlling rationality in which Communism has become quantitative, obscuring the fact that it is truly qualitative, Marx said as much all along: Communism is the rejection of all established notions, Communism abolishes all notions of morality, justice, freedom and indeed stands in opposition, contradiction to all previous societies.
Communists don't have anything resembling a monopoly on this.