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Comment by RedCondor | Hacker News Reader

What blatant political statement?

The political organization of my local region of Earth wouldn’t be top of mind for my last letter to my family, personally.

I'm sure he knew a party officer would read the letter and he wanted to ensure his widow's loyalty wouldn't be questioned. Such was life in the Soviet Union.

It’s not just a political organisation, it’s a political movement that completely reorganised and changed Russian society since 1917. One may argue, that it’s the reason behind accelerated economic and scientific development that lead to space exploration.

What a feeling to actually belong to something larger than yourself.

GP may be referring to this:

> Raise them as people who will deserve to live a new communist society.

> I wish to dedicate this flight to the people of the new communist society...

Would it seem political if someone wrote:

> Raise them as people who will deserve to live a new capitalist society.

> I wish to dedicate this flight to the people of the new capitalist society...

I think the America parallels to this statement would be God, democracy, "our way of life" and such, references to which would not at all be unexpected in a letter such as this from the 60's.

I get it now.

Americans think "communism" is an icky political thing that Soviets were coerced to like, unlike "freedom and democracy (TM)", worthy abstract ideals that all Americans (nay, all Humans) should rightfully worship naturally and organically.

It's pretty amusing!

It's pretty amusing watching you trying to lay a trap and then beating up a strawman with your sarcasm. This letter was meant for the masses to read, and not to be kept in private between him and his family. Not the regional flair of political messaging it contains is telling, but the fact that it contains political messaging at all.

If my wive went on a risky mission and died about it, and all I get from her was a letter about "freedom", "democracy" and maybe "our great nation" and stuff like this, it would break my heart even more.

The reason those seem starkly at odds is not likely to be a result of devotion so much as the tyrannical structure that typically surfaces around the former persuasion, compelling (usually by continual threat) such affirmations repeatedly.

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