URL: https://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/52448
Collection Structure Bertram David Wolfe papers >  Sound recordings >  Sound recording of a conversation between Ramon Myers and Ella Wolfe on 1 December 1983
Item Title Sound recording of a conversation between Ramon Myers and Ella Wolfe on 1 December 1983
Collection Title Bertram David Wolfe papers
Speaker Wolfe, Ella
Date Created December 01, 1983
Description Tape 6 - Ella speaks about several friends of hers. First, she speaks about Svetlana Stalin and how Svetlana was concerned with how history was recording her father. Wolfe singles out Robert Tucker as one person getting the Stalin story wrong. Ella claims Svetlana thought Bertram could properly write the history of her father, which leads to a discussion on how the Wolfes came to know Svetlana. Following the conversation about history, the interview moves to Svetlana’s personal life details; about moving to England, possible position at the Hoover Institution, etc. The other subjects are Leon Heikis, of the Soviet Embassy, and H. Lal Gupta, of the University of Mexico, I. Silone (after 1945), and Arthur and Mamaine Koestler in the 1960s. In a second session on the tape, they discuss how Americans understand the Soviet Union. Ella argues one cannot look at Americans as just one large mass. She says scholars are better informed than “so called liberals” (her words), with the latter being misinformed. However, she notes how many of them change their mind once they visit the Soviet Union. Ella believes the biggest mass of Americans have never had to depend on the Soviet Union for trade reasons and therefore do not care about the Soviet Union and are ignorant of situations. She argues the student activists within this last group are therefore susceptible to making propaganda for the Soviet Union by proxy without knowing it; she uses the example of the anti-nuclear movement. The third session on the tape concentrates on generational differences now and in the past. First Ella describes attitudes about education. Second, she criticizes television. Then, the Vietnam War and American foreign policy. Wolfe sees her view of generational decline as sad, not cynical.
Language(s) English
Country of Origin United States
Format Sound Recording
Hoover ID 77029_a_0003367
Record Number 77029.8
Collection Guide https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf838nb2m6
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