Dispatches from Soviet Britain - Konstantin Kisin
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.7146
Summary
For a girl from an industrial city in rural Ukraine, the opportunity to study at the best university in the Soviet Union was a dream. Although her ambitions were met with suspicion by many around her, Marina was bright and seemingly destined for the top. Little did she know that she was seconds away from destroying her chances of a successful application.
Transcript
00:00:02.360
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00:00:35.080
So whatever you think is going to happen in the future,
00:00:49.740
The year was 1981 and Marina was excitedly filling out her application
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to join the chemistry faculty of Moscow State University.
00:00:57.780
For a girl from an industrial city in rural Ukraine,
00:01:01.160
the opportunity to study at the best university in the Soviet Union was a dream,
00:01:06.060
although her ambitions were met with suspicion by many around her.
00:01:09.480
But Marina was bright and seemingly destined for the top.
00:01:12.920
Little did she know that she was seconds away from destroying her chances of a successful application.
00:01:19.460
Her brother-in-law asked, peering over her shoulder as she went through the form.
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Marina may have been smart academically, but she was young and naive.
00:01:32.140
Clueless about the social realities of the communist society she lived in,
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Marina was proud that her parents had managed to secure good jobs,
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Her mother was a teacher while her father worked in a factory.
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Listen to me very carefully, her brother-in-law implored in an authoritative tone.
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he said with the air of someone imparting wisdom to the next generation.
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Dutifully, Marina scrubbed out her previous answer
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and wrote in the only correct response in the class background field.
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If she hadn't, she almost certainly would have been denied entry into Moscow State University,
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never met my father, or given birth to me a year later.
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The Soviet Union was a society which believed in uplifting the oppressed
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and it was willing to do as much social engineering as was necessary to achieve these lofty goals.
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Last week, Britain's Labour government announced that the civil service internship program
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will only be available to those from a working class background.
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the child of a self-employed plumber or a train driver making £80,000 a year
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will finally have the opportunity to join the civil service,
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while the offspring of nurses, teachers and junior doctors who make half that
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will be rightfully denied the unjust expansion of the ill-gotten privilege.
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By coincidence, that same week, the Online Safety Act came into force.
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Introduced by the last Conservative government and implemented by the current Labour government,
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the Act purports to protect children from harmful content.
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Meanwhile, Section 179 of the Act makes it a criminal offence to say something false
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while Section 44 gives a government minister the ability to change censorship rules
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Online platforms will be legally forced to abide by their decisions.
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Videos of protests outside migrant hotels and other harmful content
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are already being censored by social media platforms,
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as the law stipulates fines of up to 10% of their global turnover
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and criminal prosecution of their members of staff.
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WhatsApp and Signal have already warned that the British government
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is also seeking to access your encrypted chats.
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Children are, of course, not remotely protected by any of this.
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Demand for VPN apps, which allow users to pretend they're accessing the internet
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from a different country, has surged in the last couple of weeks
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Far from protecting children, the government is in fact pushing them
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into the unregulated internet with gusto, as this brilliant article explains.
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In the meantime, the government is launching a new policing unit
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to monitor social media for early signs of protest activity and dissent.
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While the Sovietization of Britain continues at a rapid pace,
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The one good thing about the communist society my mother grew up in
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was that it at least came with the benefits of authoritarianism,
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stability, safety, and the prevention of disorder.
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In modern Britain, by contrast, petty crime is effectively ignored,
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while tensions caused by large-scale illegal immigration
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and the perception of two-tier policing are at fever pitch.
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Few remember this now, but shortly before the riots last summer,
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a brief clip of a police officer stamping on a suspect's head
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in Manchester Airport was released on social media.
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It was, we were told, a case of police brutality,
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and since the suspects were Muslim, it was also racist.
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The usual suspects in the media and on X went into meltdown about our terrible country.
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It was only later that the full video and details of the incident were released,
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which showed that the two men had in fact assaulted armed police officers,
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The man who did this was found guilty last week.
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I don't expect he will get anything like the prison time most British people would want him to,
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We keep being told that some mythical far-right is stoking tensions in this country.
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But who actually is it that lies about the police being racist
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when they're just trying to detain incredibly dangerous and violent people?
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Who is it that covers up racially aggravated, i.e. racist crimes like grooming gang rapes?
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Who is it that thinks people should be treated differently
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because of their skin color, religion, or social class?
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Social engineering is a disaster that has proven to destroy social solidarity and cohesion the world over.
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Britain must return to the pursuit of colorblind, classblind meritocracy and justice for all.
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If it does not, no amount of social media censorship can stop the ugly consequences
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If you enjoy these videos, remember that they're available on my sub-stack at constantinkission.com
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days, weeks, and sometimes months ahead of time.
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Head on Ever Than Now, click the link in the description to subscribe.
00:06:19.800
The news doesn't just tell you what's happening.
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It so often tells you what to think is happening.
00:06:24.900
And these days, the biggest red flag isn't what's said, it's what gets left out.
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It's the only site and app that compares coverage from across the political spectrum
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00:06:42.920
Their blind spot feed is one of my favorite features.
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It surfaces around 20 stories a day that are being overlooked by either the left or the right.
00:06:50.720
It's a simple but powerful way to track media bias in real time.
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Like this, NIH scientists recently published a declaration
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criticizing Trump's cuts to public health research.
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And yet, only 2% of the coverage came from right-leaning outlets.
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A new study found that 2024 saw the most armed conflicts globally since 1946.
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But you would have missed it if you'd only read left-wing news sources.
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Headlines, ownership, bias ratings, and context.
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So you can actually understand what's going on, not just react to what you're told.
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