Реферат: Jospeh Freeman

’s "The Vision Of The Thirties" Essay, Research Paper

THE VISION OF THE THIRTIES

Joseph Freeman

(Talk delivered before The American Studies Majors at

Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, May 7, 1958)

The Nineteen Thirties was an important decade, a turning point in contemporary

history and literature.

It was an exciting decade — far more exciting than the Twenties, though in

quite a different way.

It was a terrible decade — a decade of blood and terror; a nightmare Time of

Troubles; an Age of Assassins who coldly and deliberately murdered millions of men, women

and children in scientifically prepared abattoirs; a decade whose full horror we are only

now beginning to comprehend; a decade of show trials, fake accusations, fake confessions,

bloodpurges, secret assassinations, genocide; a decade in which the new Ceasars worked out

the ideology and the techniques of something never before known in history –

totalitarianism: a decade that exploded in the biggest war in all history so far.

It was a progressive decade. In the United States, the New Deal put into effect

social and economic reform which the American people had been demanding since the 1870’s.

These reforms are still with us — social security and all.

The Nineteen Thirties could easily be called the Age of Democracy. Never had the

American dream of the democratic nation and the democratic man been so aflame with

conviction, so vibrant with reality; never before had the groups and classes which used to

feel like step-children, the so-called outgroups, felt so much a part of the nation. They

were heard, they were taken in, they were in and of the American family. In the 1930s our

idea and our realtiy was — Americans all and all Americans for democracy.

And, despite the horrors of the Age of Assassins, the Thirties were also progressive in

other parts of the world — in Russia, for example.

While Stalin was shooting his rivals wholesale and retail, Russia succeeded in building

a type of economy which the world had never seen before. This economy has raised Russia to

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