Vladimir Danchev

Vladimir Danchev was a newscaster at the Soviet radio in Moscow, who is famous for calling on the Afghan people to resist the Soviet invasion of their country on May 23rd 1983. His controversial encouragement of armed resistance against the Russian military outraged many of his countrymen. However, according to the American political analyst Noam Chomsky and other commentators, his principal transgression was that he embarrassed the Soviet government by contradicting their official ideology, by describing the presence of Soviet forces in Afghanistan as an “invasion.” According to the party line, Russia was not invading Afghanistan; it was defending the Afghan people against terrorists who were funded by foreign sources (the USSR was refering to the Mujahedin and the CIA). Danchev was subsequently temporarily removed from the air and sent to a psychiatric hospital. He was praised in the U.S. media as a hero of free speech and free thought. (New York Times (8/6/83)).

REFERENCES:

(1)Noam Chomsky. Invasion Newspeak: U.S. & USSR. FAIR, December, 1989.http://www.chomsky.info/articles/198912--.htm

(2)Henrik Jøker Bjerre, University of Aarhus. Everything Politics is, Chomsky is not. (2005)Paper published at www.wittgenstein-network.dk It was presented at the conference “The Grammar of Politics: Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy” held in November 2005 and arranged by The Wittgenstein Network.

(3)Edward S. Herman. (2000) INGSOC and NEWSPEAK to AMCAP, AMERIGOOD, and MARKETSPEAK. published at DIGITAL ECOLOGY: http://world-information.org/wio/readme/992006691/992018876An abridged version of a more extensive and footnoted paper delivered at the Conference on "1984: Orwell and Our Future," University of Chicago Law School, November 12, 1999

(4)Neilson Voyne Smith, “Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals”. Page 192.