HISTORY, HUMANITY, AND TRUTH.

The article presents the full text of the Jefferson Lecture in Humanities delivered by Robert Conquest in June 1993 in Washington, D.C. and in Stanford, California. He discusses the long and horrifying experience in the Soviet Union based on a false historical theory. According to him, the false theory came in two modes. First, a supposititious class scheme was imposed on every public fact, followed by the trend of total falsification in the 1930s. Henceforth, two Soviet Union existed: one the reality of poverty, exploitation, terror, falsehood and sycophancy; the other the fantasy of posters, the media, demonstrations, splendid statistics and public enthusiasm.