Here is a far from exhaustive list of things that George Kennan, the great US diplomat, had misgivings about: automobiles, hot dogs, moving pictures, the universal franchise, advertising, Los Angeles, “national distribution chains”, women who work, men who cry, “modern hygiene”, artificial fertiliser and jeans. What he liked was the pre-industrial Russia of Anton Chekhov. He used the verb “re-primitivize”, and meant it as a good thing. “I hate the ‘peepul’,” he…
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