As historians, should you ever deny >muh lived experience?

?

who is denying

>>1556476
Yes of course

Of course not, it's not like they experienced distorted reality. Taking these experiences into account and then comparing those with contrasting ones helps establish history and infer under what conditions (i.e. biases) they had those experiences.

>>1556482
No one, I meant it as a general question in historical analysis. I was reading that thread on digg and a lot of people who doubted his story claimed they shouldn't 'deny his life story'.

>>1556476
>reddit retards will actually believe this garbage U.S. imperialist propaganda

>>1556476
Well, as much as it pains me to bring it up, there's the obvious falsified holocaust accounts /pol/ loves to bring out, so sometimes, yes, accounts are embellished for a political agenda.

I also really am skeptical to their analysis of things that aren't just factual statements of what happened. Because their subjective opinion and conjecture is just that. For example, the "observations" in your gb2 reddit screenshot may offer insight, but should not be taken at face value, and may have bias or be inaccurate.

>>1556487
Everyone experiences distorted reality. Just look at the completely contradictory reports witnesses give for crimes

>>1556498
I meant they weren't schizophrenic or fantasizing.

Everything is written from a perspective, so it's sort of redundant to mention.

>>1556493
It's completely obvious too, he even says he worked for a defense industry, there's going to be clear biases and inaccuracies about his "experiences". Just a typical American that bought into the Red Scare and spreads bullshit about the USSR.

>>1556489
People personal experience are that -- personal experiences.

A man hates communism his entire life (because of death of his parent), defects in 45 and devotes his entire life saying to anyone who listens how awful it is.

Another man lives in USSR just "fine" because his father wasn't killed by "secret police" (did he mean KGB? they weren't exactly secret by any means). His life is comparatively shittier than in the west but he doesn't know any better. He lives and dies in a silent majority.

also i was also browsing reddit frontpage earlier today and saw that article and also saw this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/4xsxk1/apparently_life_as_a_soviet_army_soldier_circa/

Well OBVIOUSLY these people who fled SU are gonna hate it -- why do you think they ran away to begin with?

>>1556508
>Well OBVIOUSLY these people who fled SU are gonna hate it -- why do you think they ran away to begin with?
KGB spies to infiltrate the USA and spread gommunism

>>1556498
Exactly. Why argue over something Thucydides got right over 2000 years ago. History is written off multiple accounts, and it's up to the historian to judge their trustworthiness when compared with yet more accounts.

>>1556476
Yes, who experience events directly are valuable primary sources, but their perception will be inevitably clouded by emotion

>>1556508
>killed by "secret police" (did he mean KGB? they weren't exactly secret by any means)
One of these, pick your poison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Soviet_secret_police_agencies

And yes, KGB did use secrecy and disguises to do what they had to do, with little to no transparency, accountability or oversight.

Memoirs published years after the events they describe can often be full of embellishments and inaccurate information meant to make things more exciting than they actually were, make the author appear in a more positive light, make their enemies appear more villainous, change the narrative to include new information that wasn't available to the author at the time of the events, etc. Unedited letters, journals, and diaries from the time are often more reliable since they aren't written for an audience outside of immediate family or friends or just for personal consumption.