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Very interesting, Mr. Storchevoy's report about the censorship
of economic writers in Russia.
It is also interesting to contrast this to what happened in Brazil during
the military regime.
First of all, marxism was not as disseminated among university courses in
economics as it was among social sciences courses. The first had a more
'technical' orientation, students were trained to know how, not
necessarily to know why.
Repression against marxism was indeed severe in the Brazilian society
during the 60s and the 70s, but not so much in the academic ghettos. It
seemed as if the militaries felt that the ideas disseminated in this
milieu would not be so influential outside the academic world. On the other
hand, they were extremely severe with subversive ideas diffused in songs,
films and other artistic manifestations. Popular composers like Chico
Buarque de Hollanda and Caetano Veloso had, for many years, to submit
their songs to the censors before divulging them. (This after being sent
to prison, sent to exhile, tortured etc.)
This does not mean that we did not have repression in the academic
milieu. We had a lot of it, and influential professors like Celso Furtado,
Josue de Castro and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (to mention just a few) were
dismissed, lost their political rights and were sent to exhile. However,
the strange thing in this process was that after they left some of our
teachers continued to teach us Marxist ideas, maybe because the militaries
felt that the whole process was under control.
I dont agree with Storchevoy when he compares the present dissemination
of North-american economics in Russia with the former situation that they
faced over there. After all, they enjoy intellectual freedom and this
makes a huge difference.
Ana Maria Bianchi
Universidade de Sao Paulo
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