An Unerring View of Russian History

I found “Mapping the Soviet Disunion” by Bettijane Levine (Sept. 11) quite interesting because I am an immigrant from the Soviet Union who came here as a high school student. While in high school, I found that the textbooks dealing with the historic and contemporary issues of the Soviet Bloc were woefully inadequate, bordering on completely false. This led to a lot of arguments with my teachers and fellow students.

When I entered the university, I was shocked by what information was presented by professors. Not only was Russian history presented with glaring errors, the histories of non-Russian republics within the U.S.S.R. were presented exclusively from a Russian imperial perspective. I won’t even go into the mapping situation.

ALEXANDRA ANDERS

Berkeley