Lethargic Man (anag.)

On the subject of yesterday's posting, it's occurred to me that something I'd love to hear is a text read which starts in Old English, and as the reading progresses, the pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary gradually shift into Modern English, via all the intermediate stages. A quick google does not show me any such thing, though there are things like this, which have discrete texts jumping forward several hundred years between each.

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The BBC published an article the other day, "The six key moments of the Cold War relived" (for the benefits of those who couldn't remember it). Under the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, it quotes a former communist supporter from London:

"My family saw the Soviet Union as the first country in which the working class had broken through and taken power. The invasion came as a tremendous shock. There were families and friendship groups divided by it. My father continued to believe that the Soviet Union's actions were correct. Others, like my mother, were more critical. It took me two decades longer to realise that the Soviet Union wasn't a socialist country after all because you can't have socialism without democracy."

It's well known how communist supporters in the West were shocked by the Soviet action then, and in Prague in 1968; it's only recently that I discovered that the whole phenomenon had happened before, in East Germany, in 1953. How did that uprising become so completely forgotten from the western consciousness (or at any rate, that part of it outside Germany)?

—Originally posted on Dreamwidth, where there are comments. Please comment there using OpenID or a DreamWidth account (which you no longer need an invite code to create). Though I am leaving comments enabled on LiveJournal for a bit, please don't comment here if you can do so there instead.