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“I know them, the American men (and women) of the left. Talking to them always makes me feel like the worst kind of dissident, a right-wing freak (or a Republican, at best), even if I consider myself an honest social democrat. For every mild criticism of life in the system I have been living under for the last forty years they look at me suspiciously, as if I were a CIA agent... But one can hardly blame them. It is not the knowledge about communism they lack - I am pretty sure they know all about it - it's the experience of living under such conditions. So, while I am speaking for 'within' the system itself, they are explaining it to me from without. I do not want to claim that you have to be a hen to lay an egg, only that a certain disagreement between two starting points is normal. But they don't go for that; they need to be right.” — Slavenka Drakulić