The second thing that influenced Country Email List my decision to study Russian history is that at the University of Melbourne, where I was studying History, you had to study a foreign language. I wanted to learn German, but they wouldn't let me do it Country Email List because I didn't have a background – since it wasn't offered as part of the curriculum at my high school. So my parents suggested that I study Russian. The reason behind it was the emblematic episode of the Cold War in Australia: the defection of the Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov, which led to the Country Email List creation in 1954 of a Royal Commission on Espionage [ Royal Commission on Espionage].
In the hysteria that followed, some members Country Email List of Parliament began to question the loyalty of the person who headed the Department of Russian Language and Literature at the University of Melbourne. It was a kind of legally permitted Country Email List smear campaign. She was a Russian named Nina Mikhailovna Christesen, married to the director of a literary magazine who was a friend of my father. My parents, like other members of the Country Email List left-wing intelligentsia with college-age children, suggested that.
I study Russian so that Nina's number of Country Email List students would increase and things would be easier for her. So that's what I did. She took the first Russian course, which was all that was required. But after I finished that course, I thought, “I don't Country Email List know enough about the language to make it useful. I will also do the second year». And in fact, I took the second year in Russian, which gave me enough reading knowledge to take the risk of Country Email List dealing with a topic using Russian sources for my fourth year history research essay.