“It’s impossible to predict the past” (joke)
American political commentator Charles Krauthammer said at a McGill University COnvocation on June 14, 1993:
“In the old Soviet Union, where the commissars would routinely rewrite and rearrange history to fit their political needs, there was a saying: In Russia, it is impossible to predict the past.”
It’s not known where this saying originated. After a news story about the U.S. government’s lies, Krauthammer said in June 2016:
“The old joke was, ‘Everywhere else it’s impossible to predict the future, in the Soviet Union, impossible to predict the past.’ This is now happening in the U.S.”
Fall 1993, Public Interest, “Commencement at McGill” by Charles Krauthammer, pg. 107:
In the old Soviet Union, where the commissars would routinely rewrite and rearrange history to fit their political needs, there was a saying: In Russia, it is impossible to predict the past.
13 March 1994, New York (NY) Times, “Mutual Funds; Invoking a Muse to Explain Markets” by Carole Gould, pg. A14:
Looking to the investment climate ahead, he wrote: “The old Soviet Union regularly revised its history texts to reflect the political fashion of the moment, which led to the lament, `In Russia, it is impossible to predict the past.’”
14 April 2000, Washington (DC) Post, “Cold War Kid; The Elian case reminds us that we weren’t all that united against communism” by Charles Krauthammer, pg. A25:
The Cold War has been the subject of the most frantic rewriting of history since the days of the Soviet Union itself — the only place, it was once noted, where it was impossible to predict the past.
Google Groups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
the Elian rescue mission
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4/24/00
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>“The Soviet Union was the only place where it was
>impossible to predict the past.”
If only that were true….
Stan Knight
|“Those who control the past also control the future”|
George O.
|“History is no only what happened in the past|
|but who tells you what happened in the past” |
Don’t know who
Financial Times
June 21, 2013 6:23 pm
The Diary: John Thornhill
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As the Russians say, it is impossible to predict the past in our country, let alone the future.
Twitter
Bryan Fischer
@BryanJFischer
Thanks to our low-information education system, in America, as in the old USSR, it is impossible to predict the past.
8:00 AM - 3 Jul 2015
Pravda (Russia)
Did Solzhenitsyn urge the US to nuke the Soviet Union?
16.09.2015
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COMMENTS
kc4cvh . в 19:44 17 сентября 2015
The saying is true: Russia is the only country where it is impossible to predict the past.
Washington (DC) Free Beacon
Krauthammer Shreds State Department’s ‘Commitment to Transparency’
BY: Jack Heretik
June 1, 2016 7:48 pm
Columnist Charles Krauthammer tore apart the Obama administration’s so called “commitment to transparency” on Fox News’ Special Report in the wake of the State Department’s admission that they had removed a portion of a 2013 press briefing regarding deception over the Iran nuclear deal.
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“Look, this incident is so appalling, it’s almost comical. In the old Soviet Union, if Stalin decided he didn’t like you, you disappeared. But then you were airbrushed out of all the pictures, the photographs that had been taken in the past and this was a source of a lot of amusement in the West,” Krauthammer said. “The old joke was, ‘Everywhere else it’s impossible to predict the future, in the Soviet Union, impossible to predict the past.’ This is now happening in the U.S.”