The claim that the only person who can know what is happening in a country is one who has been there is not even a half-truth, but it dies hard. It rests on the notion that “seeing is believing.” But those who make the claim overlook that it is a physical impossibility to “see” more than a microscopic part of the area of even the smallest country and equally an impossibility to know the life, work and thoughts of the population by "seeing" them. Moreover, the observer himself, even if supplied with full and accurate information and given free access to places and people, is useless if he does not know what to look for and how to interpret it. There are millions of workers who have lived in capitalist Britain all their lives, yet who hardly realise that capitalism exists, and who are quite content to vote for their own exploiters.
Soviet Union
