Americans in Revolutionary Petrograd International Conference European University at St. Petersburg 6-7 October 2017 Delusion: a false belief held despite strong evidence against it; self-deception. Americans badly misunderstood the revolutions in Russia in 1917. Both in Petrograd and in Washington Americans – including Ambassador David Francis, President Woodrow Wilson, and the foremost expert on Russia, George Kennan – euphorically proclaimed that the fall of the Romanov au

On the hit television series “All in the Family” in the 1970s, Rob Reiner played an unemployed leftist student whose blue-collar father-in-law, Archie Bunker, regularly called him “Meathead,” implying that he was “dead from the neck up.” In September 2017 Reiner and his Committee to Investigate Russia released a controversial video, which features actor Morgan Freeman declaring that “We are at war” with Russia. The video and the Committee deserve the “meathead” epithet for th