Something that I see the more I analyze history and totalitarian regimes is that people are more often brainwashed than not. Furthermore, they always convince themselves that they are in the right, everything around them is great, etc.
Something that came to my mind when reading the commentary on this and how they point out on numerous occasions of what they authenticity of this diary is, is a film called “Goodbye Lenin”. This is a film about the Berlin Wall falling, a women wakes up in a coma, the wall is gone, communism is over, but she was essentially a die-hard for Lenin and because of her heart, her kids did everything to make it seem like East Germany was still under communist rule. If this woman were to write a diary, her story would be very for the Soviet Party, even though life was not all that great.
They point out that the writer of the diary had everything taken away, they forged papers to live in Moscow. Do you think that the writer was kind of justifying this make believe, pro-Russia scenario in his mind? When you recall things, you may not make it out to be as bad as it was. We are so often told that these first hand accounts are the best to know what life was really like, so do you question this diary? Does it make you take these first-person accounts with a bit of hesitancy?
I think it is definitely possible that his mind protected him and justified some things that were not right, and put a happier light on some of the times in his childhood. I do not think he realizes this though, and he wrote it in his journal because it is real this way to him. Although I believe that the people who lived through it have the most wisdom about history, I don’t believe that they will always tell it as accurately as they may think. I question the diary a little bit just because if anything was written about even a week after it happened, he would not have the same feelings and emotions about it as if he wrote it that day. I do not think that first hand accounts should be taken with a grain of salt. I would say it is important to realize that this is someones opinion and their perspective, so it is important to believe that it may be skewed.