|
12/07/2006
Alexander Solzhenitsyn...a look back
Note: Due to events in Russia, I’m changing the schedule a bit to
focus on the topic the next two weeks.
In my extensive archives, I realized I have a few speeches from
Alexander Solzhenitsyn that I posted back in February 2000.
This isn’t always easy material to digest. I commented then I
needed oxen to help pull myself through it, but his comments not
only still pertain to today’s Russia, but also the situation in Iraq
and the use of power by the West.
---
June 8, 1978. The scene is Harvard University where
Solzhenitsyn is giving the commencement address. He has been
in forced exile for about 4 years at this point. The U.S. has
emerged from the Vietnam War, depressed, unsure of its role in
the modern world. Inflation has been fueled by the power of
OPEC. And while diplomats talked of “detente,” certainly the
Cold War was still very much in tact.
As you read selected passages from his address, think to today.
The press (the intelligentsia) brutally panned Solzhenitsyn for
some of his highly critical comments. He seemed to receive a
somewhat better reception among the general public.
“Western society has chosen for itself the organization best
suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of
human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws;
such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired
considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law
(though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to
understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is
solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to
be the ultimate solution.”
“I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will
tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a
terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal
one is also less than worthy of man. A society based on the letter
of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage
of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is
too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society.
Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships,
this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes
man’s noblest impulses.”
“Today’s Western society has revealed the inequality between
the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A
statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly
constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even
timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to
him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the
press. He has to prove that his every step is well-founded and
absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person
who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get
any chance to assert himself: dozens of traps will be set for him
from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of
democratic restraints.”
On foreign affairs:
“The most cruel mistake (that the West has made...Ed., again,
Solzhenitsyn is saying this in 1978) occurred with the failure to
understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all
wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that the way
should be left open for national, or Communist, self-
determination in Vietnam (or in Cambodia, as we see today with
particular clarity). But in fact, members of the U.S. antiwar
movement became accomplices in the betrayal of Far Eastern
nations, in the genocide and the suffering today imposed on
thirty million people there. [Ed. see Pol Pot] Do these convinced
pacifists now hear the moans coming from there? Do they
understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to
hear? The American intelligentsia lost its nerve and as a
consequence the danger has come much closer to the United
States. But there is no awareness of this. Your short-sighted
politician who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly
gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a
hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. [Ed. this didn’t quite
materialize] Small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion
to mobilize the nation’s courage. But if the full might of America
suffered a full-fledged defeat at the hands of a small Communist
half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?”
“I have said on another occasion that in the twentieth century
Western democracy has not won any major war by itself; each
time it shielded itself with an ally possessing a powerful land
army, whose philosophy it did not question. In World War II
against Hitler, instead of winning the conflict with its own
forces, which would certainly have been sufficient, Western
democracy raised up another enemy, one that would prove worse
and more powerful, since Hitler had neither the resources nor the
people, nor the ideas with broad appeal, nor such a large number
of supporters in the West - a fifth column - as the Soviet Union
possessed. Some Western voices already have spoken of the need
of a protective screen against hostile forces in the next world
conflict; in this case, the shield would be China. But I would not
wish such an outcome to any country in the world. First of all, it
is again a doomed alliance with evil; it would grant the United
States a respite, but when at a later date China with its billion
people would turn around armed with American weapons,
America itself would fall victim to a Cambodia-style genocide.”
“And yet, no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the
West until it overcomes its loss of will power. In a state of
psychological weakness, weapons even become a burden for the
capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to
die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of
material well-being. Nothing is left, in this case, but concessions,
attempts to gain time, and betrayal. Thus at the shameful
Belgrade conference, free Western diplomats in their weakness
surrendered the line of defense for which enslaved members of
the Helsinki Watch Groups are sacrificing their lives.”
Source: “The World’s Great Speeches,” Edited by Lewis
Copeland et al.
This next segment deals with a piece Solzhenitsyn did for
Foreign Affairs in February 1980. Preceding his remarks are
comments of mine from 2000.
To begin with, I don’t agree with everything he wrote. And as
history later proved he was way too pessimistic about the ability
of the West to elect leaders of substance, i.e., Margaret Thatcher
and Ronald Reagan, who would not be afraid to confront the
abuses of the U.S.S.R. of 1980. Remember, this was early in the
year and the results of the upcoming presidential election in
America were still very much in doubt.
But the real reason for discussing Solzhenitsyn is to see what
parallels there are for today. When you read some of my selected
passages, you will be drawn to the Hot Spots of today. Why
should the West be wary and on guard at the emergence of
Vladimir Putin? Did we make a big mistake in not being more
forceful about Russia’s actions in Chechnya? Should the U.S.
kowtow to China? I have also included some interesting thoughts
on the behavior of the combatants in World War II. It would
behoove many of the political leader’s of today to read
some of Solzhenitsyn’s works.
---
On the West’s attitudes towards Communism.
“Two mistakes are especially common. One is the failure to
understand the radical hostility of communism to mankind as a
whole - the failure to realize that communism is irredeemable,
that there exist no ‘better’ variants of communism; that it is
incapable of growing ‘kinder,’ that it cannot survive as an
ideology without using terror, and that, consequently, to coexist
with communism on the same planet is impossible.”
“The second and equally prevalent mistake is to assume an
indissoluble [permanent] link between the universal disease of
communism and the country where it first seized control of
Russia.”
On the tendency of the West to dismiss the worst abuses of
communism.
“Until the most recent times the very existence of the Gulag
Archipelago, its inhuman cruelty, its scope, its duration, and the
sheer volume of death it generated, were not acknowledged by
Western scholarship....In overall evaluations of Soviet history
we still encounter the raptures with which ‘progressive’ public
opinion in Europe greeted the ‘dawning of a new life,’ even as
the terrorism and destruction of 1917-21 were at their height in
our country.”
On the Russian State before the advent of Lenin...and today,
looking ahead, the potential for Russia if it ever gets its act
together.
“Before the outbreak of war in 1914, Russia could boast of a
flourishing manufacturing industry, rapid growth and a flexible,
decentralized economy; its inhabitants were not constrained in
their choice of economic activities, significant progress had been
made in the field of workers’ legislation, and the material well-
being of the peasants was at a level which has never been
reached under the Soviet regime. Newspapers were free from
preliminary political censorship, there was complete cultural
freedom, the intelligentsia was not restricted in its activity,
religious and philosophical views of every shade were tolerated,
and institutions of higher education enjoyed inviolable
autonomy.”
On the role of foreign policy makers.
“I note here a tendency which might be called the ‘Kissinger
syndrome,’ although it is by no means peculiar to him alone.
Such individuals, while holding high office, pursue a policy of
appeasement and capitulation, which sooner or later will cost the
West many years and many lives, but immediately upon
retirement, the scales fall from their eyes and they begin to
advocate firmness and resolution. How can this be? What
caused the change? Enlightenment just doesn’t come that
suddenly! Might we not assume that they were well aware of the
real state of affairs all along, but simply drifted with the political
tide, clinging to their posts?”
On reports from Moscow.
“Moscow has come to be a special little world, poised
somewhere between the U.S.S.R. and the West: in terms of
material comfort it is almost as superior to the rest of the Soviet
Union as the West is superior to Moscow. However, this also
means that any judgments based on Moscow experiences must be
significantly corrected before they may be applied to Soviet
experience in general. Authentic Soviet life is to be seen only in
provincial towns, in rural areas, in the labor camps and in the
harsh conditions of the peacetime army.”
On the World War II end-game, the comments are useful when
one looks at the plight of some of the nations in the Caucasus
and their attitude towards the West today.
“[On the people who immediately fell under the control of
American and British forces]. Such men were in no sense
supporters of Hitler; their integration into his empire was
involuntary and in their hearts they regarded only the Western
countries as their allies (moreover they felt this sincerely, with
none of the duplicity of the communists). For the West,
however, anyone who wanted to liberate himself from
communism in that war was regarded as a traitor to the cause of
the West. Every nation in the U.S.S.R. could be wiped out for all
the West cared, and any number of millions could die in Soviet
concentration camps, just as long as it could get out of this war
successfully and as quickly as possible. And so hundreds of
thousands of these Russians and Cossacks, Tatars and Caucasian
nationals were sacrificed; they were not even allowed to
surrender to the Americans, but were turned over to the Soviet
Union, there to face reprisals and execution.”
“Even more shocking is the way the British and American armies
surrendered into the vengeful hands of the communists hundreds
of thousands of peaceful civilians, convoys of old men, women
and children, as well as ordinary Soviet POWs and forced
laborers used by the Germans - surrendered them against their
will, and even after witnessing the suicide of some of them....
At the time, it seemed more advantageous to buy off the
communists with a couple of million foolish people and in this
way to purchase perpetual peace. In the same way - and without
any real need - the whole of Eastern Europe was sacrificed to
Stalin.”
On China. While this statement was made in 1980, when the
U.S. was seen to be using China as a wedge against the U.S.S.R.,
there is much to chew on regarding today’s environment.
“American diplomacy has gambled on another shortsighted,
unwise - indeed mad - policy: to use China as a shield, which
means in effect abandoning the national forces of China as well
(Taiwan), and driving them completely under the communist
yoke. Where is the vaunted respect for the freedom of all
nations? But even in purely strategic terms this is a shortsighted
policy: a fateful reconciliation of the two communist regimes
could occur overnight, at which point they could unite in turning
against the West. But even without such a reconciliation, a
China armed by America would be more than a match for
America.” [Ed. “China armed by America?” Rather prescient.
Think stolen technology.]
Finally, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote the following back in
1990 for Time magazine. The Wall had collapsed.
“The clock of communism has tolled its final hour. But the
concrete structure has not completely collapsed. Instead of being
liberated, we may be crushed beneath the rubble.”
I think it’s fair to say that Russia is still having trouble removing
it.
Next week a more current view of Russia.
Brian Trumbore
|
