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.
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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.
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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
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