Solzhenitsyn - The Voice of Freedom [1975]

8/12/2019 Solzhenitsyn - The Voice of Freedom [1975]

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woAddressesby Aleksandr I Solzhenitsyn the Rus-sian novelist who won the Nobel Prize for 1970 and wasdeported by the Soviet Union in February 1974. On his firstvisit to the United States, Solzhenitsyn made two addressesunder AFL-CIO sponsorship. This pamphlet is the translation of those two speeches, the first in Washington D C., onJune 30. 1975 where he was introduced by AFL-CIO President George Meany next page), the second in New York Cityon July 9, 1975 where he was introduced by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Lane Kirkland Page 26 .

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' eed Ffr' l V ceeorge eany

hen we think of the historic struggles andconflicts of this century, we naturally think of famousleaders: men who governed nations, commanded armies and inspired movements in the defense of liberty,or in the service of ideologies which have obliteratedliberty.Yet, today, in this grave hour in human history,when the forces arrayed against the free spirit of manare more powerful; more brutal and more lethal thanever before, the single figure who has raised highestthe flame of liberty heads no state, commands no

army, and leads no movement that our eyes can see.But there is a movement a hidden movement ofhuman beings who have no offices and have no headquarters, who are not represented in the great hallswhere nations meet, who every day risk or suffermore for the right to speak, to think and to be themselves than any of us here are likely to risk in ourentire lifetime.Where are the members of this invisible movement?As we prepare tonight to honor the presence of one ofthem among us let us give some thought to the rest:to the mil1ions who are trapped in Soviet slave labor

camps; to the countless thousands drugged and straitjacketed in so-called insane asylums; to the multi-

tudes of voiceless workers who slave in the factoriesof the commissars; to all those who strain for bits andpieces of truth through the jammed frequencies offorbidden broadcasts, and who record and pass outlawed thoughts from hand-to-hand in the shadows oftyranny.

But if they remain invisible to us, we can hear themnow, for there has come forth from under the rubbleof oppression a voice that demands to be heard, avoice that will not be denied.We heed this voice not because it speaks for theleft or the right or for any faction, but because it hurlstruth and courage into the teeth of total p0wer whenit would be so much easier and more comfortable tosubmit and to embrace the lies by which that powerlives.What is the strength of this voice? How has itbroken through to us when Dthers have been stilled?Its strength is art.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is not a crusader. He is nota politician. He is not a general. He is an artist.Solzhenitsyn's art illuminates the truth. t is in asense, subversive: Subversive of hypocrisy, subversi eof delusion, subversive of the Big Lie.No man in modern times and very few in all oi


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America: You Mus Think About the Worldost of those present here today are workers.

Creative workers. And I myself, having spent ma nyyears of my life as a stone cutter, as a foundryman.as a manual worker, in the name of all who haveshared this forced labor with me. like the two Gulagprisoners whom you just saw, and on behalf of thosewho are doing forced labor in our country, Tcan startmy speech today with the greeting: B r o t h e r s ~ "Brothers in Labor."

And not to forget, also, the many honored guestspresent here tonight, let me add: "Ladies and Gentlemen."

"Workers of the world unite " Who of us has notheard this slogan, \Vhich has been sounding throughthe world for 25 years? Today you can find it in anySoviet pamphlet as well as in every issue of Pravda.But never have the leaders of the Communist revolution in the Soviet Union made application of thesewords sincerely and in their full meaning. \Vhen manylies have accumulated ov er the decades, we forget theradical and basic lie which is not on the leaves of thetree, but at its very roots.

Now, it s a lmo st impossible to remember or to believe . . . For instance, I recently published- hadreprinted a pamphlet from the year 9 8. This wasa precise record of a meeting of all representatives of

the Petrograd factories, that being the city known inour country as the 'cradle of the Revolution.'I repeat, this was March 1918- only four monthsafter the October Revolution-and all the representatives of the Petrograd factories were cursing the Communists, who had deceived them in all of their promise s What is more, not on ly had they abandonedPetrograd to cold and hunger, themselves hav ing fledfrom Petrograd to Moscow, but had given orders tomachinegun the crowds of workers in the courtyardsof the factories who were demanding the election ofindependent factory committees.

Let me remind yo u, this was March 1918. Scarcelyanyone now can recall the crushing of the Petrogradstrikes in 1921 or the shooting of workers in Kolpinoin the same year.

Among the leadership, the Central Committee ofthe Communist P arty, at the beginning of the Revolution, all were em igre intellectuals who had returned.after the uprisings had already broken out in Russia.in order to carry through the Communist Revolution.One of them was a genuine worker, a highly ski lledlathe operator until the last day of his life. This ~ : :Alexander Shliapnikov. Who knows that name t < . . d . ~ ?Precisely because he expressed th e true in tere ts .:f Iheworkers within the Communist leaderihip. :r: e

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years before the Revolution it was Shliapnikov whoran the whole Communist Party in Russia-not Lenin,who was an emigre. In 192 I he headed the Workers'Opposition which was charging the Communist leadership with betraying the workers' interests, withcrushing and oppressing the proletariat and transforming itself into a bureaucracy.Shliapnikov disappeared from sight. He was arrested somewhat later and since he firmly stood hisground he was shot in prison and his name is perhapsunknown to most people here today. But I remindyou: before the Revolution the head of the Communist Party of Russia was Shliapnikov-not Lenin.

Since that time, the working class has never beenable to stand up for its rights, and in distinction fromall the western countries our working class only receives what they hand out to it. I t only gets handouts.It cannot defend its simplest, everyday interests, andthe least strike for pay or for better living conditionsis viewed as counter-revolutionary. Thanks to theclosed nature of the Soviet system, you have probablynever heard of the textile strikes in 1930 in lvanovo,or of the 1961 worker unrest in Murom and Alexandrovo, or of the major workers' uprising in Novocherkassk in 1962- this in the time of Khrushchev,after the thaw.

This story will shortly be published in detail in yourcountry in Gulag Archipelago, volume 3. I t is a storyof how workers went in a peaceful demonstration to4

the Party City Committee, carrying portraits of Lenin,to request a change in economic conditions. Theyfired at them with machine guns and dispersed thecrowds with tanks. No family dared even to collectits wounded and dead, but all were taken away insecret by the authorities .Precisely to those present here I don t have to explain that in our country, since the Revolution, there'snever been such a thing as a free trade union.The leaders of the British trade unions are free toplay the unworthy game of visiting Russia's so-called

trade unions and receiving visits in return . But theAFL-CIO has never given in to these illusions.

The American workers' movement has never allowed itself to be blinded and to mistake slavery forfreedom. And I, today, on behalf of al l of our oppressed people, thank you for this

\Vhen liber l thinkers and wise men of the West,who had forgotten the meaning of the word "liberty,"were swearing that in the Soviet Union there were noconcentration camps at , the American Federationof Labor, published in 1947, a map of our conccntra-.tion camps, and on behalf of all of the prisoners ofthose times, I want to thank the American workers'movement for this.But just as we feel ourselves your allies here, therealso exists another alliance- at first glance a strangeone, a surprising one- but if y u think about it, infact, one which is well-grounded and easy to under-


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stand: this is the all iance between our Communistleaders and your capitalist s .

This alliance is not new. The very famous ArmandH am mer who is flourishing here today, laid the basisfor this when he made the first exploratory trip in toRu ssia still in Lenin s time, in the very first years oft he Revolution. He was extremely successful in thi sintelligence mission an d since that time for a ll these50 years we observe continuous and steady supportby the businessmen of the West of th e Soviet Communist leaders.

Their clumsy and awkward economy, which couldnever overcome its own difficulties by itself is continually getting material and techn ological assistance.Th e major construction projects in the initial fiveyear plan were buil t exclusively with America n technology and materials. Even Stalin recognized that twothirds of what was needed was obtained from theWest. And if today the Soviet Union has powerfulmilitary and police fo rce in a country w ich is bycontemporary standards poor- they a rc used to crushour movement for freedom in the Sov iet Union- andwe have weste rn capital to thank for this also.

et me remind you of a recent incident which someof you may have seen in the ne wspapers althoughothers might have missed it: Certain of yo ur bu sine ssmen on their own initiative established an exh ibit ionof criminolog ical technology in Moscow. Th is was th e

most recent and elaborate technology which here, in.your count ry is used to catch criminals to bug them,to spy on them, to ph otograph them, to tail them toidentify criminals. Th is was taken to Moscow to anexhibition in order that the Soviet KGB agents co uldst udy it as if not understanding what so rt of criminalswho would be hunted b y the KGB

The Soviet government was extremely interested inthi s technology and decided to purchase it. And yourbu sinessmen were quite willing to sell it. Only when afew sober vo ices here raised an up roar against it wasthi s deal bl ocked. Only for this reason it didnt takeplace. But you have to realize how clever the KGBis. This technology didn t have to stay two or threeweeks in a Soviet bu ilding under Sov iet guard . Twoor three nights were enough for the KGB there to lookthrough it and copy it. And if today persons are beinghunted do wn by the b est and most advanced technology for this I can also thank your western capitalists.

This is someth ing which is almost incomprehensibleto the human mind: that burning greed for profitwh ich goes beyond all reason all se lf-control allconscience on ly to get money.

I must say that Lenin foretol d thi s whole proce,s.Lenin who spent most of is life in the West and n o ~in Ru ssia who kn ew the West much better thansia always w rote and said that the ,,.e tern car :ali-iwould do anything to strengthen the e o n o m ~ of "


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USSR. T hey will compete with each other to sell usgoods cheaper and sell them quicker, so that theSoviets will buy from one rather than from the other.He said: They will bring it themselves without think-ing about their future. And, in a difficult moment, at aparty meeting in Moscow, he said: "Comrades, don'tpanic, when things go very hard for us, we will givea rope to the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie willhang itself.

Then, Karl Radek, whom you may have heard of,who was a very resourceful wit, said: "Vladimirllyich, but where arc we going to get enough rope tohang the whole bourgeoisie?''

Lenin effortlessly replied, "They'll supply us withit."hrough the decades of the 1920s, the 1930s, the1940s. the 1950s. the whole oYiet press wrote: West-

ern capitalism, your end is near.But it was as if the capitalists had not heard, could

not understand, could not believe this .Nikita Khrushchev came here and said , "We will

bury you '' Th ey didn't believe that, either. They tookit as a joke.

Now, of course, they have become more clever inour country. Now they don't say "we are going tobury you" anymore, now they say "detente.

Nothing has changed in Communist ideology. Thegoals are the same as they were, but instead of the6


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ar tless Khrushchev, who cou ldn't hold his tongue,now they say detente.In order to understand this I will take the liber tyof making a short historic survey-the history of suchrelations, which in different periods have been calledtrade, stabilization of the situation, recognitionof realities,' ' and now detente. These relations noware at least 40 years old.me remind you with what sort of system theystarted.The system was installed by armed uprising.

t dispersed the Constituent Assembly.It capitulated to Germany- the common enemy.t introduced execution without trial.It crushed workers' strikes.

It plundered the villagers to such an unbelievableextent that the peasants revolted, and when this hap-pened it crushed the peasants in the bloodiest possibleway.It shattered the Church.

t reduced 20 provinces of our country to a condi tion of famine.This was in 1921 , the famous Volga fam ine. A verytypical Communist technique: To seize power without

thinking of the fact that the productive forces wi llcollapse, that the fie lds will not be sown, the factorieswi ll stop, that the country will decline into povertyand famine-but when poverty and hunger come, thenthey request the humanitarian world to help them.

We see this in North Vietnam today, perhaps Portugalis approaching this also. And the same thing happenedin Russia in 1921. When the three-year civi l war,started by the Communi t and civil war '' was aslogan of the Communists, civil war was Lenin's purpose; read Lenin, this was his aim and his sloganwhen they had ruined Russia by this civil war, thenthey asked America, America, feed our hungry.And indeed, generous and magnanimous America didfeed our hungry.The so-called American Relief Administration wasset up, headed by your future President Hoover, andindeed many millions of Russian lives were saved bythis organization of yours.

But what sort of gratitude did you receive for this?n the USSR not only did they try to erase this wholeevent from the popular memory-it's almost impossible today in the Soviet press to find any referenceto the American Relief Administration-but theyeven denounce it as a clever spy organization, a cleverscheme of American imperialism to set up a spy network in Russia. I repeat, it was a system that introduced concentration camps for the first time in thehistory of the world.

system that in the 20th Century, was the first tointroduce the use of hostages, that is to say, not toseize the person whom they were seeking, but rathera member of his family or someone at random, and7


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shoot that person.This system of hostages and persecution of thefamily exists to this day. t is still the most powerfulweapon of persecution, because the bravest person,who is not afraid for himself, still shivers at the threatto his family.

t is a system which was the first- long beforeHitler to employ fa lse registration, that is, to say :Such and such people have to come in to register "People would comply and then they were taken awayto be annihilated.We didn't have gas chambers in those days. Weuseq barges. A hundred or a thousand persons wereput into a barge and then it was sunk .It was a system which deceived the workers in allof its decrees- the decree on land, the decree onpeace, the decree on factories, the decree on freedomof the press .

t was a system which exterminated all additionalparties, and let me make it clear to you that it notonly disbanded the par ty itself, but destroyed its members. All members of every other party were exterminated. It was a system which carried out genocide ofthe peasantry; 15 million peasants were sent off toextermination.

Tt was a system which introduced serfdom, the socaiJed "passport system."It was a system which, in time of peace, artificiallycreated a famine, causing 6 million persons to die in8

the Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 . They died on th e veryedge of Europe. And Europe didn't even notice it.The world didn't even notice i t 6 million personsI could keep on enumerating these endlessly, but Ihave to stop because I have come to the year 1933when, with all have enumerated behind us, yourPresident Roosevelt and your Congress recognizedthis system as one worthy of diplomatic recognition,of friendship and of assistance.Let me remind you that the great Washington didnot agree to recognize the French Convention becauseof its savagery. Let rrie remind you that in 1933,voices were raised in your country objecting to recognition of the Soviet Union. However, the recognition took place and this was the beginning of friendship and ultimately of a military allianceLet us remember that in 1904, the American presswas delighted at the Japanese victories and everyonewanted Russia's defeat because it was a conservativecountry I want to remind you that in 1914 reproacheswere directed at France and England for having entered into an alliance with such a conservative country as Russia.he scope nd the direction of my speech todaydo not permit me to say more about pre-revolutionaryRussia. I will just say that information about prerevolutionary Ru ssia was obtained by the West frompersons who were either not sufficiently competent or


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not sufflciently conscientious. will just cite for thesake of comparison a number of figures which youca n read for yourself in Gulag Archipelago, volume1, which has been publi shed in the United States, andperhaps many of you may have read i t. These are thefigures :

According to calculations by specialists, b ased onthe most precise objective statistics, in pre-revolutionary Russia, during the 80 years before the revolution- years of the revolutionary movement when therewere attempts on the Tsar' s life, ass assination of aT'sa r, revolution- du ring these years about 17 personsa year were executed. The famous Spanish Inquisi tion,during the decades when it was at the height of itspersecution, destroyed perhaps 10 pe rsons a month.In the Archipelago- } cite a book wh ich was published y the Cheka in 1920, proudly reporting on itsrevolu tionary work in 1918 and 1919 and apologizingthat its da ta were not quite complet in 19 18 and191 9 the Cheka executed, without tri al more than athousand pe rsons a month This was written by theCheka itself, before jt understood how th is wouldlook to history.

At the height of Stalin s terror in 1937-38, if wedivide the number of persons executed by the numberof months, we get more than 40 ,000 persons shot permonth Here are the figu res : 17 a yea r, J0 a month,more than 1,000 a month, more than 40,000 a monthThus, that which had made it difficult fo r the demo-


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cratic West to form an alliance with pre-revolutiona ryRu ssia had, by 194 1, grown to such an extent andstill did not prevent the entire united democracy ofthe world-England, France, the United States, Canada, Australia and small countries-from enteringinto a military alliance with the Soviet Union. H O \V isthis to b e explained? How can we understand it?Here we can offer a few explanations. The first, Ithink, is that the entire united democracy of the worldwas too weak to fight against Hitler's Germany alonef this is the case, then it is a terrible sign. It is aterrible portent for the present day. f all these countries together could not defeat Hitler's little Germany,

what are they going to do today, when more thanhalf the globe is flooded with totalitarianism? I don 'twant to accept thi s explanation.

The second explanation is perhaps that there wassimply an attack of panic o f fear- among the statesmen of the day. They simply didn't have sufficientconfidence in themselves, they simply had no st rengthof spirit, and in t is confused state decided to enterinto an alliance with Soviet totalitarianism. This isalso not flattering to the West.

Finally, the third explanation is that it was a deliberate device. Democracy did not want to defend itself.For defense it wanted to use another totalitarian system, the Soviet totalitarian system.

I'm not talking now about the moral evaluation ofthis, l 'm going to talk about that later. But in terms1

of simple calculation, how shortsighted, what profoundself deceptionWe have a Russian proverb: Do not call a wolf tohelp you against the dogs." f dogs are attacking andtearing at you, fight against the dogs, but do not calla wolf for help. Because when the wolves come, theywill destroy the dogs, but they will also tear you apart.

orld democracy could have defeated one totalitarian regime after another, the German, then theSoviet. lnstead, it strengthened Soviet totalitarianism,helped bring into existence a third totalitarianism,that of China, and all this finally precipitated the present world situation.

Roosevelt, in Teheran, during one of his last tOasts,said the following: I do not doubt that the three ofus -meaning Roosevelt, Churchil1 and Stalin leadour peoples in accordance with their desires, jn accordance with their aims. '' How are we to explain this?Let the historian s worry about that. At the time, welistened and were astonished. We thought, when wereach Europe, we will meet the Americans, and wewill te11 them." I was among the troops that weremarching towards the Elbe. A little bit more and Iwould have reached the Elbe and would have shakenthe hands of your American soldiers. But just before

- 0that happened, J was taken off to prison and my meet-ing did not take place.But now, after all this great delay, the same hand


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zen understood that this was a sly device which madeit possible for North Vietnam to take over South Vietnam when it so chose. And suddenly, this was re -warded by the Nobel Prize for Peace-a tragic andl fOnJc pnze.A very dangerous state of mind can arise as a resultof this 30 years of retreat: give in as quickly as possible, give up as quickly as possible, peace and quietat any cost.

i s is wh t m ny western papers wrote: Let'shu rry up an end the bloodshed in Vietnam and havenational unity there." But at the Berlin \Vall no onetalked of national unity. One o[ your leading newspapers, after the end of Vietnam, had a full headline:The Blessed Silence." 1 would not wish that kind of"blessed silence" on my worst enemy. I would not

vvish that kind of national unity on my worst enemy.I spent years in the Archipelago, and for halfof my lifetime I have studied this question. Looking atthis terrible tragedy in Vietnam from a distance, Ican tell you, a miiiion persons will be simply exterminated, while 4 to 5 million (in accordance with thescale of Vietnam) will find themselves in concentration camps and will be rebuilding Vietnam. And whatis happening in Cambodia you already know. It isgenocide. It is full and complete destruction but in anew form. Once again their technology is not up tobuilding gas chambers. So, in a few hours, the entire12

capital city he guilty capital city- is emptied out:old people, women, children are driven out withoutbelongings, without food. Go and die "This is very dangerous for one's view of the worldwhen this feeling comes on: Go ahead, give it up.We already hear voices in your country and in the

West- Give up Korea and we will Jive quietly. Giveup Portugal, of course; give up Japan, give up Israel,give up Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand,give up 10 more African countries. Just let us live inpeace and quiet. Just let us drive our big cars on oursplendid highways; just let us play tennis and golf, inpeace and qu.iet; just let us mix our cocktails in peaceand quiet as we are accustomed to doing; just let ussee the beautiful toothy sm ile with a glass in hand onevery advertisement page of our magazines."ut look how things have turned out: Now in theWest this has all turned into an accusation against theUnited States. Now, in the West, we hear very manyvoices saying, It's your fault, America." And, here,I must decisively defend the United States against ,these accusations.I have to say that the United States, of all thecountries of the West, is the least guilty in all this

and has done the most in order to prevent it. TheUnited States has helped Europe to win the First andthe Second World Wars. It twice raised Europe frompost-war destruction-twice-for 10, 20, 30 years


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Solzhenitsyn and his wife tour Washington D.C. with and Mrs. Mstis lav Rostropovich the famed Russian cewho provided Solzhenitsyn with a place to live and writRussia after the USSR Writers Union expelled him in 1


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it has stood as a shield protecting Europe whileEuropean countries were counting their nickels, toavoid paying for their armies (better yet to have noneat all) to avoid paying for armaments, thinking abouthow to leave NATO, knowing that in any case America will protect them anyway. These countries startedit all, despite their thousands of years of civilizationand culture, even though they are closer and shouldhave known better.I came to your continent- for two months I havebeen trave11ing in its wide open spaces and I agree:h e r ~ you do not feel the nearness of it all, the immediacy of it a11 And here it is possible to miscalculate. Here you must make a spiritual effort to understand the acuteness of the world situation. The UnitedStates of America has long shown itself to be themost magnanimous, the most generous country in theworld. Wherever there is a flood, an earthquake, afire, a natural disaster, disease, who is the first tohelp? The United States. Who helps the most andunselfishly? The United States.

And what do we hear in reply? Reproaches, curses,Yankee Go Home. American cultural centers are

burned, and the representatives of the Third Worldjump on tables to vote against the United States.

But this does not take the load off America'sshoulders. The course of history- whether you like itor not ha s made you the leaders of the world. Yourcountry can no longer think provincially. Your politi- 4

cal leaders can no longer think only of their ownstates, of their parties, of petty arrangements whichmay or may not lead to promotion. You must thinkabout the whole world, and when the new politicalcrisis in the world will arise (I think we have justcome to the end of a very acute crisis and the mextone will come any moment) the main decisions willfall anyway on the shoulders of the United States ofAmerica.

And while already here, I have heard some explanations of the situation. Let me quote some ofthem: I t is impossible to protect those who do nothave the wm to defend themselves. I agree with that,but this was said about South Vietnam. Tn one-halfof today's Europe and in three-quarters of today'sworld the will to defend oneself is even less than itwas jn South Vietnam.

We are told: We cannot defend those who areunable to defend themselves with their own humanresources. But against the overwhilming powers oftotalitarianism, when all of this power is thrownagainst a country-no country can defend itself withits own resources. For instance, Japan doesn't have astanding army.

We are told, We should not protect those who donot have full democracy. This is the most remarkableargument of the lot. This is the Leitmotif I hear inyour newspapers and in the speeches of some of yourpolitical leaders. Who in the world, ever, on the front


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line of defense against totalitarianism has been ableto sustain full democracy? You, the united democracies of the world, were not able to sustain it. America,England, France, Canada, Australia together did notsustain it At the first threat of Hi tlerism, you stretchedout your hands to Stalin. You ca ll that sustainingdemocracy?And there is more of the same (there were manyof these speeches in a row) : I f the Soviet D_nion isgoing to use detente for its own ends, then we

But what will hap pen then? Th e Soviet Union hasused detente in its own interests, is using it now andwill continue to use it in its own interests For example, China and the Soviet Union , both activelyparticipating in detente, have quietly grabbed threecountries of Indochina. True, perhaps as a consolation, China will send you a ping-pong team. And justas the Soviet Un ion once sent you the pilots who oncecrossed the North Pole, in a few days you're flyinginto space togethe r. A typical diversion. I remember very well the year,this was Ju ne of 1937 , when Chkalov, Baidukov andBeliakov heroically flew over the North Pole and

landed in the state of Washington. This was the veryyear when Stalin was executing more than 40 ,000persons a month. And Stalin knew what he was duing.He sent those pilots and aroused in you a naivedelight- the friendship of two countries across theNorth Pole. Th e pilots were heroic, nobody wi l say

anything against them. But this was a show-a showto divert you from the real events of 1937. And whatis the occasion now? Js it an anniversary 3 8 years?Is 38 years some kind of an anniversary? No, it issimply necessary to cover up Vietnam . And, onceagain, those pi lots were sent here. The Chka lov Memorial was unveiled in the State of Washington. Chkalovwas a hero and is worthy of a memorial. But, topresent the true picture, behind the memorial th ereshould have been a wall and on it there should havebeen a bas re lief shO\ving the executions, showing theskulls and bones.We are also told (I apologize for so many quotes,but there are many more in your press and radio) :

We cannot ignore the fact that No rth Vietnam andthe Khmer Rouge have viol ated the agreement , butwe 're ready to look in to the future." What does thatmean? It means: let them exterminate people. Bu t ifthese murderers who live by violence, these executioners, offer us detente we will be happy to go alongwith them. As Willy Brandt once said: I would evenbe willing to have detente with Stalin.'' At a time whenStalin was executing 40,000 a month he would havebeen willing to have detente with Stalin?

Lo ok into the future. This is how th ey looked intothe future in 1933 and 1941, but it was a shortsighted look into the future. This is how they lookedinto the futu re two yea rs ago when a senseless, incomp rehensible, non-guaranteed truce in Vietnam was

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arranged, and it was a shortsighted view. There wassuch a hurry to ma ke this truce that they forgot toliberate your own Americans from captivity. Theywere in such a hurry to sign this document that some1,300 Americans, Well, they have van ished; we canget by without them. H ow is that done? How canthis be? Part of them, indeed, ca n be missing in action,but the lead ers of North Vietnam themselves haveadmitted that some of them are still being kept inpr ison. And do they give you back your countrymen?No, they are no t givi ng them back. and they arealways raising new conditions. At first they sa id,

Remove Th ieu from power. Now. they say, Havethe United States restore Vietnam, otherwise it's verydifficult for us to find these people.

f the government of North Vietnam has difficultyexplaining to you what happened wi th you r b rothers,with your American POWs who have not yet returned,I, on the ba sis of my experience in the Archipelago,can explain this quite clearly. Th ere is a law in theArchipelago that those who have been treated themost harshly and who have withstood the most br ave-ly, th e most honest , the most courageous, the mostunbending, never again come out into the world. Theyare never aga in shown to the world bec ause they willtell such ta les as the human mind cannot accept. Apart of your returned POWs told you that they weretortured. Th is means that those who have remainedwere tortured even more, but did not yield an inch.6

These are your best people. T hese are your firstheroes, who, in a solitary combat, have stood thetest. And today, unfortunately, they cannot take courage from our applause. They can't hear it from th eirsolitary cells where they may either die or sit 30 years,like Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat whowas seized in 1945 in the Soviet Union. He has beenimprisoned fo r 30 years and they will not yield him up.

And you have some hysterical public figure whosaid: I will go to North Vietnam. I will stand on myknees and beg them to release our prisoners of war.This isn't a political act-this is masochism.

To understand properly what detente h as meant allthese 40 years-friendships, stabilization of the situa-tion, trade, etc . wo uld have to tell you something,which you have never seen or heard, of how it lookedfrom the other side. Let me tell you how it looked.Mere acquaintance with an American, and God for-bid tha t you should sit with him in a cafe or restaur ant ,meant a 10-year term for suspicion of espionage .In the first vo lume of Archipelago tell of an eventwhich was not told me by some arrested person, butby all of the members of the Supreme Court of theU R during those short days when I was in thelim elight under Khrushchev. One Soviet citizen wasin the Un ited States and on his return said that inthe United States they have wonderful automobilero ads . The KGB arrested him and demanded a termof 10 years. But the judge said: I don't object, ut


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there is not enough evidence. Couldn't you find something else against him? ' So the judge was exiled toSakhalin because he dared to argue and they gavethe other man 10 years. Can you imagine what a liehe told? And what sor t of praise this was of Americanimperialism-in America there are good roads? Tenyears.In 1945-46 through our prison cells passed a lotof pcrsons- a:1d these were not one who were coopcrating with Hitler, although there were some of those,too These were not guilty of anyt hing, but ratherpersons who had just been in the West and had beenliberated from German prison camps by the Amedcans. This was considered a criminal act : liberatedby the Americans. That means he has seen the goodlife. Tf he comes back he wil l talk about it. The mostterrible thing is not what he did but what he wouldtalk about. And all such p ~ r s o s got 10-year terms.

During Nixon's ]ast visit to Moscow your Americancorrespondents were reporting in the western way fromthe streets of Moscow. T am going down a Russianstreet with a microphone and asking the ordinarySoviet citizen: ''Tell me please, what do you thinkabout the meeting between Nixon and Brezhnev?"And , amazingly, every last person answered: "Wonderful :- I'm delighted. I'm absolutely overjoyed "

What does this mean? l T m going down a streetin Moscow and some American comes up to me witha microphone and asks me something, then I know

that on the other side of him is a member of the statesecurity, also with a microphone who is recordingeverything I say . You think that I'm going to saysomething that is going to put me in prison immediately? Of course T say : "It's wonderful; I'm overjoyed.''

But what is the value of such correspondents if theysimply transfer western techniques over there withoutthinking things through?

You helped us for many years with Lend Lease,but we've now done everything to forget this , to eraseit from our minds, not to remember it if at all possible. And now, before I came into this hall, I delayed my visit to Washington a little in order to firsttake a look at some ordinary parts of America, goingto various states and simply talking with people. Iwas lold, and 1 learned this for the first time, that inevery state during the war years there were SovietAmerican friendship societies which ~ l l e t e d assistance for Soviet people- warm clothes, canned food,gifts and sent them to the Soviet Union. But w notonly never saw these; we not only never receivedthem (they were distributed somewhere among theprivileged circles) no one ever even told us that thiswas being done. I only learned about it for the fi rsttime here, this month, in the Un ited States.

Everything poisonous which could be said aboutthe United States was said in Stalin's days. And allof this is a heavy sediment which can be stirred up

7


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anytime. A ny day the newspape rs can com e out withthe headlines: Bloodthirsty American imperialismwants to seize control of the world, and this poisonwill ris e up from the sediment and many people inou r country will believe this and will be poisonedby it and will consider you as aggressor s. This ishow detente has been managed on our side.

The Sov iet system is so closed that it is almostimpossible for you to un derstand from here. Yourtheoreticians and scholars write works trying to under-stand and explain how things occur there. Here aresome naive explanations which arc simply funny toSoviet citizens. Some say that the Soviet leaders havenow given up their inhumane ideology. Not at all.Th ey have n't given it up one bit.

Some say that in the Krem li n there are some onthe left so me on the right . And they are ighting witheach other and we've got to behave in such a way asnot to interfere with those on the left side. This is

ll fantasy: left ri ght. There is som e sort of astruggle for power but they all agree on the essentials.There also exists the following theory that no w

thanks to the growth of technology there is a tech-nocracy in the Soviet Union a growing number ofengineers and the engineers arc now runnin g the econ-omy and will soon determine the fate of the countryra ther than the party. I w tell you though, thatthe engineers determine the fate of the economy justas much as our generals determ ine the fate of the


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Army. That means zero. Everything is done the waythe party demands. That's our system. Judge it foryourselfIt s a syst m wh r for 40 years there haven't beengenuine elections but simply a comedy, a farce. Thusa system which has no legislative organs. It's a sys-tem without an independent press; a system withoutan independent j u d i c i r y ~ where the people have nointluence either on external or .internal p o l i c y ~ whereany thought which is different from what the statethinks is crushed.

And let me tell you that electronic bugging in ourcountry is such a simple thing that it s a matter ofeveryday life. You had an instance in the UnitedStates where a bugging caused an uproar which lastedfor a year and a half. For us it 's an everyday matter.Almost every apartment, every in st itution ha s got itsbug and it doesn t surprise us in the least w e areused to it.

It 's a system where unmasked butchers of millionslike Molotov and others smaller than him have neverbeen tried in the courts but retire on tremendouspensions in the greatest comfort. Tt s a system wh erethe show still goes on today and to which everyforeigner is introduced surrounded by a couple ofplanted agents working according to a set scenar io.It's a system where the very constitution has neverbeen carried out for one single d y ~ where all the

decisions mature in secrecy, high up in a small irr -sponsible group and then are released on us and onyou like a bolt of lightning.

And what are the signatures of such persons worth?How could one rely on their s ignatures to documentsof detente? You yourselves might ask your specialistsnow and they ]] tell you that precisely in recent yearsthe Soviet Union has succeeded in creating wonderfulchemical weapons, missiles, which arc eve n better thanthose used by the United States.

So what are we to conclude from thnt? Is detenteneeded or not? Not only is it needed , it s as necessaryas air. lt's the only way of saving the e r th insteadof a world war to have detente, but a true detente,and if it has already been ruined by the bad wordwhich we use for i t - detente then we should findanother word for it.I would say that there arc very few, only three,main characteristics of such a true detente.

In the first place , there would be disarmamentnot only disarmament from the use of war but alsofrom the use of violence. We must stop using not onlythe sort of arms which are used to de stroy one'sneighbors, but the sort of arms which are used tooppress one's fellow countrymen. t is not detente iwe here with you today can spend our time agreeablywhile over there people are groaning and dying andin psychjatdc hospitals. Doctors are making theirevening rounds, for the third time injecting peop:c


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with drugs which destroy their brain cells.The second sign of detente, T would say, is thefollowing: that it be not one based on smiles, no t onverbal concessions, but t has to be based on a firm

foundation. You know the words from the Bible:Build not on sand, but on rock. There has to be

a guarantee that this will not be broken overnightand for this the other side- the other party to theagreement-must have its acts subject to public opinion, to the press, and to a freely elected parliament.And until such control exists there is absolutely noguarantee.

The third simple condition-what sort of detente isit when they employ the sort of inhumane propagandawhich s proudly called in the Soviet Union ideological warfare. Let us not have that. f we're going tobe friends, let's be friend s, if we're going to have detente, then let's have detente, and an end to ideological warfare.he oviet Union and the Communist countries can

conduct negotiations. Th ey know how to do this. Fora long time they don't make any concessions and thenthey give in a little bit. Then everyone says triumphantly, Look, they've made a concession; it's time tosign . The European negotiators of the 35 countriesfor two years now have painfully been negotiating andtheir nerves were stretched to the breaking point andthey finaiiy gave in. A few women from the Commu-20

nist countries can now marry foreigners. And a fewnewspapermen are now going to be permitted to travela little more than before. They give 1/ 1 OOOth ofwhat natural law should provide. Matters which people should be able t.o do even before such negotiations are undertaken. And already there is joy. Andhere in the West we hear many voices, saying: Look,they're making concessions; it's time to sign.

During these two years of negotiations, in all thecountries of eastern Europe, the pressure has increased, the oppression intensified, even in Yugoslaviaand Romania, leaving aside the other countries. Andit is precisely now that the Austrian chancellor says,We've got to sign this agreement as rapidly aspossible.

What sort of an agreement would this be? Theproposed agreement is the funeral of eastern Europe.It means that western Europe would finally, once andfor all, sign away eastern Europe, stating that it isperfectly willing to see eastern Europe be crushedand overwhelmed once and for a11 but please don'tbother us. And the Austrian chancellor thinks thatif all these countries are pushed into a mass grave,Austria at the very edge of this grave will surviveand not fall into it also.

And we, from our lives there, have concluded thatviolence can only be withstood by firmness.You have to understand the nature of communism. The very ideology of communism, all of Lenin's


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teachings, are that anyone is considered to be a foolwho doesn't take what's lying in front of him. f youcan take it, take it. f you can attack, attack. But ifthere's a wall, then go back. And the Communistleaders respect only firmness anci have contempt andlaugh at persons who continually give in to them.Your people are now saying-and this is the lastquotation I am going to give you from the statementsof your Jeaders- Power, without any attempt at con-ci li ation, will lead to a world conflict. But I wouldsay that power with continual subservience is nopower at all.ut from our experien e I can tell you that onlyfirmness will make it possible to withstand the assaults

of Communist totalitarianism. We see many historicexamples, and let me give you some of them. Look atlittle Finland in 1939, which by its own forces with-stood the attack. You, in 1948, defended Berlin onlyby your firmness of spirit, and there was no worldconflict. In Korea in 1950 you stood up against theCommunists, only by your firmness, and there wasno world conflict. In 1962 you c0mpelled the rocketsto be removed from Cuba. Again it was only firmness,and there was no world conflict. And the late KonradAdenauer conducted firm negotiations with Khrush-chev and thus started a genuine detente with Khrush-chev. Khrushchev started to make concessions and ifhe hadn't been removed, that winter he was planning

to go to Germany and to continue the genuine detente.Let me remind you of the weakness of a man whosename is rarely associated with weakness-the weak-ness of Lenin . Lenin, when he came to power, inpanic gave up to Germany everything Germanywanted. Just what it wanted. Germany took as much

as it wanted and said, Give Armenia to Turkey. AndLenin said, Fine. It's almost an unknown fact butLenin petitioned the Kaiser to act as intermediary topersuade the Ukraine and, thus, to make possiblea boundary between the Communist part of Russiaand the Ukraine. t wasn't a question of seizing theUkraine but rather of making a boundary with theUkraine.

We, we the dissidents of the USSR, don't have anytanks, we don't have any weapons, we have no orga-nization. We don't have anything. Our hands areempty. We have only a heart and what we have livedthrough in the ha lf century of this system And whenwe have found the firmness within ourselves to standup for our rights, we have done so. It's only by firm-ness of spirit that we have withstood. And if I amstanding here before you, it's not because of the kind-ness or the good will of communism, not thanks todetente, but thanks to my own firmness and your firmsupport. They knew that I would not yield one inch,not one hair. And when they couldn't do more theythemselves fell back.

This is not easy. In our conditions this was taugh.


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to me by the difficulties of my own life. And j youyourselves-any one of you-were in the same difficult situation, you would have learned the same thing.Take Vladimir Bukovsky, whose name is now almostforgotten. Now, I don 't want to mention a lot ofnames because however many I might mention thereare more still. And when we resolve the question withtwo or three names it is as if we forget and betray theothers. We should rather remember figures. Thereare tens of thousands of political prisoners in ourcounlry and-by the calculation of English specialists-7 ,000 persons are now under compulsory psychiatric treatment. Let's take Vladimir Bukovsky as anexample. It was proposed to him, All right, we l1free you. Go to the West and shut up. And thisyoung man, a youth today on the verge of death said:No, I won't go this way. I have written about thepersons whom you have put in insane asylums. Yourelease them and then 1 11 go West. This is what Imean by that firmness of spirit to stand up againstgranite and tanks.Finally, to evaluate everything that I have said toyou, I would we need not have had our conversation on the level of business calculations. Why did.such and such a country act in such and such a way?What were they counting on? \Ve should rather riseabove this to the moral level and, say : In 1933 andin 1941 your leaders and the whole western world,in an unprincipled way, made a deal with totalitarian-22


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ism." We will have to pay for this, some day this dealwill come back to haunt us. For 30 years we havebeen paying for it and we're still paying for it. Andwe're going to pay for it in a worse way.One cannot think only n the low level of politicalcalculations. It s necessary to trunk also of what isnoble, and what s honorable-not only what is profitable. Resourceful western legal scholars have nowintroduced the term "legal realism." By legal realism,they want to push aside any moral evaluation ofaffairs. They say, "Recognize realities; if such andsuch laws have been established in such and suchcountries by violence, these laws still must be recognized and respected."

At the present time it s widely accepted amonglawyers that law s higher than morality-law is something which s worked out and developed, whereasmorality s something inchoate and amorphous. Thatisn't the case. The opposite s rather true Moralitys higher than law While law s our human attemptto embody in rules a part of that moral sphere whichis above us. We try to understand this morality, bring

it down to earth and present it in a form of laws.Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less.Sometimes you actually have a caricature of morality,but morality s always higher than law. This view mustnever be abandoned. We must accept it with heartand soul.

It s almost a joke now n the western world, in the

20th century, to use words like "good" and "evil."They have become almost old-fashioned concepts, butthey are very real and genuine concepts. These areconcepts from a sphere which s higher than us. Andinstead of getting involved in base, petty, shortsighted political calculations and games we have torecognize that the concentration of World Evil andthe tremendous force of hatred s there and it's flowing from there throughout the world. And we haveto stand up against it and not hasten to give to it,give to it, give to it, everything that it wants to swallow.Today there are two major processes occurring inthe world. One is the one which I have just describedto you which has been n progress more than 30 years.t is a process of shortsighted concessions; a processof giving up , and giving up and giving up and hoping

that perhaps at some point the wolf will have eatenenough.The second process s one which I consider the key

to everything and which, I w ll say now, will bringall of us our future; under the cast-iron shell of communism - for 20 years in the Soviet Union and ashorter time in other Communist countries- there isoccurring a liberation of the human spirit. New generations are growing up which are steadfast in thekstruggle with evil; which are not willing to c c e p ~unprincipled compromises; which prefer to lose thing-salary , conditions of existence and life :3elbut are not willing to sacrifice conscience: : lOi w l : :';


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to make deals with evil.This process has now gone so far that n the SovietU nion today, Marxism has fallen so low that it hasbecome an anecdote, it's s mply an objec t of contempt.No serious person in our country today, not evenuniversity and high school students, can talk aboutMarxism without smiling, withou t laughing. But thiswhole process of our liberation, which obviously willentail social transformations, is slower than the firstone- the process of concessions. Over there, when wesee these concessions, we are frighten ed . Why soquickly? Why so precipitously? Why yield severalcoun tr ies a year?I started by saying that you are the allies of ourliberation movement in the Communist countries. AndI call upon. you: let us think together and try to seehow we can adjust the relationship between these twoprocesses. Whenever you help the persons persecutedin the Soviet Union, you not only display magnanimityand nobility, you're defending not only them butyourselves as well. You're defending your own future.

So let us try and see how fa r we can go to stop thissenseless and immoral process of endless concessionsto the aggressor these clever legal arguments for whywe should give up one country after another. Whymust we hand over to Co mmunist to talitarianism moreand mo re technology c omplex, delicate, developedtechnology which it needs for armaments and fo rcrushing its own citizens? ff we can at least slow down4

that process of concessions, if not stop it all together- and make it possible for the process of liberation tocontinue in the Communist countries u ltimately thesetwo processes will yield us our future.

On our crowded planet there are no longer anyinternal affairs. The Communist leaders say, Don'tinterfere in our internal affairs. Let us strangle ourcitizens in peace and qui et. But I tell you: Interferemore and more. Interfere as much as you can. Webeg you to come and interfere.

Understanding my own task in the same way I haveperhaps interferred today in your internal affairs, orat least touched upon them, and I apologize fo r it. Ihave traveled a lot around the United States and thishas been added to my earlier understandi ng of it;what I have heard fro m l stening to the radio, fromtalking to experienced persons.

America-in me and among my friends and amongpeople who think the way I do over there, among allordinary Soviet citizens-evokes a sort of mixture offeelings of admiration and of compassion. Admirationat the fact of your own tremendous forces which youperhaps do n' t even recognize yourselves. You're acountry of the future; a young country ; a country ofstill un tapped possibilities; a country of tremendousgeographical distances; a country of tremendousb readth of spirit; a country of generosity; a countryof magnanimity. But these qualities trength, generosity and magnanimity-usually make a man and


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even a whole country trusting, and this already severaltimes has done you a disservice.I would like to call upon America to be more careful with its trust and prevent those wise persons whoare attempting to establish even finer degrees of justice and even finer legal shades of equality somebecause of their distorted outlook, others because ofshort-sightedness and still others out of self-interestfrom falsely using the struggle for peace and for socialjustice to lead you down a false road. Because theyare trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarmyour strong and magnificent country n the face ofthis fearful threat one which has never been seenbefore n the history of the world. Not only in thehistory of your country, but in the history of the world.

And I call upon you: ordinary working men ofAmerica- as represented here by your trade union

movement do not Jet yourselves become weak. Donot let yourselves be taken in the wrong direction.Let us try to slow down the process of concessionsand help the process of liberation

'vfay I express our deep appreciation to AleksandrSolzhenitsyn for his inspiring address for the thoughtsthat he left with us at a time when God knows, theworld needs to think more about hwnan freedom. Theworld needs to think more about those who are losingtheir freedom every day.America must, in y opinion shape up to thischallenge as the leader o.f the free world because if

America doesn t lead the free world the free worldI m afraid has no leader. George Meany


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e r roud n o ore t a d ith

Lane irkland

principle of mech nics tells us that given a long-enough lever one man can move the entireworld. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a living test ofthat principle.His lever is his pen extended far beyond hisreach by his mind his talent his courage and hisunshakable integrity.He seeks to move a world that today seemsfar gone in madness and in cowardice. A world

where terror murder and oppression are welcomedand are exalted in the glass and marble temples ofuniversal peace and justice that were built by ahighly optimistic generation after World War ILHe stands as a living monumental reproach to

26

all of those statesmen and leaders who today raisethe practice of abstention on basic moral issuesto the level of high national policy and who flfrom any test of the good will the graces andthe kindly disposition of the most deadly enemiesof mankind.His work is not devoted to the advancement ofany political doctrine or fashion in political discourse or any passing notion of expediency but

to the most elemental values of human dignityhuman justice and human freedom.The AFL-CIO is proud and honored to standwith him in that cause. I am privileged now tointroduce Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.


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Communism Legacy of Terror

Is it then possible or impossible to transmit the ex-perience of those who have suffered to those who haveyet to suffer? Can one part of humanity learn fromthe bitter experience of another or can it not? Is itpossible or impossible to warn someone of danger?

How many witnesses have been sent to the Westin the last 60 years? How many waves of immigrants?How many millions of persons? They are a here.You meet them every day. You know who they are:if not by their spiritual disorientation, their grief. theirmelancholy , tl1en you can distinguish them by theiraccents by their external appearance. Coming fromdifferent countries and without consulting with oneanother, they have brought to you exactly the sameexperience; they telJ you exactly the same thing: theywarn you of what is already happening, what hashappened in the past. But the proud skyscrapersstand on, point to the sky and say: it will neverhappen here. This will never come to us. It's notpossible here.

t can happen. t is possible. As a Russianproverb says: When it happens to you, you ll knowit s true.

But do we really have to wait for the momentwhen the knife is at our throats? Couldn't it bepossible, ahead of time, soberly to assess the world-wide menace that threatens to swallow the wholeworld? I was swallowed myself. I have been in thedragon's belly, in the red burning belly of thedragon. He wasn't able to digest me. He threw meup. I have come to you as a witness to what it slike there, in the dragon's belly.

It's an astonishing phenomenon that communismhas been writing about itself in the most open y -in black and white-for 125 years. And even moreopenly, more candidly in the beginning. The Communist Manifesto, for instance, which everyone knowsby name, and which almost no one ever takes thetrouble to read, contain s even more terrible thingsthan what has actually been done. It's perfectlyamazing. The whole world can read, everyone isliterate, but somehow no one wants to understand.Humanity acts in such a way as if it didn't understa::lCwhat communism is, and doesn't want to undersiand.is not capable of understanding.think it isn t only a question of the d 1 s ~ : S 3


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I II

which communism has assumed in the last decades.It's rather that the essence of communism is quitebeyond the limits of human understanding. It's hardto believe that people could actually plan such thingsand carry them out. And precisely because its essenceis beyond comprehension, communism is so difficultto understand.

In my last address in Washington I spoke a greatdeal about the Soviet state system, how it wascreated and what it is today. Bu t it s perhaps moreimportant to discuss with you the ideology that in-spired the system, that created it, and that st igoverns it. It 's much more important to understandthe essence of this ideology, and above all its legacywhich h asn't changed at all in 125 years . It hasn'tchanged since the day it was born.That Marxism is not a science is something whichis entirely clear to intelligent people in the SovietUnion. Tt would be a joke to call it some sort ofscience. Leaving aside the exact sciences, such asphysics, mathematics, and the natural sciences, eventhe soc ial sciences can predict an event-when inwhat way and how the event might occur. Communism has never made any such forecasts. t has neversa id where, when, and precisely what is going tohappen. Nothing but declamations. Declamations tothe effect that the world proletariat will overthrowthe world bourgeoisie and the most happy andradiant society will then arise. The fantasies of Marx.28

Engels and Lenin break off at this point, not one ofthem goes any further to describe what the societywould be like. They simply said: the most radiant,most happy society. Everything for the sake of man.

wouldn t want to enumerate for you all theunsuccessful predictions of Marxism, but I can givea couple. For example, it was claimed that the conditions of the working class in the West would deterio-rate steadily, get more and more unbearable untilthe workers would be reduced to total poverty. (Ifonly in our country we could feed and clothe ourworking class, provide it with everything and giveit as much leisure as you do )

Or the famous prediction Communist revolutions\VOuld all begin in such advanced industrial countries_as England. France, America. Germanv-that 's wherecommunism will begin, (But t worked out exactlythe other way, as you know. ) Or the prediction thatthe socialist state wouldn't even exist. As soon ascapitalism would be overthrown, the state would atonce wither away. (Look about you: where canyou see states as powerful as in the so-called socialistor Communist countries?) Or the prediction thatwars are inherent only to capitalism. Wars are saidto arise only because of capitalism; as soon as communism is introduced , a wars will come to an end .(We have seen enough of this also: in Budapest, inPrague, on the Soviet-Chinese border, in the occu-


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pation of the Baltic countries, and when Poland wasstabbed in the back. We have seen enough of thisalready, and we will surely see more yet.)Communism is as crude an attempt to explainsociety and the individual as if a surgeon were toperform his delicate operations w h a meat-ax. Allthat is subtle in human psychology and in the structure of society (which is even more delicate); all ofthis is reduced to crude economic processes. Thiswhole created being-man-is reduced to matter. It'scharacteristic that communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. I t lacks argumentsand hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement.arxism has always opposed freedom. I will quote

just a few words from the founding fathers ofcommunism, Marx and Engels I quote from thefirst Soviet edition of 1929) : Reforms are a signof weakness (vol. 23, p. 339); Democracy ismore to be feared than monarchy and aristocracy,(vol. 2, p. 369); Political liberty is a false liberty,worse than the most abject slavery (vol. 2, p. 394).In their correspondence Marx and Engels frequentlysaid that after achieving power, terror would beindispensable, thqt it will be necessary to repeat theyear 1793. After achieving power, we'll be con-


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'II I

sidered monsters, but we couldn't care less (vol. 25 ,p 187).

Communism has never concealed the fact th at trejects all abso lute concepts of morality. t scoffsat any consideration of good and evil as indisputable categories. Communism considers mor ality tobe relative, to be a class matter. Depending uponcircumstances and the polWcal situation, any act,including murder, even th e killing of thousands , couldbe good or could be bad. t a ll depe nd s upon classideology. And who defines class ideology? The wholeclass cannot get toge ther to pa ss judgment. A handfulof people determine what is good and what is bad.But I mu st say that in this very respect comm unismhas been most successful. t has in fected the whol eworld with the belief in the relativity of good andevn . Many people besides the Co mmunists arc car riedaway by this jdea today. Among enlightened peopleit is considered rather awkward to use seriously suchwords as good and evil. Co mmunism has ma naged to instill in all of us th at th ese concepts areo ld-fashioned concepts and laughable. But if we areto be deprived of th e concepts of good and evil, whatwm be left? Nothing but the ma n ipul ation of oneanother. We will decline to the sta tus of an imals .Both the theory and practice of communism arecompletely inhuman for that reason. There is awo rd very commonly used these days : anti-communism. It 's a ve ry stupid word , badly put together.30

t makes it ap pe ar as though co mmunism weresomething original , something basic, something fund amental. Therefore, it is taken as the point o de parture, and anti-communism js defined in relationto communism. Here is why I say that this wordwas poorly selected , tha t it was put together by people who do not understand etymo logy: the primary ,the eternal concept is humani ty . And communism isanti-humanity. Whoever says anti-communism issaying, in effect, anti-anti-hum ani ty. A poo r co nstruction. So we should say: that which is against communism is for humanity. Not to accept, to reject thisinhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a humanbeing. t isn't being a member of a party. It 's a protestof our souls against those wh o tell us to forget theconcepts o good and ev il.But what is am azing is th at ap a rt from all theirbooks, communi sm has o ffered a multitude of examples for modern man to see. The tanks ha verumbled through Budapest. t is nothing. Th e tanksroar into Czechoslovakia. t is nothing. No one elsewould have b een forgiven, but communism can beexcused. With som e k ind of strange deliberation , asthough G od wanted to punish them by taking awaytheir reason 1 the Communists erected the Berlin wall.t is indeed a mo nstrous symbol that demonstrates

the true meaning of communism. F o r 14 years peopleha ve been machi ne gunned there, a nd not onl y thosewho wanted to leave the happy Communist uciety.


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Recently some foreign boy from the western sidefell in to the Spree R iver. Some people wanted topull him out, but the East German border guardsopened fire. No, no, don't save him. And so hedrowned; this innocent boy.Has the erlin wall convinced anyone? No again.It's being ignored. It's there, bu t it doesn't affect us.We'll never have a wall like that. And the tanks inBudapest and Prague, they won 't come here either.On all the bo rders of the Communist countries, theE uropean ones in any case, you can find electronickilling devices. These are automatic devices for killinganyone who goes across Bu t people here say: Thatdoesn't threaten us either, we are not afraid of that.In the Communist countries they have a developedsystem of forced treatment in insane asylums. That'snothing. We're living quietly. Three times a y -right at this very moment-the doctors are makingtheir rounds and injecting substan ces in to peoples'arms that destroy their brains. Pay no attention to it.We'll continue to live in peace and quiet here.

Th ere's a certain woman here named Angela Davis.I don't know if you are familiar with her in thiscountry, but in our country, literally for one wholeyear, we heard of nothing at all except about AngelaDavis Th ere was only Angela Davis in the wholeworld and she was suffering. We had our ears stuffedwith Angela Davis. Little ch ildren in school were32

told to sign peti tions in defense of Angela D avis.Little boys and girls, 8 and 9 years old in schools,were asked to do this. Well , they set her free .Although she didn 't have a rough time in this country, she came to recuperate in Soviet resorts. SomeSoviet dissidents-but more important, a group ofCzech dissidents-addressed an appeal to her: Comrade Davis, you were in pr ison. You know howunpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when yopconsider yourself innocen t. You now have suchauthority. Could you help our Czech prisoners?Could you stand up for those persons in Czechoslo-vakia who are b eing persecuted by the state? AngelaDavis answered: They deserve what they get. Letthem remain in prison.'' That is the face of communism. That's the heart of commu nism for you.

I would particula rl y want to remind you todaythat communism develops in a straight line and asa single entity, without altering as people now liketo say. Lenin did indeed develop Marxism, but primarily along the lines of ideologi ca l intolerance. fyou read L enin , you will be astonished at how muchhatred there was in him at the least deviation, when-ever some view differed from his y so much as ahair's breadth. Lenin also developed Marxism inthe direction of inhumanity. Before the Oc toberRevolution in Russia, Lenin wrote a book calledThe Lessons of the Paris Commune. There he

analyzed why the Paris Commune was defeated in


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have merely returned to the previous tactic: if it s its unity, its cohesion. Enrico Belinguer quite recently


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necessary to send two off to jail, then send two, nota hundred . In the eyes of the party, Stalin's entireguilt lay elsewhere: he did not trust his own Commu-nist Party. Due to this alone the co ncept of Stalinismwas devised. But Stalin had never deviated from thesame basic line. They used to sculpt a bas relief ofMarx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin all together; to thisone could add Mao Tse-tung, Kim Sung, Ho ChiMinh; they are all in the same line of development.

The follow ng theory s also accepted in the West.It s said that China is a sort of purified, puritanicaltype of co mmunism, one which hasn't been transformed for the wo rse . But China s simply a delayedphase of that so-called war communism establishedby Lenin in Russia, but which was in force onlyuntil 1921. Lenin established it not because the milita ry situation required it , but because this is howthey envisioned the future of their society. But wheneconomic pressure required them to ret reat , they introduced the so-called New Economic Policy andthey retreated. In China this initial ph ase has simplyla sted longer. China s characterized by a the sametraits: massive compulsory labor which is not paidin accordance with its value; work on holidays; forcedliving in communes and the incessant drumming inof slogans and dogmas that abolish the human essenceand deny all individuality to man.

What's worst in the world Communist sys tem is34

said that the sun had set on the Comintern. Not atall. t hasn't set. Its energy ha s been transformedinto electricity which is now pulsing through under-ground cables. The sun of the Comintern todayspreads its energy everywhere in the form of highvoltage electricity. Quite recently there was an incident when western Communists indignantly deniedthat Portugal was operating on instructions fromMoscow. Of course, Moscow also denied this. Andthen it was discovered that those very orders hadbeen openly published in the Soviet magazine Prob-lems of Peace and Socialism. These were the veryinstructions that Ponomarev had given. All theseeming differences among the Communist parties ofthe world are imaginary. All are united on one point:your social order must be destroyed. Why shouldwe be surprised if the world doesn't understand this?Even the socialists, who are the closest to communism,don't understand this themselves. They ca nnot graspthe true nature of communism . Recently, the leaderof the Swedish socialists, Olaf Palme, sa id that theonly way that communism can su rvive is by takingthe path of democracy. Tha t is the same thing assaying that the only way in which a wolf can survvewould be to stop eating me at and become a lamb.And yet Pa lme lives right next door. Sweden is quiteclose to the Soviet Union. I think that he, andMitterand, and the Italian socialists will live to the


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.:ay \vhen they will be in the position that (Portugal's' Ia rio) Soares is in today.Soa res' situation tod ay, by the way, is not yet at itsworst. An even more te rrible future awaits him and

hi party. Only the Russian socialists the MensheYiks and the Socialist Revolutionaries-could havero ld them of the fate that awaits them. But they cannot tell of it; they are all dead; they've all been killed.Read the Gu lag Archipelago for that.Of course in the present situation the Communistshave to assume various disguises. Sometimes we hearwords like the popular front," at other times"dialogue with Christianity" is brought up. For Communists to have a dia logue with Ch ristianity In theSoviet Union this dialogue was a simple matter: theyused machine guns and revolvers. And today, inPortugal, unarmed Catholics are stoned by the Communists. This happens today. This is dialogue. . .And when the French and the Italian Communistssay th at they arc going to have a dialogue, let themonly achieve power and we shall see what thisdialogue will look like.When traveled to Italy this past April, I wasamazed to see hammers and sickles painted on thedoors of -churches, insults to priests scrawled on thedoors of their houses. In general, offensive Communistgraffiti cover the walls of Italian cities. This is today,at a time before they have achieved power. This is

today When their leaders were in Moscow,Palmira Togliatti agreed to all of Stalin's executions.Just let them reach power in Italy and we shall seewhat the dialogue will look like then.All of the Communist parties, upon achievingpower, have become completely merciless. But at thestage before they achieve power, it's necessary toadopt disguises.

We Ru ssians who have had experience with this,find it tragic to see what is in on in Portugal. Wewere always told, "Well, this happened to you Russians. It's just that you couldn't maintain democracyin your country. You had it for eight months andthen it was throttled. That's eastern Europe for you."But look at Portugal, at the very western-most edgeof Europe, you can't go further West than Portugal.And what do we see there? We see a sort of caricature, a slightly altered version of what happened inRussia. For us t sounds like a repetition .we recognize what's going on and can make the proper substitutions, placing our socialist in Soares' position.Or another familiar note in Russia the Bolsheviksalso pursued power under the slogan All Power tothe Constituent Assembly." But when the electionstook place, they got 25 percent of the vote. So theydispersed the Constituent Assembly. The Communistsin Portugal got 12 percent of the vote. So they madetheir parliament entirely powerless. \Vhat irony: the

5

socialists have won the elections. Soares is the leader tance of the West (they have already ruined Portugal,


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of the victorious pa rty. And he has been deprived ofhis own newspaper. Just imagine: the leader of avictorious party has been stripped of his own newspaper And the fact that there an assembly has beenelected and that it will sit in session has no significance whatever. Yet the western press writes seriou slythat the first free elections took place in Portugal.L ord save us from such free elections Specific instances of duplicity, of trickery, can ofcourse change from one set of circumstances to another. But we recogni.ze the Communist character inthe ep isode when the Portuguese military leaders,who are allegedly not Communists, decided to settlethe dispute within the newspaper Republica in thefollowing manner. Come at 12 o'clock tomorrow,they said, we'll open the doors for you and yousettle it all as you see fit." But they opened the door sat 10 o'clock and for some reason only the Communists knew of this, but not the socialists. Th e Communists en tered, burned all the incriminahng documents and then the socialists arrived. Ah, yes, it waso course only an error. An accident, they didn'tcheck the time

These are the sort of tricks-and there are thousands-which make up the history of our revolution ..There will be many more such incidents in Portuga l.Or take the following example: the current militaryleadership of Portugal, in order not to lose the assis-36

there is nothing to eat, so they need help) , havedeclared, "Yes, we shall keep our multi-party system . And the unfortun ate Soares, the leader of thevictorious party, now has to demonstrate that he isplcased with this declaration in favor of a multi-partysystem. Bu t on the same day the same source declaredthat the construction of a classless society will beginimmediately. Anyone who is the lea st bit familiarwith Marxism knows that "classless society" impliesthat there won't be any parties. That is to say, on thevery same day they said: there will be a multi-partysystem and we shall strangle every party. But theformer is heard while the latter is inaudible. Andeverybody repeats only that there wilJ be a multi-partysystem. This is a typical Communist technique.Portugal has, in effect, fallen out of NATO today.I hate to be a prophet of doom but these events areirreversible. Very shortly P ortugal will already beconsidered a member of the Warsaw P act. t is painfulto look at this tragic and ironic repetition of Communist techniques at the far ends of Europe , 60 yearsapart. In the same few months we see the throttlingof a democracy which had only just begun to get onits feet.Th e question of war is also well elucidated inCommunist and Marxist literature. Let me show youhow communism regards the question of war. I quoteLenin: We cannot support the slogan 'Peace' since


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we regard it as a totally muddled one and a hindrance scene-terrorism. Partisan war, violence, prisons,


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to the revolutionary struggle. (Letter to AlexandraKollontai, July 1915) ' 'To reject war in principle isun-Marxist. Who objectively stands to gain from theslogan 'Peace'? In any case not the revolutionaryproletariat. (Letter to Alexander G Shliapnikov,November 1914). There's no point in proposing abenign program of pious wishes for peace without atthe same time placing at the forefront the call forillegal organization and the summons to Civil War.This is communism's view of war. War is necessary.War is an instrument for achieving a goal.

But unfortunately for communism, this policy ranup against your atomic bomb in 1945. The Americanatomic bomb. Then the Communists changed theirtactics. Then they suddenly became advocates ofpeace at any cost. They started to convoke peacecongresses, to circulate petitions for peace, and thewestern world fell for this deceit. But the goal, theideology remained the same. To destroy your society.To destroy the way of life known in the West.

But with your nuclear superiority, it wasn't possiblet do this then. Hence they replaced one concept withanother. They said: what is not war s peace. That isto say, they opposed war to peace. But this was amistake. Only a part of the antithesis opposed to thethesis. Although an open war could not be conducted,they could still carry out their oppressions behind the38

concentration camps. I ask you: is this peace?he di metric opposite of pe ce is violence. Andthose who want peace in the world should remove

not only war from the world, but also violence. fthere is no open war, bu t there is still violence, thatis not peace.As long as in the Soviet Union, in China, and inother Communist countries there's no limit to the useof violence-and now we find India joining in (itappears that Indira Ghandi has learned a lot fromher trip to Moscow; she has mastered these methodsvery well, and is now adding another 400 millionpersons to this continent of tyranny)-as long asthere is no limit to this use of violence, as long asnothing restrains the use of violence over this tremendous land mass (more than half of humanity) ,how can you consider yourselves secure?America and Europe together are not yet, I agree,an island in the ocean-I won't go so far as to saythat. But America together with Europe js now aminority, and the process is still continuing. Untilsociety in those Communist countries can keep acheck on the government and can have an opinionon what the government doe now it doesn't evenhave the least idea of what the government is upto-until that time comes th e We5t, and the worldgenerally, has no guarantee at all.


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We have another proverb in Russia: Catch onyou will when you're tumbling downhill."I understand that you love freedom, but in ourcrowded world you have to pay a tax for freedom.You cannot love freedom just for yourse lf and quietlyagree to a situation where the majority of humanityover the greater part of the globe is being sub jectedto violence and oppression.

The Communist ideology is to destroy your society.This has been their aim for 125 years and has neverchanged; only the methods have changed a little.When there is detente, peaceful co-existence, andtrade, they will still insist: the ideological war must.continue And what is ideological war? t is a focusof hatred, this is continued repetition of the oath todestroy the western world. Ju st as, once upon a timein the Roman Senate, a famo us speaker ended everyspeech with the statement : Furthermore, Carthagemust be destroyed, so today, with every act-detente,trade , or whatever-the Communist press, acting onsecret instructions, sends out thousands of speakerswho repeat : Furthermore, capitalism must be destroyed."I understand, it's only human that persons livingin prosperity have difficulty understanding the necessity of taking steps here and now, in a sta te ofprosperity-to defend themselves. That even in pros-per.ity one must be on guard.

Bu t if I were to enumerate the treaties that have

been violated by the Soviet Union, it would take meanother whole speech. I understand that when yourstatesmen sign some treaty with the Soviet Un.ion orChina you want to believe that it will be carried out.But the Poles who signed a treaty in Riga in 1921wjth the Communists also wanted to believe that thetreaty would be carried out, and they were stabbedn the back. Estonia7 Latvia and Lithuania , who signedtreat ies of friendship with the Soviet Union alsowanted to believe that they would b e carried out, butthese countries were all swallowed.

And the persons who sign these trea ties with younow-these very men and no others-at the sametime give orders for persons to be confin ed in mentalhospitals and prisons. Why should they be different?Do they have any love for you? Why should they acthon orably and nobly toward you while they crushtheir own people? The advocates of detente havenever yet explained this.ou want to believe and you cut down on yourarmies. You cut down on your research. There usedto be an In stitute for the Study of the Soviet Unio -

at least there was one. (You know nothing about theSoviet Union. It's dark over there. These searchlightsdon ' t p enetrate that far.) Knowing nothing, you eliminated the last genuine insti tute which actually couldstudy this Soviet society, because there wasn't enoughmoney to support it. But the Soviet Union is studying

39


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he is so clever, so calcu lating, so inventive, that he that a hurricane is rising. That' s what it means to be


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will certainly win. He sits there, he calculates hismoves. With these two knights he will make fourforks. He can hardly wait for his opponent to move.He's squirming on his chair out of happiness. Hetakes off his glasses, wipes them, and puts them backon again. He doesn' t even admit the possibility thathis opponent may be more cl ever. He doesn't evensee that his pawns are being taken one after the otherand that his castle is under threat. t all seems to him,Aha, that's what we'll do. We'll set Moscow, Peking,Pyongyang, Hanoi one against the other.ut what a ioke No one will do any such thingIn the meantime, you've been outplayed in WestBerlin, you've been very skillfuJly outplayed in Por

tugal. In the Near East you're being outplayed. Oneshouldn't have such a low opinion of one's opponent.But even if this chess pl ayer were able to win thegame on the board, carried away by the play, heforgets to raise his eyes; he forgets to look at hisopponent and doesn't see that he has the eyes of akiller. And if the oppone nt cannot win the game onthe board, he will take a c1ub from behind his backand shatter the skull of the other chess player, winning the game in that way. This very calcul atingchess player also forgets to raise his eyes to thebarometer. It has fallen . He doesn't see that it'salready dark outside, th at the clouds are coming on,42

too self-confident in chess.In addition to the grave political situation in theworld today, we are witnessing the e rgence of awholly new situation, a crisis of unknown nature, onecompletely different, one entirely non-political. We'reapproaching a major turning point in world history,

in the history of civilization. I t can be seen in variousareas by various specialists. I could compare it onlywith the turning point from the Middle Ages to themodern era, a whole shift of civilizations. t is aturning point at which settled concepts suddenlybecome hazy, lose their precise contours, at whichour familiar and commonly used words lose theirmeaning, become empty shells, at which methodswhich have been reliable for many centuries nolonger work. It's the sort of turning point at whichthe hierarchy of values to which we are dedic ated allour lives, which we use to judge what is valuableand what is not, and which causes our lives and ourhearts to beat, is starting to waver and may perhapscollapse.

And these two crises: the political crisis of today'sworld and the oncoming spir itual crisis, are occurringat the same time. t is our generation that will haveto confront them. The leadership of your country,which is entering the third century of your nationalexistence, will perhaps have to bear a burden greaterthan ever before seen in the whole of American his-


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tory. Your leaders during this time (which is so near)wi need profound intuition: spiritual foresight, highqualities of mind and soul. May God grant that inthose times you will have at the helm in this countrypersonalities as great as those who created yourcountry.In recent weeks, when traveling through various ofyour states, I of course felt that these two cities inwJ ich I have made my addresses-\Vashington andNew York-are far from reflecting your country asa whole, with its tremendous diversity and all of itspossibilities. Just as old St. Petersburg did not expressthe whole of Russia, just as Moscow d

Documents

Solzhenitsyn - The Voice of Freedom [1975]