Understanding Communism

SOLZHENITSYN, ALEKSANDR

Thinking Aloud UNDERSTANDING COMMUNISM BY ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN It's an astonishing phenomenon that Communism has been writing about itself in the most open way, in black and white, for 125...

...He doesn't even see that his pawns are being taken one after the other and that his castle is under threat...
...War is an instrument for achieving a goal...
...But I would say that what we need is rather this image of the open hand...
...This was the beginning of the handshake...
...Leaving aside their superiority in tanks and airplanes, where they surpass you by a factor of four, five or seven, take the salt talks alone: In these negotiations your opponent is continually deceiving you...
...It is only human that individuals living in prosperity have difficulty understanding the necessity for taking steps immediately to defend themselves...
...In your wide open spaces even I get a little infected...
...It's there, but it doesn't affect us...
...The Director of the Russian Institute of Columbia University, Marshall Shulman, at a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, depicted a radiant long-range future, stating that detente would ultimately lead to cooperation between the United States and the USSR in the establishment of a world order...
...It's already dead...
...I won't go as far as to say that...
...We are slaves from birth...
...Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality, that it scoffs at any consideration of "good" and "evil" as indisputable categories...
...To make a comparison with chess, this is like two players sitting at a chess board, one of whom has a tremendously high opinion of himself and a rather low opinion of his opponent...
...We'll continue to live in peace and quiet here...
...But can the free and varied Western system follow this policy...
...only the methods have changed a little...
...All of the Communist parties, upon achieving power, have become completely merciless...
...The Communists' ideology is to destroy your way of life...
...We have enough already...
...You're helping the Soviet police state...
...But after everything that has happened in recent years, I think that I can set their minds at ease, and your minds at ease as well: There will not be any nuclear war...
...Three in Indochina plus India...
...This happens today...
...Senators in the Kremlin...
...Has the Berlin Wall convinced anyone...
...Until societies in the Communist countries can keep a check on their governments and can have an opinion oh what those governments do (now they don't even have the least idea of what the governments are up to)-until that time comes the West, and the world generally, has no guarantees at all...
...It's being ignored...
...Despite detente, peaceful co-existence and trade, they continue to insist: The ideological war must continue...
...I think that if the armaments they had before were enough, they would not have driven things further...
...The advocates of detente have never yet explained this...
...Gandhi has learned a lot from her trip to Moscow and is adding another 400 million persons to the continent of tyranny)-as long as nothing restrains the use of violence over more than half of humanity, how can you consider yourselves secure...
...No one will do any such thing...
...He's squirming on his chair out of happiness...
...He takes off his glasses, wipes them, and puts them back on again...
...Sometimes we hear words like the "popular front,' at other times "dialogue with Christianity.'' Dialogue with Christianity...
...We'll set Moscow, Peking, Pyongyang, and Hanoi one against the other...
...It's a protest of our souls against those who tell us to forget the concepts of good and evil...
...must stop the growth of nuclear armaments...
...This has been their aim for 125 years and it has never changed...
...It is nothing...
...This was a very effective move...
...The whole existence of our slave owners from beginning to end relies on Western economic assistance...
...Why should there be a nuclear war if for the last 30 years the Communists have been breaking off as much of the West as they wanted-piece after piece, country after country...
...I don't know if you are familiar with her, but in our country, literally for one year, we heard of nothing except Angela Davis...
...The Communist Manifesto, for instance, contains even more terrible things than have actually been done...
...It is very possible that this cannot be done...
...to this, one could add Mao Tse-tung, Kim II Sung, Ho Chi Minh...
...And this ratio of 3-1, or 5-1 will have its effect: You will not make a move...
...It's a very stupid word, badly put together...
...Why should they act honorably and nobly toward you while they crush their own people...
...We are born slaves...
...Some people wanted to pull him out, but the East German border guards opened fire...
...It's a term which became very popular...
...The forces of the entire Soviet economy are concentrated on war, where you don't help them...
...Who objectively stands to gain from the slogan 'peace?' In any case, not the revolutionary proletariat...
...It is a turning point at which settled concepts suddenly become hazy and words lose their meaning and become empty shells, at which methods that have been reliable for many centuries no longer work...
...Not at all...
...Letter to Aleksandr Shliapnikov, November 1914...
...And I must say that Communism has been most successful in infecting the entire world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil...
...They suddenly became advocates of peace at any cost...
...And when he came to power, Lenin did just this...
...Let us not interfere with it...
...Let them remain in prison...
...I sense that you're tired...
...What for...
...Due to this alone the concept of Stalinism was devised...
...I quote Lenin: "We cannot support the slogan 'peace' since we regard it as a totally muddled one and a hindrance to the revolutionary struggle...
...But people here say: "That doesn't threaten us, we are not afraid of that...
...He doesn't even admit the possibility that his opponent may be more clever...
...What is done here by a few people, by a few machines, in our country takes tremendous crowds of workers and enormous masses of materials...
...Let me emphasize that Communism has developed in a straight line and as a single entity, without changing, as people now like to say...
...Please do not send them the shovels...
...I can compare it only with the turning point from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era...
...Finally it will be 5-1...
...As long as there is no limit to the use of violence in the Soviet Union, in China, and in other Communist countries-and currently we find India joining the list (it appears that Mrs...
...Now, as all recognize, it is becoming superior to yours...
...But let us assume that ultimately the Western world will understand and say, "No, not one step further...
...Today's word, "detente," literally means a reduction of the tension of a taut rope...
...The tanks have rumbled through Budapest...
...There must be some reason for this...
...Could you help our Czech prisoners...
...Only the Russian Socialists-the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries-could have told him of the fate that awaits him...
...We'll never have a wall like that...
...Here is why I say that this word was poorly formed: The primary, the eternal concept is humanity, and Communism is antihumanity...
...In the eyes of the Party, Stalin's entire guilt lay in his mistrust of his own Communist party...
...By a peculiar coincidence, the very day I was giving my address in Washington, Mikhail Suslov was talking with some visiting U.S...
...In the Near East you're being outplayed...
...In ancient times trade would begin with the meeting of two persons who had come out of a forest or had arrived by sea...
...You're tired, but the Communists who want to destroy your system aren't tired...
...The tanks have roared into Czechoslovakia...
...What will happen then...
...Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also wanted to believe that the treaties of friendship they signed with the Soviet Union would be carried out, but these countries were all swallowed up...
...It is a focus of hatred, a repetition of the oath to destroy the Western world...
...The American nuclear specialists may think this way if they want to, but for some reason the nuclear specialists of the Soviet Union-and for some reason the leaders of the Soviet Union-think differently...
...With these two knights he will make four forks...
...Precisely because this is the worst possible time, I have come to tell you about our experience over there...
...It is all a matter of class ideology...
...Let me turn now to the question of war, which is also well elucidated in Communist and Marxist literature...
...To reject the inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being...
...It can be seen in various areas by various specialists...
...In recent weeks, while traveling through various of your states, I was profoundly impressed by my contact with those places that are, and have always been, the wellsprings of your history...
...Capitalism is breathing its last...
...Recently the leader of the Swedish Socialists, Olof Palme, said that the only way Communism can survive is by taking the path of democracy...
...In the meantime, you've been outplayed in West Berlin, you've been very skillfully outplayed in Portugal...
...But what sort of new order, in cooperation with insatiable totalitarianism, does this professor want to see established...
...But this carefree life cannot continue in your country or in ours...
...But the diametric opposite of peace is violence, and the Communists continued to carry out their oppressions behind the scenes-through terrorism, partisan war, prisons, concentration camps...
...When the Soviet economy is no longer able to deal with everything, it will have to reduce its military preparations...
...You, though, who were born free, why do you help our slave owners...
...For 14 years people have been machine-gunned there, and not only those who wanted to leave the happy Communist society...
...And as a sign of this each would extend an open hand...
...Enrico Berlinguer, the Italian Communist party leader, has said that the sun has set on the Comintern...
...But if we are to be deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be left...
...The men who sign the treaties with you today-these very men and no others-at the same time give orders to confine their domestic opponents in mental hospitals and prisons...
...Even in the West they often say now: "If only the Soviet Union doesn't return to Stalinism...
...You're tired, but not as tired as we are, lying crushed to the ground for 60 years...
...Three times a day -right at this very moment-the doctors are making their rounds and injecting substances into peoples' arms that destroy their brains...
...And the tanks in Budapest and Prague won't come here either...
...or else he is violating the conditions on multiple warheads...
...War is necessary...
...The great predictions of Marx, Engels and Lenin are coming true...
...Could you stand up for those persons in Czechoslovakia who are being persecuted by the State...
...But in reality Lenin had given shape to all the main aspects before Stalin ever came on the scene...
...America and Europe together are not yet, I agree, an island in the ocean...
...Thinking Aloud UNDERSTANDING COMMUNISM BY ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN It's an astonishing phenomenon that Communism has been writing about itself in the most open way, in black and white, for 125 years...
...Their practical policies were checked against that moral compass...
...In 1975 alone four countries were broken off...
...They did not laugh at the absolute nature of good and evil...
...We're marching our troops to Europe, and if you make a move, we will annihilate you...
...It is perfectly amazing...
...One should be aware of how rapid the tempo is...
...Perhaps today the ratio is just greater than unity, but soon it will be 2-1...
...Of course, in the present situation the Communists have to assume various disguises...
...The futures of our two countries are going to be extremely difficult, and it is better to prepare for this beforehand...
...A poor construction...
...Let us stop elbowing each other and clamoring, 'Me, me, let me have a concession, please give it to me...
...That's nothing...
...It was contrived by Khrushchev and his group to shift onto Stalin all of the characteristics and all the principal defects of Communism...
...If it's all that powerful, let it stand on its own feet for 10 or 15 years...
...Our country is taking your assistance, but in the schools they are teaching and in the newspapers they are writing and in lectures they are saying, "Look at the Western world, it's beginning to rot...
...And so he drowned, this innocent boy...
...But the Poles who signed a treaty in Riga in 1921 with the Communists also wanted to believe that the treaty would be carried out, and they were stabbed in the back...
...Pay no attention to it...
...We are slaves, but we are striving for freedom...
...Indeed, theoreticians will be found to say, "If only we can have that blessed silence...
...But there never was any such thing as Stalinism...
...or he is violating the limitations on their destructive force...
...This is dialogue...
...There was only Angela Davis in the whole world and she was suffering...
...But what a joke...
...or he is violating the limitations on the dimensions of missiles...
...As the United States enters the third century of its national existence, it will perhaps have to bear a greater burden than ever before in the whole of American history...
...I think-and I particularly address those who have a socialist outlook-that we should at last permit this socialist economy to prove its superiority...
...But they are all dead, they've all been killed...
...They started to convoke peace congresses, to circulate petitions for peace, and the Western world fell for this deceit...
...So a detente means a relaxation of tension...
...You now have such authority...
...They are all united on one point: Your social order must be destroyed...
...I realize that when your statesmen sign some treaty with the Soviet Union or China you want to believe that the treaty would be carried out...
...Even the Socialists who are the closest to Communism don't understand this...
...Either he is testing radar in a way that is forbidden by the agreement...
...The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment, so a handful of people determines what is good and what is bad...
...Then 3-1...
...It will have to abandon the useless space effort and it will have to feed and clothe its own people...
...Who defines class ideology...
...What an ominous coincidence: A rope again...
...But everything else, everything needed to fill the gaps, everything necessary to feed the people, or for other types of industry, they get from you...
...an even more terrible future awaits him and his party...
...It was Lenin who deceived the peasants about their land...
...In addition to the grave political situation in the world today, we are witnessing the emergence of a wholly new situation, a crisis of unknown nature, one completely different, one entirely nonpolitical...
...Communist sculptors used to make a bas-relief of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin all together...
...And the system will be forced to relax...
...But Stalin never deviated from the basic line, and those who have followed him have merely returned to the previous tactic: If it is sufficient to send two off to jail, then send two, not a hundred...
...You know how unpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when you consider yourself innocent...
...Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter...
...In my Washington address I requested only one thing, and I make the same request now: When they bury us alive in the ground (I compared the Helsinki agreement with a mass grave for all the countries of East Europe) it is a very unpleasant sensation...
...Letter to Alexandra Kollontai, July 1915...
...Its energy has been transformed into electricity that is now pulsing through underground cables...
...It all seems to him, "Aha, that's what we'll do...
...Is it only a question of showing that detente is needed today, here and now...
...Nothing but the manipulation of one another...
...Do they have any love for you...
...And how surprising it is that a practical policy computed on the basis of moral considerations turned out to be the most farsighted and salutary...
...It's the sort of turning point where the hierarchy of values that we have been dedicated to all our lives, that we use to judge what is valuable and what is not, and that causes our lives and our hearts to beat, is starting to waver and may perhaps collapse...
...It is he who sent troops out to the border areas to crush any national movements for liberation and to set up an empire...
...Therefore, it is taken as the point of departure, and anti-Communism is defined in relation to Communism...
...He sits there, he calculates his moves...
...Therefore the Soviet economy cannot deal with every problem at once: war, space (which is part of the war effort), heavy industry, light industry, and at the same time the necessity to feed and clothe its own population...
...And he said, "In fact, the significance of our trade is more political than economic...
...The principal argument of the advocates of detente is well known: All of this must be done to avoid a nuclear war...
...I understand that this is the most unfavorable time to come to this country and deliver this sort of message...
...Then it became equal to yours...
...If there is no open war, but there is still violence, that is not peace...
...I'm not young anymore, and I myself was born a slave...
...And if this sort of unity cannot be achieved in the West, if in the frenzied competition one country after another continues to rush in with loans and advanced technology, if they present earth-moving equipment to our gravediggers, then I'm afraid Lenin will turn out to have been right when he said, "The bourgeoisie will sell us rope, and then we shall let the bourgeoisie hang itself...
...Communism has managed to instill in all of us that these concepts are old-fashioned and laughable...
...The whole world can read, but somehow no one wants to understand, or is capable of understanding, what Communism is...
...It isn't being a member of a party...
...What is most dangerous about the world Communist system is its unity, its cohesion...
...No again...
...Then the word Stalinism was thought up...
...Today, in Portugal, unarmed Catholics are stoned by the Communists...
...That's the heart of Communism for you...
...He can hardly wait for his opponent to move...
...Depending upon circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of thousands, can be good or bad...
...But America and Europe are already a minority, and the process is continuing...
...Indeed, when one sees your free and independent life, all the dangers that I have talked about seem imaginary...
...We will decline to the status of animals...
...Whoever says "anti-Communism" is saying, in effect, antihumanity...
...To reject war in principle is un-Marxist...
...Then we will see what it looks like...
...Let us stop selling to it and giving it loans...
...But if it were a favorable time, if it were an appropriate time, there wouldn't be any need for me to speak...
...they're not tired at all...
...Before the October Revolution in Russia, Lenin wrote a book, The Lessons of the Paris Commune, explaining why the Paris Commune was defeated in 1871...
...His principal conclusion was that the Commune had not shot, had not killed enough of its enemies...
...Just as, once upon a time in the Roman Senate, a famous speaker ended every speech with the statement: "Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed," so today, with every act-detente, trade or whatever-the Communist press, acting on secret instructions, sends out thousands of speakers who repeat: "Furthermore, capitalism will be destroyed...
...The Communists erected the Berlin Wall-a monstrous symbol that demonstrates the true meaning of Communism...
...Recently a foreign boy from the Western side fell into the Spree River...
...Well, she was set free, and although she didn't have a rough time in this country, she came to recuperate in Soviet resorts...
...We're living quietly...
...He is the one who created the Cheka, the secret police...
...You have theoreticians who say: "The U.S...
...In the Soviet Union this dialogue was a simple matter: They used machine guns and revolvers...
...Where it would have been enough-in order to instill general fear-to jail two people, he jailed a hundred...
...Instead we should say: That which is against Communism is for humanity...
...I understand that you love freedom, but in our crowded world you have to pay a tax for freedom...
...He is the One who deceived the workers about self-management...
...No one else would have been forgiven, but Communism is excused...
...They cannot grasp the true nature of Communism...
...Today America has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other half of the world...
...Let us stop playing up to them...
...The Soviet economy has an extremely low level of efficiency...
...The seeming differences among the Communist parties of the world are imaginary...
...It is nothing...
...It won't be your order in any case...
...It makes it appear as though Communism were something original, something basic, something fundamental...
...There is a word very commonly used these days, "anti-Communism...
...Unfortunately for Communism, the policy ran up against the American atomic bomb in 1945, so the Communists changed their tactics...
...This is Communism's view of war...
...One shouldn't have such a low opinion of one's opponent...
...Let me direct your attention to the following fact...
...So indirectly you are helping them to rearm...
...they are all in the same line of development...
...If you read Lenin, you will be astonished at how much hatred there was in him at the least deviation, whenever some view differed from his by so much as a hair's breadth...
...this is even more true for those who are younger...
...We have theoreticians who look very far into the future...
...That's a lie...
...They would show one another that they weren't carrying a stone or club, that they were unarmed...
...I think that he, and French Socialist leader Francois Mitterand, and the Italian Socialists will see the day when they are in the position that the Portuguese Socialist leader Mario Soares is in today...
...But what is remarkable is that apart from their books, Communism offered a multitude of examples for modern man to see...
...Soares' situation, by the way, is not yet at its worst...
...You're fatigued, but you have not yet really suffered the terrible trials of the 20th century that have rained down on the old continent...
...our mouths get filled with earth while we're still breathing...
...Your leaders during this time will need profound intuition, spiritual foresight, high qualities of mind and soul...
...There's a certain woman in this country named Angela Davis...
...He is the one who turned the trade unions into organs of oppression...
...Why should they treat you differently...
...We can get along without your trade...
...Can all the Western countries together say, "It's true, let us stop competing...
...He thinks that he will, of course, outplay his opponent...
...On all the borders of the Communist countries, the European ones in any case, you can find electronic killing devices, automatic devices for killing anyone who goes across...
...We're approaching a major turning point in world history, in the history of civilization...
...He also developed Marxism in the direction of inhumanity...
...The Communists declared: What is not war is peace...
...Please do not send them the most modern earth-moving equipment...
...These two crises, the political crisis of today's world and the oncoming spiritual crisis, are occurring simultaneously...
...That is the face of Communism...
...That is the same as saying the only way a wolf can survive is by not eating meat anymore and becoming a lamb...
...With such a nuclear superiority it will be possible to block the use of your weapons, and on some unlucky morning Moscow will declare: "Attention...
...Little children in school, little boys and girls, eight and nine years old, were told to sign petitions in defense of Angela Davis...
...On this continent it is hard to believe all the things that are happening in the world...
...The only new thing that Stalin did was based on mistrust...
...At one time there was no comparison between Soviet strength and yours...
...Those who want peace in the world must remove not only war from the world but violence as well...
...Angela Davis answered: "They deserve what they are getting...
...A group of Czech dissidents addressed an appeal to her: "Comrade Davis, you were in prison...
...We have a proverb in Russia: Catch on you will when you're tumbling downhill...
...Why should we be surprised if the world doesn't understand this...
...He is the one who created the concentration camps...
...Look at the economy of the Western world, it's coming to an end...
...No, no, don't save him...
...the process keeps going on, and very rapidly, too...
...You cannot love freedom just for yourself and quietly agree to a situation where the majority of humanity over the greater part of the globe is being subjected to violence and oppression...
...Lenin did indeed develop Marxism, but primarily along the lines of ideological intolerance...
...And yet Palme lives right next door to the Soviet Union...
...It had destroyed too few people, when it was necessary to kill entire classes and groups...
...It has demonstrated once and for all the triumph of Communism...
...He thinks he is so clever, so calculating, so inventive, that he will certainly win...
...And our socialist economy is flourishing...
...I'm not a specialist in this area, but this can hardly be accidental...
...And when the French and the Italian Communists say they are going to have a dialogue, let them only achieve power and we shall see what this dialogue will look like...
...Both the theory and practice of Communism are completely inhuman for that reason...
...Among enlightened people today it is considered rather awkward to use such words seriously...
...May God grant that you will have at the helm personalities as great as those who created your country...
...It hasn't set...
...Let's allow it to show that it is advanced, that it is omnipotent, that it has defeated you, that it has overtaken you...
...Four...
...We had our ears stuffed with Angela Davis...
...In the Communist countries, they have a developed system of forced treatment in insane asylums...
...It really makes one think: The men who created your country never lost sight of their moral bearings...
...It is our generation that will have to confront them...
...And what is ideological war...

Vol. 58 • August 1975 • No. 16


 
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