Why We Are Silent

...you were given more than the others, now yon want everything...

...It is my conviction that Yugoslavia, which does not belong either to the Eastern or Western worlds, is where these two movements will converge...

...That is why writing of this kind by Westerners, regardless of whether it is published in the West or in the Socialist press, cannot be successfully exploited here as a propaganda weapon...

...In addition, Yugoslavia's approach has in good measure been adopted by all European Socialist countries, making the problem of freedom in Yugoslavia the problem of freedom in the entire Socialist bloc...

...These questions, I think, must often be asked in the West...

...Similarly, those in the West who outlaw Communist parties, and engage in censorship and McCarthyism, strengthen Communist totalitarianism...

...The Socialist intellectual who expresses himself freely before the Western public begins to feel, somehow, like a traitor...

...It is impossible to fight oppression with oppression, or lies with lies...

...Then we would no longer have to keep silent...

...Alas, in our society one must still write and speak about it in veiled fashion—the notions of an organized opposition within Socialism, of a school system secularized from Marxist dogma, and of openly non-Marxist thought in the press, still seem much too heretical and promptly provoke charges of reviving capitalism...

...On the contrary, they may be fiercer enemies of Western economic totalitarianism than those who currently hold the strings of power in Socialist society...

...Every time the policeman's club strikes a demonstrator in the West, it invisibly but no less crushingly strikes all those who yearn for freedom in our half of the world...

...There is a deeper cause for the silence in the Socialist world...

...I am convinced, in fact, that Marxist ideology as a basis for totalitarianism will remain a danger longer in the Western than in the Eastern world...

...It cannot be justified on the grounds that, in the specific case of Yugoslavia, it has been an unusually liberal oneparty system, just as an absolutist monarchy cannot be exculpated because of the temporary appearance of a benevolent ruler...

...And every one-party system, whatever else may be said about it, is some kind of subspecies of Stalinism...

...Nor is it difficult to publish...

...All of the propaganda activities directed against the opposite social system, from one or the other side, only serve to throw sand in the eyes of those who fight for freedom on both sides...

...Indeed, Yugoslavia has become a prism in which the fates of mankind are being refracted...

...and as I have said, the potential of democracy is incomparably greater in the Socialist society than in the capitalist one...

...But eventually the disease must be overcome, if only because no totalitarian society will be a match for the Asiatic totalitarianism which is just being born...

...After Yugoslavia's tempestuous turn toward democracy in 1958, a turn which affected all other Socialist states, Yugoslav society has today arrived at a critical point: The road may lead either backward toward a totalitarianism of the Soviet type, or toward a hitherto unattainable democratic socialism...

...In the few instances where terror has succeeded, it was only because those who endured it were undeserving of anything better...

...And in this struggle Socialist intellectuals are in a tougher, incommensurate situation because they are condemned to silence...

...Above all, we want what the enlightened people of the West enjoy—free thought and a free press...

...I am not in sympathy with Communist ideas, but when the West starts persecuting Communists, I become a Communist...

...At the same time, in the last two or three years there have been increasing signs that within the Communist Union, and outside it, there still exist a not inconsiderable number of people who are inclined toward totalitarianism...

...Every experience enriches, even if the enrichment means rejection of the experience...

...For in spite of self-rule, all channels of information and all permitted social organizations are under the control of the Union of Communists...

...That is why the majority of us are silent...

...So we intellectuals of Socialist societies feel like traitors when we speak the truth—traitors both to our countries and to all who fight for freedom in capitalist society...

...For us in Yugoslavia, the situation is especially complicated...

...The Ku Klux Klan burns our freedom, too...

...That it is impossible to criticize the real basis of the system without the approval of the executives of the system, does not today represent a great tyranny—but this could prove catastrophic...

...The fight for tomorrow's free humanity, in the economic and political sense, is not being waged in Vietnam, but in Yugoslavia...

...sooner or later they will meet...

...The suppression of the West German Communist party, on the other hand, undermines the struggle for freedom in our society...

...I believe this feeling has been experienced even by writers who, thanks to unusual circumstances, have succeeded in speaking the truth about their society in their own country: Pasternak, Dudintsev and Solzhenitsyn must have felt this uneasiness...

...Since this is impossible in the Socialist press, when published only abroad it becomes a powerful weapon against one's society and nation, a weapon that usually falls into the hands of those same forces at which a Hochhuth's criticism is directed...

...All of the leading intellectuals in the Socialist countries have frequent opportunities to expose their views in the Western press, particularly if they are critical of Socialism...

...The last is where the Socialist countries have so far failed, and why they are still less democratic than capitalist states...

...As for fear of reprisals, we know from history that even the most ruthless terror has not succeeded in keeping people quiet very long...

...Under the conditions that have developed in Yugoslavia, one thing vitally needed to insure future progress is a free press—an organ that is not controlled by the Communist Union...

...What is the essence of that struggle...

...Thus, for most of us it is impossible to write critically in the Western press as well, despite the ample opportunity to do so...

...And this sense of treachery is a much more decisive factor in inhibiting free expression than fear of the reprisals to which Socialist intellectuals submit themselves...

...This is because there is no practical way Yugoslavia could defend itself, should the power now in the hands of top Yugoslav Communist party members fall into the clutches of a Stalinist...

...And the struggle for a democratic Russia is being carried on today in Yugoslavia...

...whether they like it or not, they concretely strengthen reactionary forces of all kinds in the opposite camp...

...One need only compare the dates of the coming of dictatorship in Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain...

...There you are, being ungrateful...

...It is as if there existed connected vessels of freedom: Pressure against freedom in one part of the world automatically lowers the level of freedom in all parts of the world...

...To be sure, like any war, this one for democratic socialism will have its victims...

...The ruling orders East and West, I believe, have common interests...

...the struggle for freedom in one's own society is simultaneously a struggle for freedom for all humanity...

...But freedom, like life, cannot be parceled out...

...The difference between political and economic power is purely a matter of form, not of substance...

...The difference, though, should not be lightly dismissed...

...Despite the numerous freedoms Yugoslav Socialist society enjoys today, thanks to its doctrine of selfrule, there nevertheless hangs over us the unceasing possibility of a relapse into totalitarianism...

...A second vital area of reform concerns ideological freedom—permitting the open expression of non-Marxist thought (whether individualistic, or religious...

...in the last analysis, therefore, they are in the Party's hands...

...The devil triumphs when he is being warred against in an evil, devilish way...

...It also seems to me that Europe has emerged from the hell of totalitarianism to find itself in purgatory, and will not allow a return to hell...

...A subtle yet determined contest is being waged between the status quo, the so-called Socialist Democracy, and the ideal of democratic socialism...

...There can be no question of restoring capitalism, nor could the force be found to maintain it...

...Today Yugoslavia is on the way to realizing a unique experiment—an attempt at a socialism that is not totalitarian...

...I do not believe that the fundamental conflict of our day is between the Socialist and capitalist systems...

...It is a terrifying vision: a world totalitarianism in which people might well recall with longing the days when the truth about one system could be freely expressed within the framework of the other...

...It would be a mistake, however, to think that Yugoslavs battling for freedom within the present Socialist system are opting for a capitalist social order...

...Judging from all the evidence, that cancerous wound of mankind, totalitarianism—in all of its forms (fascist, Communist, economic)—tends to appear synchronously in the European-American part of the world...

...But today free socialism has its chance in Yugoslavia...

...In a changed historical situation, but under an unchanged system, they would bring about a relapse into Stalinism...

...rather it is the conflict between democratic socialism and totalitarianism—be it political totalitarianism, as in the Socialist countries, or economic, as in the West...

...That is why the United States today, with its war in Vietnam, is performing a disservice to the cause of freedom in the Socialist world...

...Zhadanovism" and "Mc-Carthyism'' after World War II in Russia and America, and so on, to perceive that everywhere the process is the same, differing only in form and intensity...

...This will require a free, Christian Europe, united with a democratic (that is to say, Christian) Russia—just as the Stalinist USSR, after all, had to arouse the national Christian spirit of the Russian people to withstand Hitler's Germany...

...At the heart of the matter lies a cruel paradox: Those who prevent us from speaking the truth here in the Socialist world abet the repression of freedom in the capitalist world...

...While the USSR is to a large extent liberalizing itself, while the youth of the Socialist countries is growing closer spiritually to the best traditions of the Western democracies, American youth is moving toward the Left, toward what socialism promises, toward the ideals of a material democracy and not merely a political one...

...Nevertheless, even though Western intellectuals and journalists daily write sharp criticism striking at the very roots of capitalist society, both in their own and the Socialist press, it is an extraordinary rarity when Socialist intellectuals do the same—and the event instantly produces a sensational uproar...

...That is why the most reactionary Western circles are lavishly aided by the slightest encroachment on free expression in Socialist society...

...Should the two worlds reach an understanding preserving today's conditions, the cause of liberty would not greatly profit thereby...

...As the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev says: "Force cannot save anyone because salvation presupposes an act of freedom...

...No, contentment, or fear, or the inability to publish —these are not the answers...

...Certainly, the organization of an opposition—that is, creation of a two-party system—would not only not work against, but would to a large degree facilitate the imposition of a genuinely social (as distinguished from an economically or politically private) power over the means of production and over material goods...

...Accordingly, any society that maintains the totalitarianism of one ideology, like Franco's Spain, cannot be called Christian even if the ideology is a Christian one...

...In contrast, when the West German magazine Der Spiegel succeeded in ousting Defense Minister Franz-Iosef Strauss, respect for Western democracy was heightened in the Socialist countries—where a similar incident is inconceivable...

...the simultaneity of "enforced collectivization" and the economic crisis in the West...

...A third necessity for advancement is free public association—the banding together of people who do not occupy influential positions in the ruling Party...

...We have, without doubt, incomparably more freedom than any other Socialist state, and when we demand still more, we are rebuked not only by those who are in power in our country but also by Western liberals...

...Consequently, authentic democracy is most realizable in a society that is free from private ownership and that has succeeded in eliminating the possibility of any one group assuming absolute political power...

...It would seem to me that because totalitarianism is now most intense in the Socialist world, it has the greatest number of active enemies there...

...I would not call this form of socialism Communist, for it is distinct from the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat"—that is, the dictatorship of one party—which leads automatically into political totalitarianism...

...For Socialist criticism is employed not only as a weapon against the Socialist states but also against socialism, and against all those oppressed by poverty or racial prejudice in the Western world...

...This battle is being fought, consciously and unconsciously, in all areas of Yugoslav social fife, in all hearts and minds...

...Each victory of freedom in any country is, therefore, significant—because it testifies to a movement toward recovery of health in all of Europe...

...When Western intellectuals, from Sartre to Rolf Hochhuth, write critically of social conditions in their countries, the mere fact that they can speak out without danger of being arrested or losing their means of subsistence elicits respect in Socialist countries for the society, and the country, that allows such free criticism...

...And why is it that if they do speak out publicly, their critiques concern only peripheral aspects of society rather than the core of the matter—the systems under which they live...

...The situation is almost exactly the opposite in the case of criticism of conditions at home by people who live in Socialist countries...

...We in the Socialist world are silent because we do not want to betray our countries, or provide fuel for the forces of reaction that oppose the fighters for freedom in the West...

...No society exists yet which satisfies all its constituents, and in Socialist countries as elsewhere, there are many people who have reason to be unhappy with the systems under which they live...

...The initial effects of this contest will already be visible within the next year...

...For exactly that reason, the question of freedom may be of greater importance in Yugoslavia than in any other country today...

...Nonetheless, should the forces of democratic socialism emerge victorious, the remaining Socialist states will follow Yugoslavia's example—and sooner or later, the modern capitalist states will too...

...It cannot be stressed too often or too strongly, therefore, that the fight for freedom to criticize the present Socialist system publicly, the fight against the ideational totalitarianism of Marxist thought, is a fight for the future of the entire European-North American population...

...These two trends are thus heading for each other...

...THINKING ALOUD Why We Are Silent By Mihajlo Mihajolv Zadar, Yugoslavia Why are most intellectuals in the Socialist world silent about true conditions in their countries...

...Rather, I would call it Christian—not because the free democratic socialist society would profess the Christian faith, but because the projection of authentic Christianity into the socio-political sphere is—democracy...

...Freedom will perhaps penetrate deeper in countries that have survived the disease of totalitarianism than in countries that were not infected by it, or suffered it only mildly...

...Again, the situation in Yugoslavia proves that the struggle toward these goals is not between socialism and capitalism, but solely between the partisans of "enlightened (or unenlightened) Socialist absolutism" and the supporters of democratic socialism...

...Oppression can be fought only with liberty, lies only with truth...

...I think that Yugoslav society is already conscious of the need for the socio-political democratization of its system of Socialism...

...Because Yugoslavia represents in many respects the synthesis, or more accurately, a potential synthesis of East and West, the fight for freedom of speech and opinion in Yugoslavia is simultaneously the fight against both political and economic totalitarianism—a struggle against the possibility of a synthetic politico-economic totalitarianism which would choke the life out of all mankind...

...Let us not forget that Adolf Hitler was a foremost anti-Communist, yet Hitler's actions helped prolong the rule of Stalinism in the USSR for nearly two decades...

...The only way one society can help another society which is not free, is by being free itself...

...None of these explanations is correct...

...I would also guess that the average Western reader explains the silence in one of three ways: by assuming that people in the Socialist countries are satisfied with things as they are, or that fear prevents their speaking out, or that they are unable to get into print...

...Unfortunately, liberty has never yet been won without cost...