THE NEW RUSSIAN SPIRIT: HOW STRONG IS IT? WHAT LIES BEYOND CONTAINMENT?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88G01116R000500550019-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 39
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2011
• Sequence Number: 19
• Content Type: REPORT

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Please retain - DCI asks for this all
the time.
betty
13 June
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Executive Registry
86- ,241-9.3
How Strong Is It? What Lies Beyond Containment?
Speech, May 1, 1986 at the Smithsonian Institute and shorter
version, May 2, 1986 at the Wirth Seminar in the Cannon Caucus Room
Today is May 1. In the Soviet Union, this day will begin the
celebration of the greatest week of holidays of the whole year.
In an unusual conjunction which happens only once every five or
six years, the most important secular and religious holidays will
be celebrat.ed in the same week. May 1 falls this year during'
Holy Week of the Orthodox Church. Today is Holy Thursday; tomor-
row Good Friday; Saturday night through Sunday the most profound,
important and holy feast day of the Orthodox Church, Easter.
This is followed by Den' Pobeda (May 9) Victory Day, the end
bf World War II, which will coincide with the end of the Churc
"Bright Week" that culminates with Rodinitsa, that-most dear and
ancient celebration for the Russians, the day of commemoration
of the dead and honoring of ancestors. On that day thousands of
Russian families will go, as they have for 900 years, to picnic
on the graves of their ancestors, in a celebration which is:rdost
profoundly Slavic. The old and the new, the secular and the';
religious, inextricably, mixed. in one gigantic celebration'-'
_F11 V
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which the whole Slavic population of the Soviet Union will be
joined; holidays which sum up all the history of Russia, old and
new.
Certainly, despite the denials of the government, the coinci-
dence of the Chernobyl atomic plant disaster happening during
this unusual week of mass national holidays will not go unnoticed
by the Russian people. For believers, this event, happening as
it did during the Holy Week of the Church leading to Easter, will
be interpreted in a deeply spiritual way. For non-believers, for
the government, despite the defensiveness and pretense of busi-
ness as usual, the secular celebrations will have a more than
usual hollow ring and the result may eventually be to subject the
party to more questioning about its priorities and policies than
ever before.
On May Day the color red is everywhere., Buildings are fes-
tooned with huge banners and placards. Red flags stand stiffly
at attention on every bridge and are hung before every public
building.
Red is a color deeply loved by the Russians. Today appropri-
ated as its own by the Soviet regime, it is in reality a symbol
of something .much older and deeper in the Russian spirit. Once
the word for "red" and "beautiful" were the same. Even today, in
modern Russian, the root of the word "beautiful" is "red." It is
not "Red" Square, but "Beautiful" Square. Icons are hung in the
"red," or "beautiful" corner. In the 17th century ladies paint-
ed their cheeks red, plaited their hair with red ribbons. Pea-
sants used red in all their folk art. For Easter, eggs were dyed
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red and exchanged with friends and family, a custom which dates
back more than a thousand years to pre-Christian days.
And in the church, red is the color of the Holy Spirit.
On May 1 there is the "Demonstration." "Spontaneously enthu-
siastic" workers parade through the streets carefully watched by
a formidable double row of soldiers who line the streets and
cordon off much of the city. There are floats from factories
with blinking lights, paper flowers and balloons carried aloft by
children. "Spontaneously enthusiastic" workers who agree to
carry the red flags in the parade are paid 5 rubles each to en-
courage them to do so.
In front of the tribune, in orange and blue jumpsuits, massed
"sportsmen" parade, followed by the enthusiastic workers, the
floats -- all of them harangued about the glories of Soviet
society by some invisible stentorian voice from the Trib.une.,
eliciting rather anemic hurrahs.
All this week in the farmers markets of Moscow and Leningrad,
people from the country will have been selling wooden eggs which
they have painted. Near the churches, on Friday and Saturday old
women sell paper flowers they have fashioned to place on the
kulich or Easter cake that will be brought in baskets along with
pashka, eggs and other Easter treats to the churches by a steady
flow of people all day Saturday, there to be placed on special
long wooden tables often set up outside in the church courtyard
and then sprinkled with holy water and blessed by the priests.
On Saturday night, assembling early because there is never
enough room for all those who wish to attend, and finally
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eleven approaches, packed, jammed, spilling out on to the
streets, the churches will be bursting. The masses of faithful
will stand for most of the night holding lighted candles, symbols
of the living spirit. The priests, blazing in their robes of
silver and gold, their jewelled miters sparkling like stars, will
intone the ancient litergy. At midnight there will be the joyous
cry Khristos Voskrese! "Christ has risen!" And the answer,
Voistinu Voskrese! "He has risen indeed!" The church bells will
toll and the choirs will sing the most beautiful liturgical music
in the world, in what is surely the most magnificent church
service in Christendom. For believers, this year, the fact that
state and religious holidays coincide, means that they will have
more free time to attend services today and tomorrow. They will
fast until after the Easter service and then go home to feast and
make merry until the sun rises. Last year, I had the great ex-
perience of spending Easter night at the Holy Trinity St. Sergius
Monastery at Zagorsk, and broke the fast after the services at
5:00 a.m. with the monks.
It was a great experience, an extraordinary sight, and for
myself, I must say that there was no comparison between this age-
less splendor and the tinny um-pa-pas and hypocritical harangues,
the sportsmen in their slightly shabby jumpsuits badly in need of
dry cleaning, the images of Soviet leaders in much rejuvenated
likenesses listlessly carried like false icons above the heads of
the "spontaneously enthusiastic" workers who cannot wait to break
ranks and go celebrate, preferably with a bottle, somewhere else.
I dare say I am not alone in my feeling.
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On the 9th of May I was in Leningrad. I marched alongside
the sailors on the Vassilevsky Island to the playing of the song
"Day of Victory" ("tis a day we meet with tears") and older
tsarist marches like the "The Banks of the Slavianka." I 'watched
soldiers march down the Nevsky Prospect, (a taxi driver exclaimed
irreverently, "Look at them, like roosters!"). Children were
hanging from the street lamps. Recruits were sitting on each
other's shoulders. At night there was a great salute of fire
works over the Peter and Paul Fortress, filling the air with
thunder and the sky with fiery sparkling colors. Afterwards I
joined a group of merrymakers dancing on the banks of the Neva to
the music of a passing acordionist.
For Rodinitsa, I was in Pskov, that citadel of old Russia,
whose silver and gold cupolas cut the sky in glory. The church
was alight with small candles, placed on what was left of the
Easter cakes. After the service, the people left to picnic on
the graves of departed family members - an ancient and cherished
custom still faithfully observed in Russia today, by non-believ-
ers and believers alike. This year, Rodinitsa will gain added
significance by being joined to the solemn celebrations for.those
who died in the last war. Nothing breaks Russians from their
ancient customs - they have never really given them up, and the
expression of these is growing stronger every day.
There is an old saying that goes, "Scratch a Russian - you'll
find a Tartar." Today I think one can amend this to say,
"Scratch a Soviet and you'll more than likely find a Russian."
In Russia, things are changing.. Like a sea change over the past
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eighteen years, it has been happening slowly -- for nothing
happens quickly in Russia -- but now one can see it everywhere.
Quietly, but unmistakably, every day in every way, the Russians
are beginning to look and act more like Russians.
To understand what is happening in the Soviet Union today, it
is vital to understand the distinction between Russian and
Soviet. We use the terms interchangeably. We should not. The
Soviet government does not. They know there is a difference, and
we should too. Russian and Soviet are not synonyms for each
other. Michael Binyon, in his recent book, Life in Russia, says
that the use of the word "Russia" to refer to all the country,
instead of just one of its 15 republics, "is so widespread in the
West that it would seem silly to quibble." So, why quibble?
Because it's a big quibble, that's why. Gorbachev made inter-
national headlines, when he slipped and used the word "Russia"
instead of "Soviet Union" twice in one of his first speeches.
does not do it any more. Russians have asked me, "Why is it
always Soviet sputniks and Russian tanks?" The Russians are not
our enemies. It is the Soviet regime that has called us enemy,
not the Russian governments of the past or the Russian people
today. So what is Soviet Union and what is Russia?
The term "Russian" refers to a people with a thousand year
old history, culture and Christian heritage. "Soviet" refers to
the Communist state forged by the Bolshevik coup in October 1917.
"Russia" is an ethnic and national entity. The "Soviet Union" is
a purely political one, which encompasses not only Russia, but a
hundred other nationalities as. well, all under the same totals-
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tarian regime and ideology. This is why the ideology must be so
rigid. Without ideology there is nothing.
It is important to understand the difference because how
Russians are thinking, being the ethnic majority in the Soviet
Union, is bound to affect the Soviet government.
By now, everyone knows the nature of the Soviet system. No
one wants it as a model. Europe has rejected Communism entirely,
China is turning off on a new experiment, and increasingly, the
Third World too, is rejecting the Soviet model. Even in the
homeland many questions are being asked. The boredom, the
hopelessness, the shabby vulgarity, the economic stagnation that
predominates in a country which before the revolution, had
achieved a very high degree of civilization and taste, was
leading the world in the arts, and surpassing the United States
in its economic growth; a country which was the bread basket, of
Europe, producing more wheat, barley and rye than the United
States, makes it evident that something is very wrong. This is
beginning to be recognized, even by the Party.
Ironically, it was Stalin who first let the Russian national-
ist genie out of the bottle. To encourage Russians to fight the
Nazis during World War II, he called on the feelings of the
Russian people for their Motherland, rather than for the Commun-
ist Party. These feelings never have gotten back in the bottle
again. Perhaps they never really disappeared anyway.
One can make a very good case that the Russians have been
more decimated by the Soviet regime than any other nationality,
because it was necessary to crush their religion and their
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culture more than any other. They were, after all, the majority.
So today, conversely, the opinion and feelings of Russians have
an importance to the regime which that of other nationalities do
not.
The Soviet empire is not really an expansion of the Russian
cultural tradition at the expense of others, but the destruction
of Russian tradition as well. What remains is the total political
culture. The focus of this ideology is the state, and not the
nation. Today, the ideology is moribund. It remains the only
legitimizing factor for the regime. If there is no ideology,
what is there? The ideology is in malaise and in crisis. It is
suffocating. Worst of all, it is boring. Especially in the case
of young people, it is boring them to death. A country that
loses its youth cannot look forward to a bright future. During
the past twenty years, there has been a growing vaccuum of
belief, and nature abhors vaccuum. What has been rushing in to
fill that spiritual vaccuum are revived feelings of Russian
nationalism, which I think are better called "Russianist"
feelings. These find a great echo in the population.
Every government, however totalitarian, exists in some part
either with the consent or, at least, the acquiescence of the
governed. There is a public opinion in the Soviet Union,
although it does not work-in ways that we are used to. What the
Russians think is important to the Soviets. If Russian attitudes
are changing significantly, there must be some adaptation - or
conflict will most surely eventually result. Increasingly, Rus-
sianists have been saying that it is precisely Marxist-Leninist
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thinking that is destroying Russia, not the threat from Western
Imperialism. There is a growing difference between "them" and
Russianist sentiment is not a political party in any sense.
Rather, it reflects the thinking of many groups, whose general-
ized body of concerns bring them more and more into conflict with
Marxist-Leninist thinking and priorities. There are indications
that these concerns and feelings reach up to the highest levels
of government and find strong support among the military.
We in the West have not, up to now, paid very much attention
to these growing nationalist feelings, nor to their manifest-
ation. This, I believe, is due to our Western proclivity for
looking for mirror images. We in the West have been more. inter-
ested in the "dissident" movement. These were indeed a heroic
few who did.much to begin the process of questioning which is now
continuing in the Soviet Union along other paths. But the
dissident movement was not broad based, it did not reflect the
concerns of the majority of the Russian people. Directed toward
the West, it was well reported by Western newsmen and closely
tied to the question of Jewish emigration, which found echo and
support in the West. The nationalist movement finds no such
understanding or support here, and we have not been much
interested in its development. I think we are very mistaken,
because, contrary to the dissident movement, the Russianist
movement does represent the deepest concerns and worries of
millions of Russians. The regime cannot afford to entirely
disregard these strong and growing sentiments.
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The fires of revolution no longer burn so brightly. The
revolutionary youth has settled-into middle age and is facing the
problem of paunch, balding, grey hair, and loss of energy. As a
Russian song goes,
"One begins to see that autumn has lost
the brightness of June and the pompous
power of August,
That the roads are bad,
That darkness falls not at ten, but at
eight,
That the fields grow dark and that fate
has not been so kind."
In the Soviet Union these days, not only the economic reality, but
the human reality is not so good. The social fabric is decaying.
These are no longer secrets, but discussed openly and even passionate-
ly in the pages of the newspapers of the Soviet Union. No more talk
about surpassing and burying the United States. Much less talk about
communism being "built." In.his 27th Party Congress speech, Gorbachev
himself referred to "Socialist civilization" and of having constructed
"a Communist society." The utopia has arrived. And so now what? The
USSR may be a powerful military machine, but everything else; roads,
communications, and food, are not doing so well. Except for uniforms,
it is more and more apparent'to everyone that the Emperor has no
clothes.
Increasingly, in order to justify its totalitarian power amidst
growing awareness of deficiencies at home, the regime is falling back
on one theme - that of portraying itself as the protector of the Rus-
sian land against outside enemies. In a country which has known so
many invasions and has such a deep seated fear of war, this powerful
appeal to the instinct for national survival goes very deep and out-
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weighs almost everything else. More and more, Russians are being
treated to powerful doses of nationalism, rather than Communist plati-
tudes. The cult of World War II grows to ever dizzying heights,
treated by the regime as if it happened last week and not forty years
ago. It is indeed vitally important to them because the Great Patri-
otic War, as it is called in the Soviet Union, remains the only area
in which the entire nation agreed and participated together.
This War Cult is a manipulated nationalism. The government has
manipulated and continues to manipulate Russian symbols. It tries to
appropriate them to itself; the love of pictures, symbols, icons,
parades, patriotism, and the color red. Of course, the authorities
would prefer a non-Christian version of nationalism, celebrating
steely, spartan-like Russian warriors. But the people, with some
exceptions, are refusing to accept this definition and they are making
themselves heard.
Popular nationalist feelings are broader and more humane than
the manipulated nationalist feelings that the regime now encourages.
The two are a little bit like oil and vinegar in vinaigrete. You can
shake them up for a while, but left to rest, they separate. Therefore,
when we confuse the two terms "Soviet" and "Russian," we help the
regime achieve the goal that it is presently trying to achieve -- that
of merging Russian nationalism with itself. That is why it is
important for us to know the difference.
This is especially important because the goals of the Russianists
are ones with which the US can sympathize. They concentrate on issues
which are seen are most injurious to the well-being of the Russian
people. What are these-issues?
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1. The Russianists express great concern over the rape of the
environment by the headlong scientific-technical revolution, which has
been the cornerstone of the Communist regime (Chernobyl may eventually
have a very big effect on public opinion in the Soviet Union. Perhaps
the reason that the regime initially released so little news about it
at home, initially and so piecemeal now, is because they fear that
popular reaction may yet endanger their ambitious nuclear programs.)
Nationalists are against Promethean, utopian communist projects.
Curiously, this Russian rediscovery of the environment coincided
exactly with ours in the US in the 60's. But it is even stronger in
Russians who have traditionally, and still today, maintain ,a closer
connection with nature and land than we do in the United States.
2. The decline of the village and destruction of the countryside
and culture of the village. Russianists see the village as being a
repository for age old values that are now being eroded and destroyed
by the headlong march to scientific-materialistic progress.
3. The preservation of old Russian monuments. Over the past 18
years, Russianists have mounted an effective campaign against the
continued razing of historical and cultural monuments, including
churches. So effective has this movement been that the preservation
of monuments is now government policy.
4. The preservation and protection of religion, particularly the
Orthodox Church, which they see as playing a vital role in Russian
history and culture.
Basically, Russianists want to throw the Soviet juggernaut in
reverse; to promote a concern for the physical-and spiritual health
a people threatened with decline and even : extinction.
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These Russianist goals are, in my view, realistic and patriotic
ones which would help to bring Russia back into the family of nations,
help her prosper and restore her prestige. Utopian? I don't think
so. On the contrary, I find them realistic. I have often heard the
word "tupik" (dead end) in the Soviet Union, referring to the present
state of affairs. If so, then the only course of sanity is to turn
back a bit and look for a more constructive road.
In the West, some academics have tried to portray rising Russian
national feelings as dangerous, fascist, antisemitic. I do not share
this view. While it is true that every nation, including Russia, has
its own home-grown bigots, they are by no means the majority. How
would we like our own nationalistic feelings to be judged exclusively
by our John Birchers or neo-Nazis? Rather, what I have observed is a
people looking through the rubble for its lost soul, trying to find a
way back to national morality and values. And where is it more logi-
cal to look than in their own past? There is a powerful phrase of
Solzhenitsyn, "When a culture is taken away from a people, it is like
commiting a lobotomy on them." Russians are simply refusing to be
lobotomized, and we should be glad for this. They have resisted total-
itarianism in whatever form it came clothed - a great feat. "Ethics
and aesthetics" is the slogan and positive mission of the "quiet
revolution" of the Russianists. Their goal is to resurrect from near
extinction, values and moral reflexes which have been out of fashion
and, indeed, subject to persecution and derision during the Soviet
period.
Today, old Russia is definitely back in style, and this is becom-
ing more and more evident everyday in ways small and; large.
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The revival began sometime in the late 60's. First it was
crosses; among young people especially, it became fashionable to wear
little golden crosses around their necks. Artists, as it happens so
often, were among the first to sense the growing spiritual searching.
With increasing frequency, crosses, cupolas, and other religious
symbols began to appear in the paintings of unofficial artists. The
prerevolutionary Christian philosophers, Solov'yov and Berdayev, were
searched out and read by members of the intelligentsia. Through the
Russian classics young people found the language of faith.
Dostoevsky, after all, was uncensored and published in unexpurgated
form only about 20 years ago. Church weddings became more desirable.
Some of the children of high Communist officials found them much
prettier than the assembly line in the House of Marriages presided
over by an uninspiring Party official. Baptisms began to increase.
The new love for Russian style shows in many small details.
Over the past two years I have noticed that young women are more
often wearing the long, Russian plait, which used to be the glory of
Russian womanhood. They are tying their flowered scarves in graceful,
traditional ways. The fur hat, "Boyarina style," was much in demand
in Leningrad last fall. Some enterprising young men found fur lined
coats somewhere; coats that made them look much more dashing. They
have taken, in greater frequency, to wearing beards and mustaches. I
even saw several members of the militia wearing mustaches of 19th cen-
tury style, which made them look quite like old fashioned hussars. I
saw a sign for "old Petersburg dishes" in a window of a restaurant not
for foreigners. The store windows of the Gostiny Dvor, the famous
prototype of. the shopping mall'built by Catherine the
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being painted as they were in the 19th century, and the displays much
more attractively done by artists who have their names posted in the
windows.
Last fall, to my astonishment, I saw, clip-clopping down the
Nevsky Prospect a carriage, driven by a liveried driver. I thought
perhaps it was for a film until I saw a television program one even-
ing, where the driver was interviewed. It turned out that this gentle-
man was selling rides in his carriage for 40 kopeks a kilometer. He
said his horse and carriage were " very popular among our young
people, especially for weddings."
In Leningrad, the Literary Cafe has opened in the very place and
building where Wolf and Barringer's, a famous Petersburg cafe once
existed. There, legend has it that Pushkin had his last cup of coffee
before he left for his fatal duel.
The picturesque Arbat district in Moscow has been partially
restored, and is now closed off to automobile traffic. Pedestrians
browse among the little shops which have blossomed.
In Leningrad there is a project to close off the Palace Embankment
and a parallel street, which was known in the past as Millionarnaya;
there to restore horses and carriages and the old store fronts.
A recent study, published in Izvestia, reports that young Russian
parents are now no longer naming their children such names as Electri-
fication. Alexander and Ekaterina have replaced former favorites like
Tractor, Hypotenuse, and Revolution. One in every thirty boys is now
named Alexander, a name which recalls three tsars and the country's
greatest poet. Following in popularity were Dmitri, Alexsei,: Sergei.,
and Andrei and, f-or girls, Ann$, Maria,~,ElenaOlga, and 'Tatiana
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incidentally perhaps, all Saints names. Some people haplessly named
Central Chemical have been changing their names back officially to the
more traditional Nikolai and Mikhail. Patronymics, too, are more in
style, although some Soviet officials still pompously insist that
these be dropped.
This interest in re-naming extends to places. Continuing its
campaign for the preservation of "the historical memory" of the
Russian people, the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya said that the Moscow
Executive Committee should discuss with Soviet historians the
possibility of returning the old, prerevolutionary names to streets
and squares in Moscow.
During my visits over the last two years, I have noticed that
there are fewer political banners and placards, and those that remain,
are getting a little bedraggled and not being rapidly replaced. There
are less Lenin pictures in the store windows and no more five story
high banner of a clenched fisted Lenin in the Palace Square in Lenin-
grad -- my first impression of the Soviet Union in 1967. Instead, for
May Day there was a great banner with a more modest Lenin peeping out
from behind the hirsute Marx and Engels.
In Moscow, according to a recent article, young people are singing
songs of the White Army, and in Afghanistan, it was reported by a
French newspaper recently, soldiers are singing Tsarist songs, playing
Russian roulette, calling. each other Gospodin (sir) instead
Comrade, and favoring the more elegant champagne instead of vodka. In
Leningrad old tsarist marches are rousingly played by military bands.
Even the new leader is in step. Gorbachev is the first.full-
blooded great Russian since Peter the Great,_a fact noted-by Russians
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with approval.
Along with this renewed interest in all things old, it is perhaps
natural that monarchist feelings and nostalgia exist as well.
There has been a tremendous and growing public interest in the
lives of the last Emperor, Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Rus-
sians gobble up information about their lives and tragic death, seem-
ing to feel that in this period before the Revolution lies the explan-
ation for the events that followed.
It is not unusual to find pictures of the last Tsar and his family
on the walls of modest apartments. During the past ten years, a
trashy book about Nicholas II, "23 Steps Downwards" by Marc Kasvinov,
has been published and was eagerly bought up by the Russian public.
Despite its fallacious rendering of the facts, it is a book which Rus-
sians found fascinating, if only for the few crumbs of real informa-
tion it contained.
There have been official attempts to demonstrate that it was not
Lenin, but Kerensky, who actually ordered the assasination of the
Imperial family and that the killing of the Tsar was done by Russians,
not by foreigners as was actually the case. (This is because Russians
often insist that no Russian would ever have murdered the Tsar.)
The Ipatiev House in Sverdlovsk, where the Imperial family was
murdered, was razed about five years ago. The reason? -- it had be-
come a place for pilgrimages.
Since the mid-60's three films have been made on the subject of
the last tsar! "His Majesty's Crown," "Before Judgment" and "Agoniya"
-- released to the general public only last year, more than eight
years after its completion. Millions flocked to see them.
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In 1982 the Moscow poet Yuri Kubalanovskii, now an emigre, wrote:
"When one visits the home of a member of the Nomenklatura elite, one
is likely to see photographs of our Cyclops (Brezhnev, et. al.) on the
walls. But let us turn to the room of the son; here one finds a
votive lamp, a photo of the last Tsar and Empress and a simple icon of
Saint Seraphim of Saratov."
We should not, I think, dismiss this too quickly as lunacy or
merely rear guard narrowmindedness. The aspiration for monarchy as a
symbol of a stable and enduring national identity is not so strange.
1-
After all, why should it be more unrealistic or wrong for some Rus-
sians to be exploring this thought than it is for the English, the
Spanish or the Scandanavians, where we find it most natural and
acceptable. Socialist governments and kings seem to get along rather
well in those places.
During the 70's, the artistic concerns of the Russianists appeared
in the works of many painters and writers.
Called the "Village writers" or the "Siberian" group, Valentin
Rasputin, Vasiliy Belov, the late Feodor Abramov and Vasiliy Shukshin
were among a new group of writers who sprang up in the late sixties
and in the seventies. Vladimir Soloukhin has written several books on
old Russian culture and Orthodoxy. We did not pay much attention to
these writers in the West, but the Russians did, eagerly devouring
their books. The "Village writers" wrote about the problems of the
disappearing and decaying life of the villages, the backbone of
Russian life, about the destruction of ancient village morality,
encroached upon by technocrats and factories.
are quite-startlingly frank and honest. The_ stories of..Shukshin
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remind one of Chekhov in their economy of expression and human
understanding.
(Shukshin, since his untimely death at age 45 a few years ago, has
become, like the late poet-singer Vladimir Vysostsky, a national hero.
Every year pilgrimages are organized to his home in Siberia, where his
works are read. A talented actor and film director as well as a
writer, his film, "Kalina Krasnaya," has become a contemporary Soviet
classic.)
In a lower vein, the writer Pikul, who has turned out trashy
historical novels about the reigns of Catherine the Great and Paul I,
enjoys an enormous popularity. A Communist official advised me
enthusiastically: "You must read Pikul -- he writes about our history!
Our tsars!"
Painters, too, expressed the theme of the disintegration of
Russian life in their canvases. There are neo-primitives, who seek
their inspiration from Russian folk art, and others who portray relig-
ious symbols and scenes. Ilya Glazunov, a controversial artist, both
there and here, specializes in nationalistic and Russian historical
themes. Personally controversial or no, good artist or bad, the fact
is that in 1978 and 1979, 600,000 people waited in long lines to see
some 400 of his paintings in Moscow (in contrast, a three month long,
60th anniversary exhibit which had been held in Moscow to commemorate
the anniversary of the founding of the USSR drew only 50,000 people).
Almost a million people in Leningrad - one quarter of the city -
flocked to see his exhibition there. Up to 45,000 a day assembled to
see the exhibit, despite efforts of the authorities to close or limit
attendance. Glazunov was severely taken to task bythe Party,
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establishment in Leningrad and in Leningradskaya Pravda. Yet he was
able to hold the Leningrad Party establishment at bay, which indicates
that he had some powerful protection somewhere.
The big hit of the show was "The Return of the Prodigal Son,"
showing a shirtless young man in jeans, on his knees, being comforted
by a Christ-like figure, behind whom stand holy men and cultural
figures from Russia's past. In the foreground were scenes associated
with wild debauch, Soviet prometheism, political terror, barbed wire,
a skyscraper. In the visitors book at the exhibition, thousands of
comments were written, such as:
"Long live the Great Russian Idea, risen up like a Phoenix" - a
group of Russian youth;
"Thank- you for Rus', for that which lives in us always and
everywhere, which is impossible to kill, to which we shall return."
In music, after a long disappearance or rare performances, the
Russian repertoire grows more classic each time I visit. I have seen
several of Rimsky-Korsakov's finest operas; operas which can only be
seen in the Soviet Union, for they are sadly never performed here. A
new production of "Evgeny Onegin" and "The Queen of Spades," by
Timurkanov, the conductor and director of the Kirov. Theater Orchestra
in Leningrad, was the hottest ticket in town. These were beautiful
productions, done with perfect taste and attention to the tradition of
Petersburg. At the Cappela, or Choir Hall, in Leningrad, Chernushenko
has almost singlehandedly resurrected some of the most beautiful of
Russian music. This year, I heard there liturgical music of the 16th
and 17th centuries, the music of the 18th century composer
Bortnyansky, and others, the songs of Peterthe Great,!s time. There
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are beautiful concerts given now in the restored palaces of Pavlovsk
and Gatchina.
Poets, too, are taking up Russianist themes; poets such as Oleg
Okhapkin in Leningrad, a devout Orthodox poet who has been writing for
many years using religious and philosophical themes. There is a
determined search for more classical language in poetry.
Perhaps one of the most dramatic illustrations of this great surge
of interest in the past and in Russian history is the extraordinary
work of restoration and preservation of old monuments and buildings.
In Moscow, I was told by the head of Moscow Restorations that there
are now in the Soviet Union close to 15 million members of organiza-
tions concerned with restorations, or people working in such restora-
tions. Said he, "We cannot even touch a bridge now without having a-
flood of protests."
Perhaps one thing that most differentiates Russians from Western-
ers is the degree to which the Russian is guided by his emotions. As
we all know, emotions are connected with moods. Over and over their
history has shown, that urged on by his emotions, the Russian can
accomplish great feats. Conversely, when he is not in the mood, he is
capable of great laziness. Simply looking at the problems of the
economy in the Soviet Union, we can deduct that in this area the
Russian today is not highly motivated and even quite discouraged.
However, when we turn to the restoration of palaces and churches
we see something quite different. Although everywhere else in the
Soviet Union one is surrounded by shabby goods and bad workmanship --
here one sees work that shines like a true diamond. The restoration
of the palaces outside Leningrad destroyed by the Nazis during :-Yorld
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Russians. There one sees that Russian emotion has achieved miracles
-- miracles which deserve to be admired by the entire world. Nothing
demonstrates better what Russians can do when they want to -- the
perfection and devotion with which they can work when motivated. If
Mr. Gorbachev could harness the feelings that have motivated these
magnificant efforts for the entire economy, he would have few
problems.
What is this motivation? Not love of money, certainly, for many
worked as volunteers and there was no way to pay for all the extra
hours of devotion above the call of duty. Not love of Lenin, party,
or scientific-materialism, certainly -- rather, it is love of country,
love of beauty, love and respect for the past. The Russian people
have been ready to defend and protect their history and culture from
all attacks, whether at home or from Nazi hordes, and they have
succeeded. I have often wondered, as I looked at these miracles of
restoration, if it had happened to us, what buildings would we
consider so important to our national soul, to our culture that we
would work with such patience for 44 years to restore them? Or, in
love with the future, would we prefer to raze them and start something
Perhaps one of the major reasons that the Soviet regime is becom-
ing more concerned with Russianist issues is the sobering reality of
the dismal human statistics which are affecting primarily the Russian
and European populations of the USSR.
For some time, there. has bee'n a declining or stagnatj birth rate
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in the Russian north, compounding the shortage of labor and leaving
vast tracks of resource rich land short of settlers. This is in
contrast to the Moslems, who are notorious for their reluctance to
move North, or even into cities, who have exploded in numbers.
In Russia, the statistics are 17.6 births per thousand, and in
Ukraine 16. In the Asiatic republics, the highest, Tadzhikistan, is
39.7 per thousand and in Kazakhstan, the lowest, 24.4 per thousand.
If these trends continue, Murray Feshbach, the leading U.S.
demographer who studies the Soviet Union, predicts that by the year
2000, the Russians may no longer be the ethnic majority.
The Soviet government has tried to offer incentives, including
cash and extended maternity leaves, for each baby. But the problem is
difficult in a country where women make up 51% of the labor force and
92.5% of all working age women work or study. One in three marriages
ends in divorce and this is now one in two. Of all those married in
1977, a third had filed for divorce by 1978. (Again, in the Moslem
republics, the problems are lesser. There, because of strong religi-
ous tradition, divorce is negligible) The birth rate in the Western
industrialized part of the country has fallen to such a low point that
in the Russian republic, 56% of all couples have only one child and
another 33% have only two. This means that 89% of all families in the
largest and most populous republic have fewer children than the
replacement rate.
Abortions are soaring. There are more abortions in Russia than
any other country in the world; at least three times as many as in the
United States according to official statistics.
Every woman has six
to eight abortions in her lifetime. And since most
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Central Asian republics have none, this means that in the West and in
the North, women have as many as fifteen. Soviet medical reports put
the ratio of live births anywhere between 2.1 to 4.1.
There is now an all-out campaign to stop women from terminating
their first pregnancies, in view of the serious damage this is found
to cause health and the chance of ever being able to complete any sub-
sequent pregnancy. Statistics show that 36% became seriously ill
after the first abortion, atributed to the blow to their hormonal
systems, and I might also add, their psychological systems, for
abortions in the Soviet Union are routinely done without anest#tsia.
Public discussion of the issue is increasing. The state is try-
ing to put sanctity back into marriage. Attempts are being made to
strengthen the Soviet family. But as women work an average of 80
hours a week between job and home, and men 50, this is not to the
liking of Russian women, who outnumber men by a larger proportion than
anywhere else in the world. (This, a sad testimonial to the wars,
Stalin's terror, and all the calamities that have befallen Russia.)
Today Russians are searching for old values of family and children.
The official image is not now that of a bulky superwoman swinging a
hammer to build Communism, but a domesticated mother contentedly
fulfilling herself by bringing up children at home. But the party
knows it cannot get people to marry and have children by decree.
Alcoholism is another terrible social problem. The average age of
the chronic alcoholic in the Soviet Union is 15 to 17 years. Eleven
percent of workers are absent every day becuse of drunkenness. There
are approximately 42 million alcoholics. Deaths from alcohol poison-
ing are ten times higher than in the United States. The
percentage:o
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25
people who began to drink under age 18 has risen from 16% in 1925 to
93% today. Each working adult in European Russia consumes an average
of one bottle of hard liquor a day. A terribly sad, tragic statistic
for the future is that there is now a high percentage of mentally
retarded children born to alcoholics. Teachers who work in the
countryside report that sometimes they find whole villages of children
are mentally retarded.
Soviet society is also plagued by a rising crime rate and increas-
ing juvenile delinquency, a falling mortality rate for men, whose
average life expectancy is now approximately 60.4 years of age. There
is an 11.5 year difference in life expectancy between men and women,
the highest difference in any developed country. The Russian popula-
tion is literally drinking itself to death.
And what are the reasons for this? Soviet authorities and social
workers say "escapism," "boredom," that Soviet society has lost many
of its values. There is, they say, "A spiritual emptiness in our
youth." Where to fill this spiritual emptiness and how? Increasing-
ly, as the State fails to come up with answers, more and more Russians
are turning to God.
Of all the manifestations of a resurgent Russian national con-
sciousness, the rising appeal and strength of the Orthodox Church is
the most important.
It is one of the glories of the Russian people that they are, and
remain, deeply spiritual, sensitive to beauty and to mystery. The
increasing interest in the past, the restoration of magnificent pre-
revolutionary architecture, the interest in peasant culture, the Tsar,
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and Russian heros, was bound to lead to the church, for Russian na-
tionalism relates very positively to the Orthodox Church. The Russian
church is the only institution which represents an unbroken continuity
with a thousand year old past; the only institution which has remain-
ed unabsorbable. It is the only unassimilated, non-Marxist,. Leninist
organization allowed to exist officially; the only alternative belief
system tolerated in the USSR, the only place one can go if one rejects
the ideology, the only place to emigrate without leaving the country.
Another important aspect is that, in a society deprived of beauty, and
for a people as sensitive to beauty as the Russians, the church is
beautiful. One has only to look at the expressions of Russians
flocking to museums and to churches to understand how important beauty
is to them. All the more so, because there is so little anywhere
else. It is, therefore, an immensely attractive element for those who
do not accept the system, or whom the system will not accept. The
integrating role it can play among Belyorussians, Ukrainians and
Great Russians, gives this church a particular role at this moment in
history when the regime is facing a problem of increasing disintegra-
tion and social decay. We are seeing certain signs of a greater
rapprochement of the church and the state.
That the church in Russia has survived at all, and that it is
growing today is a miracle, for perhaps no state in history has mount-
ed such a concentrated, sustained assault on religion.
For many hundreds of years, Russia was the church and the church
was Russia. It was therefore vital for the new Communist regime to
destroy it.
In the years immediately. following the revolution, thousands of
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priests were killed. Churches were destroyed, turned into warehouses,
movie theaters, and swimming pools. The first Five-Year Plan confi-
dently predicted, "all vestiges of religion will be destroyed by the
end of the first Five-Year Plan." But they were not destroyed then
and they are not destroyed now. Today the regime takes a different
tone.
Yet so viciously effective was this first campaign against the
church that by 1929 there were only four bishops left and by 1939,
only 100 churches in a country which had had thousands. The mighty
Church of the Saviour, built by contributions of Russian people as a
thanksgiving for the victory over Napoleon, as powerful an image on
the horizon as the Kremlin, was blown up in 1931. "We'll blow up
Mother Russia's skirts a little," said the Party official who pushed
the dynamite lever.
Ironically, it was Stalin again, who not only resurrected Russian
national feelings at the time of war, but also under pressure, restor-
ed the Patriarch and called on the church to help inspire feelings for
the Motherland. The church has has never been pushed back in the box
again. In 1943, in a tremendous concession by the state, the Orthodox
Church regained the land given up by the Nazis. By the end of the
war, there were 20,000 churches. Yet once again, in 1958 - 1964,
under Khrushchev, a mighty anti-religious campaign was mounted by the
regime and 1/2 to 2/3 of these newly opened churches were closed,
along with an overwhelming majority of seminaries and convents.
But despite all efforts and all the persecution of their
government, the Russians have refused to give up their faith. Over
the past 20 years, first gradually and now in every growing numbers,
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Russians, including the young, have been returning to the church.
There is a profound thirst for the spiritual. As I was told by
one young man shortly after he had been baptised, "I couldn't stand
lies any more. I thought there had to be truth somewhere." Fifty
five to sixty million people are now willing to be registered as
Orthodox believers, -three times as many as the Communist party. This
figure does not include several million Catholics, Baptist-s. and other
- - --- -------------
Protestants -- nor the underground Orthodox church, for which we have
no figures, only estimates. But even official figures make the USSR,
along with the US and Brazil, one of the three largest Christian
countries on earth (as well as being the fourth largest Moslem
nation). The church now estimates that there are more than one
million new baptisms a year. Grandmothers have been assailed in the
pages of Pravda for refusing to sit with heathen babies. Whatever the
numbers, the fact is that Communist ideas are growing weaker and
religion is growing stronger.
Russians have great experience with spiritual resistance. Some-
times they remind me of a woman with a bullying husband. She knows he
is stronger than she is, she knows he can hit her if he likes, perhaps
even kill her. So she keeps her profile low and goes about her own
business, fooling him when she can, staying out of his way the best
she can, but always keeping her real thoughts and counsel to herself,
her opinions unchanged.
How do Russians deal with tyranny? Their history gives some
answers. They are a nonconfrontational people. The most ancient
teachings of the church instruct them - "Do not resist evil with
evil,". and to accept with humility the will of.God. Their;;:most
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potent weapon is patience - and they are masters at it. They survived
250 years of Mongol domination and a 100 years of Westernization and
emerged more Russian than before from each ordeal. Champions of
endurance, they outlast, outwait, and finally swallow every conqueror,
making them over into their own image. This is what they are
gradually doing today, for Russia' remains always essentially herself.
Russians have been resisting in their own, desperate way. They
have brought their economy to a halt by refusing to work. They have
refused to reproduce themselves, and have preferred to kill themselves
with alcohol rather than to become robots, to lose their souls. The
ultimate resistance, after all, is suicide.
One can say that today in Russia everyone is either religious or
superstitious, and what is superstition but a primitive belief in an
unseen world?
Today slowly, cupolas are being regilded, churches are being re-
stored; a source of historical and architectural pride once again.
During the funerals of the last three leaders, the church was present.
The church is preparing to celebrate its Millenium - a thousand years
of Christianity, in 1988. The Danilovsky monastery, the oldest and
first monastery in Moscow, has been given back to the church and is
being entirely restored. This monastery holds profound resonances for
the Russians. Prince Daniel, the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky,
was given Moscow, then a small settlement, by his father. Daniel, a
monastic prince, and cannonized after his death, founded the monastery
in the 13th century and it became an important first center of
spiritual resistance to Mongol domination. The monastery complex
includes seven chapels, and a cathedral. In addition, a new building,
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which is to be future center of the Orthodox Church, is under
construction. In 1988, the Patriarch will move there from Zagorsk to
Moscow, a move which also has powerful historic connotations. A few
weeks ago, the statue of Lenin was removed peacefully from the
courtyard, in the presence of many witnesses. Daily monastic services
are conducted there already. Restoration of the monastery has aroused
great interest all over Russia; thousands of pilgrims from all over
the USSR have come to Moscow and even offered to voluntarily help with
the restoration work. In a measure unprecedented since the Revolu-
tion, the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate recently announced that,
an account in the name of "Restoration and building of the compound of
Holy St. Daniel's Monastery Foundation" has been opened in the Foreign
Trade Bank of the USSR Moscow. The Commission for the Restoration
announced that from now on anyone, worldwide, can participate in the
common enterprise conducted by the Moscow Patriarchate. Contributions
in any currency will be accepted.
Of course, as religious sentiment has grown, the government has
not stood idly by. Over the past years there have been renewed
efforts to teach atheism in the schools. Books have been published
purporting to show that the church's contribution to Russian history
and culture has been overrated. Propaganda emphasizes the corruption
of priests and monks during the tsarist regime.
During the 70's in the Brezhnev period, along with the crackdown
on the dissident movement which received much attention in the West,
there was an equally harsh, in some respects even harsher, crackdown
on Russian nationalist thinkers and independent Orthodox priests.
Many were arrested and many were broken. Many still languish in
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extremely bitter prison conditions. This crackdown, however, received
scant attention in the West.
Alexander Ogorodnikov, founder of the Christian Seminar in Moscow,
has been in prison since 197$ and is now in severely deteriorating
health because of foul prison conditions. His sentence was extended
in February. His current whereabouts are unknown. Father Gleb
Yakunin, a couragous, independent priest is also still imprisoned. We
pay little attention to these martyrs of conscience. They are
Russians, after all, and wish to stay in Russia. A testimonial to our
disinterest is that Anatoly Shcharansky's recent release received a
great deal of notice. His fellow prisoner of whom Shcharansky spoke
in affectionate terms, Vladimir Poresh, a gentle pacific man whose
crime was exploring Russian Chris an philosophy and Orthodoxy, and
leading a Christian seminar in Leningrad, did not. Poresh, who was
tried and imprisoned at the same time as Shcharansky and suffered the
same harsh imprisonment, was also released shortly after Shcharansky.
There was not a single line about Poresh in the Western press, yet in
Russia his release was perhaps even more significant than
Shcharansky's.
The regime has come to realize that it is an unobtainable goal to
eradicate religion entirely, so they have now decided that since they
cannot beat it, they will try to join it. Today the Soviet government
makes every attempt to infiltrate, control, manipulate and use the
church for disinformation, internal and external. The organized
church is, of course, very vulnerable to such pressure, but the mass
of popular believers is much less. They are. the targets of anti-
religious campaigns, which now have turned into mostly prophylactic
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campaigns aimed at preventing young people from being infected by
religion, or from relapsing. But before we dismiss the Russian Ortho-
dox Church as merely a subservient tool of the regime, which it is not
entirely, we should remember that these contacts are not a one way
street. Interaction between the two forces is very complex.
Christian history is full of stories of those who came to scoff and
persecute and stayed to pray -- to name one, Saul, who set out on the
road to Damascus to organize the persecution of the Christians and
somewhere on the road became Saint Paul.
I think we will see a continuing rapprochement between the church
and the state in the years to come, for as it did in wartime, the
church can play an important unifying role for the nation.
The rediscovery of common roots of nationality and religion, the
merger of nationality and religious consciousness, which has,
incidently also happened among the Moslems, is an important force.
Increasingly, attacks on the church are being perceived as attacks on
nationality. Today, even those who are not believers, are opposed to
religious persecution: "Let believers believe, it's not our
business," is a growing attitude, "Do not interfere in their lives."
Increasingly, the church is seen as performing a role in moral educa-
tion for a regime which is fighting social disintegration. One
teacher, I was told, said, "I much prefer the children of believers,
they behave so much better." There is a feeling that religion can
instill wholesome values in the population, that the church can serve
as a powerful medicine for an ailing nation.
We do not know yet whether Gorbachev is more a patriot of his
country or of his party, which has traditionally shown a disregard for
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the good of the people, treating them as ideological fodder for amibi-
tious projects, or destroying them in war. During the past few days,
after the tragedy at Chernobyl, the official attempt to save face at
any cost once again illustrates the pathological defensiveness and
sensitivity to criticism of a system which knows itself to be vulner-
able to public opinion. This official reaction is sad and discourag-
ing. How Gorbachev will react we do not yet know. But before this
latest disaster, there have been indications that he is aware and con-
cerned about the problems of his people. His campaign against
alcoholism, his efforts to go out to the public directly demonstrate
this. He has cancelled the controversial rivers of the North project
(a high priority for Russian conservationists) that would have
diverted rivers with unforeseeable environmental consequences and by
the by, drowned several old and beautiful Russian villages. He has
cancelled a majority of the proposed utopian projects in Siberia in
order to divert much needed funds and resources to European Russia.
As for religion, under the section of the 27th Party Congress
Program "Atheism," it was written that "the Party will use the means
of ideological influence for the wide dispersal of a scientific-mater-
ialistic world understanding and for the surmounting of religious
dogmas, but without giving offense to the feelings of believers"
(italics mine) -- a new and startling departure. There is a well
substantiated rumor that Gorbachev wanted to remove the section on
atheistic teaching all together.
In the first weeks of his leadership, Gorbachev began by going out
to the people to seek their support, in a way unprecedented for any
Soviet leader. They will give it to him if he begins to attend to
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their pressing needs. This means more attention to the consumer
economy. It means an end to the war in Afghanistan, which is
uselessly killing young Russian men, who are badly needed at home for
more constructive purposes, including making babies. Babies who, in
turn, deserve the right to see other lands and to develop themselves
fully. It means an end to lies, for the lack of free contact with the
rest of the world is hurting Russia most of all. (The isolation that
we have just witnessed at Chernobyl is not only sad, but as we have
seen, terribly dangerous.) It means an end to making mischief in
countries in far off places, an end to gigantism, which is costing
Russia dearly money that could better be used at home.
An old saying has been whispered among the people; that the
troubles of Russia will not end until a new Mikhail came to power.
This is a reference to the Time of Troubles, which ended when the
first Romanov came to the throne in the early 17th century. Well, he
has, and let's hope that the old superstition is right.
The time of Easter is a profoundly symbolic time of hope, of re-
surrection. In Russia, among the Russian people, there are stirrings
of new life, as delicate as new spring branches. The ground is still
hard and unfertile, the roots have been damaged but new life there is.
If these observations are true, then what questions does this new
life pose for us in the United States in our long-range relations with
the USSR? What attitude will we take to these new and developing phe-
nomena? Will we be prepared to meet new developments with an open
mind, or only with old stereotypes and prejudices? Will we be dis-
cerning enough to recognize constructive change when we see it? We
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have often misjudged events in both Russia and the Soviet Union, or we
have recognized them too late. At this vital junction in our rela-
tionship we must be more sensitive and discerning than we have ever
been before. Perhaps a good way to begin is to differentiate clearly
between the people and the government.
As the Russians are fond of saying, "Nothing lasts forever,
everything passes." We, in the United States, need to develop a
little longer view, a little perspective. After all, 67 years is a
drop in the historical bucket. Russia is more than a thousand years
old. She has seen many masters. Many leaders have passed into the
mist, but Russia is still there. As one Russian said, "Russia will
always free herself. She should have been spiritually killed by the
Mongols, but she was not. She will always liberate herself from any
pressure."
One of the great differences between us'is that we in America are
a country so enamored by the future that we often behave as if there
were no past. The Russians have a tendency to do the opposite. We
are both wrong. We in the United States need to remember that it was
not always like this. We had good relations with the Imperial Russian
government. Alexander II freed the serfs two years before Lincoln,
and because of this became a national American hero. He corresponded
with Lincoln and in 1863, sent a Russian fleet to support the Union.
Lincoln spoke of this timely arrival of the Russians in his Thanks-
giving Proclamation that year, as "one of God's great bounties which
cannot fail to penetrate the heart." And yet, no two systems could
have been more different than an ancient autocracy and a young
republican democracy. So the difference in systems is not the
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problem. The problem is hostile expansionist, Marxist ideology.
However, if we will only be satisfied with a mirror image, we are
bound to be disappointed, for Russia is different, has always been
different and her answer to her problems may not be ours. In any
case, psychologists say that only narcissists want mirror images.
Perhaps we should explore the differences -- we might learn something.
We are a country of impatience, they of patience. We are a country of
rationality, they of emotion. They are comfortable with mystery, we
are not. We don't know it yet perhaps, but we need the Russians. We
need their strength, their profound spirituality, their humanity, the
wisdom they have so dearly won by their suffering.
We, too, in the past ten years, and I think it is a healthy thing,
have developed a greater respect for our past and for our values.
This, in my view, is a mark of maturity. Healthy patriotism for a
nation is like self-respect for an individual. It is the distorted
sense of nationalism, meglomania, that is bad. It is good that Russia
is beginning to find her nationality again.
At this time, with respect to the Soviet Union, we have a very
developed "anti" policy: anti-communist, anti-Soviet expansion, but
what are we for? I believe that we must begin to ask ourselves what
lies beyond containment? In less than 14 years we will come to a new
century. Do we all want to continue on this negative road?
Certainly a country's strength is not measured only by the power
to destroy, but the power to create. A releasing of the creative
energy of the Russian people means allowing them to express them-
selves, to travel, to learn from others. After all, before the
Revolution, Russia was leading the world in the arts; her artists a
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symbol of everything that was daring, beautiful and free. "Our people
are not ready," one Soviet official said to me. "Not ready for what?"
I asked. I considered his remark an insult to the Russian people.
Yes, they are ready, for air, for light, for movement; not only ready,
but quite literally dying for it.
In the Soviet Union today, there are some first real signs of
facing the human problems of Soviet society in a realistic way. If
this is translated into more than rhetoric, it is a development we can
and should applaud, for it is perhaps the very modest beginning of
constructive change. We cannot solve their problems. It is the
Soviet regime who, in the end, must eventually come to the conclusion
that continued repression and suffocation of their people is
counterproductive. It is they who must learn to trust their quite
remarkable nation. If the present Soviet government can begin to do
this, perhaps we can begin to trust them.
Is all this impossible? I don't think so. Change is the order of
nature. Nothing stands still. Nothing is impossible in Russia. It
is a country where the impossible occurs quite regularly, where the
most extraordinary things, both bad and good, do happen. In this
spring season of renewed life, of resurrection, it is possible to hope
for the future and I do.
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I am not an expert on arms control or throw-weight. I am a
writer. I am primarily interested in people; how they think, react
and feel. Professionally, for almost twenty years, in the Russian
people, many of whom I know, whose bread I have shared, whose culture
and history I have studied. I know their humor, their warmth, their
generosity, their ruthlessness, their cunning, their strength. I know
something about their problems, and these are very real. We are not
always at the center of their radar screen, as much as we would like
to think so, but sometimes on the very edge.
I think it is very difficult to judge the Russian people without
knowing them, and without seeing their country, which unfortunately,
not only Richard Perle has never done, but too many others in the
decision making process in our own country. The danger of over-spe-
cialization is that one can get a slight case of tunnel vision. The
world is not an exclusively military place. The military has a
specific task, but there is much about the world that cannot be dealt
with in terms of military strategy alone. Military strategy is only
one component of a country's foreign policy, and foreign policy only
one component of the life of a nation. This involves a complex set of
problems. So it is in the United States, and so it is in the Soviet
Union.
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