THE PEACE MOVEMENT & THE SOVIET UNION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00153R000300020014-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 30, 2008
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: May 1, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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STAT
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Commentary
The Peace Movement & the Soviet Union
Vladimir Bukovsky
Peace will be preserved and strengthened if the
people take the cause of peace into their own
hands and defend it to the end.
JOSEPH STALIN, 1952
THE "struggle for peace" has always
been a cornerstone of Soviet foreign
policy. Indeed, the Soviet Union itself rose out of
the ashes of World War I under the banner of
"Peace to the People! Power to the Soviets!" Prob-
ably from the very first, Bolshevik ideologists were
aware of how powerful a weapon for them the
universal craving for peace would be-how gulli-
ble and irrational people could be whenever they
were offered the slightest temptation to believe
that peace was at hand.
Only a year before the Bolsheviks raised their
banner, the most terrible prospect for any Russian
would have been to see an enemy burning down
his villages and defiling his churches. Yet once
blinded by the slogan, "A just peace without an-
nexations or tribute," he was to rush from the
front lines, along with hundreds of thousands of
his fellow soldiers, sweeping away the last rem-
nants of the Russian national state. He did not
want to know that his desertion had done no more
than simply prolong the war for another year, not
only condemning thousands more to death on the
Western front, but ending in that very German
occupation of the Ukraine and Russia he had so
much dreaded just a year ago. For the moment
the only thing that mattered was peace-right now,
and at any price.
Hardly anyone taking part in the stampede
back home in 1917 knew the first thing about the
ideology of Communism-except possibly for a
couple of simple slogans and this one incendiary
word: Peace. In a country of 70 million there were
VLADIMIR BUKOVIttY spent twelve years in Soviet prisons,
work camps, and p+ychlatric hospitals before being released
to the West in 1976 as a result of a public outcry. He now
lives in Cambridge, England, where he is connected with
Kings College. He is the author of an autobiographical
book, To Build a Castle' Aly Life as a Dissenter (Viking,
1979) and, most recently, of Cette lancinante douleur de la
Libertd: Letters d'un rdsistant russe aux Occidentaux ("'Tis
Stabbing Pain of Freedom: Letters of a Russian Resister to
Westerners"), which was published in Paris last year.
only 40,000 Communists. Anyone who had taken
the trouble to read the Communists' "fine print"
with just a little care could have discovered that
what their soon-to-be masters meant by "peace"
was not peace at all but rather the "transforma-
tion of imperialist war into civil war."
The Russian people were in any case so fed up
with the war by then that they did not care. Any-
thing seemed better, or at least not worse. After
three years of civil war, however, in which some 20
million people were slaughtered or died of starva-
tion, cold, and typhoid (i.e., ten times as many as
were killed at the front during the whole of
World War I), the war came to seem a trifle by
comparison, a sort of frontier skirmish somewhere
in the Byelorussian swamps.
And once again an irresistible craving for peace
drove people to accept Soviet rule-as a lesser evil.
Anything was now preferable to this monstrous
slaughter, starvation, and typhoid. They would
give anything for some kind of order.
The order imposed by the Communists was
nothing more than a permanent state of civil war,
both inside the country and around the world. Or
as Lenin put it, "As an ultimate objective peace
simply means Communist world control." Thus,
while comrade Chicherin, at the Conference of
Genoa in 1922, was appealing to the entire world
for total and immediate disarmament, crowds
of bewildered people in the Soviet Union were
marching to the cheerful song:
We'll fan the worldwide flame,
Churches and prisons we'll raze to
the ground.
The Red Army is strongest of all
From Moscow to the British islands.
Indeed, the churches were the first to be put to
the torch. As for the prisons, the Communists were
in no hurry to carry out their bold promise. Quite
the contrary, the number of prisons grew with
each year to accommodate tens of millions of
"class enemies" or "enemies of the people." And
speaking of worldwide flame, one need only com-
pare the map of the world of, say, 1921 with that
of 1981 to see that the song's promise was not en-
tirely empty.
Once they recognized the power of "peace" as a
25
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26/COMMENTARY M 1982
weapon, the Communists have never let go of it.
In this respect, it must be admitted, Soviet politics
have invariably been most "peaceful." We must at
the same time bear in mind that according to
Communist dogma, wars are the "inevitable con-
sequence of the clash of imperialist interests under
capitalism," and therefore they will continue to he
inevitable as long as capitalism exists. The only
way to save humanity from the evil of wars, then,
is to "liberate" it from the "chains of capitalism."
Accordingly, there is a very precise distinction to
be made between "just wars" and "unjust wars."
"Just wars" are those fought "in the interests of
the aroletariat." It is perfectly simple and perfect-
ly clear: just wars are absolutely justifiable be-
cause they lead to the creation of a world in which
there will be no wars, forevermore. Proletarians
are Ill brothers, are they not? So, once the world
is rid of capitalists, imperialists, and various other
class enemies, why should those who are left fight
one another?
By this same impeccable logic, the interests of
the proletariat are best known to the advance-
guard of the proletariat, that is, the Communist
party, and should be defined by Lenin, Stalin,
Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, since they are in turn
the advance-guard of the Communist party.
A,,soon as we have pinned down this formula
and deciphered its terminology, the course of his-
tory becomes absolutely clear. For instance, Soviet
occupation of the Baltic states and Bessarabia,
or the war with Finland in 1939-40, were of
course perfectly just, as was the partition of
Poland, achieved in cooperation with Nazi Ger-
many in 1939. On the other hand, the Nazi attack
on tle Soviet Union in 1941 was blatantly unjust.
By the same token, any attack by the Arabs on
Israel is just, at least insofar as it is successful. If
Israeli resistance to attack is successful, however,
then all peace-loving peoples must protest.
I T GOES without saying that world pub-
lic opinion must accept the distinction
I have outlined above and direct every effort in
the struggle for peace toward establishing it. For-
tunately, there are a great many "progressive" peo-
ple in the world, people for whom any direction
taken by Moscow is progressive because by clefini-
tion it is taken in the service of socialism. Thus,
before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 was
signed, the energies of all progressive people were
mobilized against fascism, whether in Spain, Italy,
or Germany. As soon as the pact was signed, the
notion of what was progressive and what was not
changed drastically.*
On February 2, 1940, for example, the German
Communist leader, Walter Ulbricht, later to be-
come head of the East German state, was per-
mitted by the Nazi government to publish an
article in Die Welt in which he said: "Those who
intri;ue against the friendship of the German
and Soviet peoples are enemies of the German
people and are branded as accomplices of British
imperialism."
The British Doily Worker adopted a similar
line and greeted the new alliance as a victory for
peace, as (lid the American Daily Worker. On
September 19, 1939, when the war was raging in
Poland, it published a declaration of the National
Committee of the American Communist party pro-
claiming the war declared by France and Britain
on Nazi Germany to be an imperialist (that is,
"unjust") one, which should be opposed by the
workers. This appeal was immediately supported by
fellow-travelers like Theodore Dreiser, and Com-
munist trade unions set out to sabotage produc-
tion in munitions factories, lest any aid reach
Britain or France. Right up to the eve of the Nazi
invasion of Russia, Communist propaganda did
everything possible to dissuade the United States
from helping the European democracies in their
war against Nazi Germany. These pages in the
history of the glorious "struggle for peace" by the
progressive social forces are not much spoken of
any more, particularly where the young might
hear.
But nowhere was this "struggle for peace" as
influential as in France, where the Communist
party and its fellow-travelers were openly defeatist
before, and remained so during-and some time
after-the Nazi invasion of France. The French
Communist party, which was quite considerable
in strength, worked so energetically to undermine
the French war effort as to suggest a fifth column.
Within a month of France's declaration of war
the party's leader, Maurice Thorez, fled to Moscow
to direct the resistance to French preparations
against Germany. In November 1940 Thorez and
his associate Jacques Duclos exulted openly over
the fall of France, Thorez declaring that "the
struggle of the French people has the same aim as
the struggle of German imperialism."
The Franco-German alliance alluded to by
Thorez expressed itself in concrete terms. German
propaganda leaflets dropped over the Maginot line
pointed out that "Germany, after her victory over
Poland and since her pact with Russia, disposes of
inexhaustible resources in men and material,"
while all the Communist deputies petitioned Presi-
dent Herriot to make peace in response to Hitler's
appeal. After Communist publications had been
suspended by decree in France, the party continued
to publish its propaganda on German presses. Its
leaflets urge(] troops, dockers, and others engaged
in essential war work to resist and to sabotage the
country's effort. In March 1940, a party leaflet
claimed that the Allied failure to launch an offen-
* Much of the material that follows here on the early
days of World War II is taken from the book by Nikolai
Tolstoy, Stalin's Secret War (1981), where the appropriate
references can be found.
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THE PEACE MOVEME: : THE SOVIET UNION/27
live was due to the effectiveness of the party's de-
featist propaganda. And there can be no doubt
that this effective spreading of defeatism, coupled
with a serious campaign of sabotage in munitions
factories, played a major role in the catastrophic
French defeat of June 1940.
At the very time that General de Gaulle, in
London, was issuing his appeal for resistance, the
French Communist paper l'Humanite said: "Gen-
eral de Gaulle and other agents of British capital
would like to ccnipel Frenchmen to fight for the
City...
Later Khrushchev was to recall that "Stalin
once told me that Hitler had sent a request for a
favor through secret channels. Hitler wanted
Stalin, as the man with the most authority and
prestige in the Communist world, to persuade the
French Communists not to lead the resistance
against the German occupation of France." Evi-
dently Hitler's request was not denied.
Even in Yugoslavia, where the Communist
movement had directed all its efforts to vilifying
the British and French, Tito's first appeal for a
struggle against the German invaders did not come
until June 22, 1941. It was not the German con-
quest of Yugoslavia that aroused his ire, but the
German invasion of the Soviet Union. Even in far-
off Buenos Aires, a British diplomat had noticed
that Nazi diplomats were "collaborating with local
Communists in a very dangerous attempt to win
over the masses with the cry of 'away with British
capitalism and commercial exploitation.'
As soon as Nazi Germany turned against its
great Eastern ally, the "struggle for peace" was
instantly termin;.ted. Indeed, the sudden outburst
of patriotism among the "progressive social forces"
was remarkable. No strikes, no condemnation of
Western imperialism-as if the latter had never
existed. For the remainder of World War II the
Allies were to enjoy a happy time of industrial
peace and a relaxation of the class struggle. The
war, of course, was now a "just" one.
O nnrv, the passion for peace was resur-
rec.ed shortly after the war was
over, while the Soviet Union was swallowing a
dozen countries in Central Europe and threaten-
ing to engulf the rest of the continent. At that
time, some "imperialist warmongers" were sound-
ing the alarm over Soviet conduct and even sug-
gesting the creation of a "very aggressive" NATO
alliance. The "reactionary forces" in the world
were starting a "cold war." Beyond this, the Soviet
Union was troublesomely lagging behind the U.S.
in the development of nuclear weapons. For some
curious reason, however, the "imperialist military-
industrial complex"-all those Dr. Strangeloves-
failed to drop the atone bomb on Moscow while
they still enjoyed a monopoly on it. This should
undoubtedly be ascribed to the success of a great
movement of peace-lovers. How could it be ex-
plained otherwise, short of the reactionary sugges-
tion that NATO generals were not in the least
aggressive?
In any case, members of the older generation
can still remember the marches, the rallies, and
the petitions of the 1950's (particularly the famous
Stockholm Appeal and the meetings of the inde-
fatigable World Peace Council). It is hardly a
secret now that the whole campaign was organized,
conducted, and financed from Moscow, through
the so-called Peace Fund and the Soviet-dominated
World Peace Council-where a safe majority was
secured by such figures as Ilya Ehrenburg, A.N.
Tikhonov, etc. This was the period when comrade
Stalin presented his memorable recipe for peace
that is the epigraph to this article. Stalin's formu-
lation was enthusiastically taken up by millions,
some of them Communists, some loyal fellow-trav-
elers, a number of them muddleheaded intellec-
tuals, or hypocrites seeking popularity, or clerics
hungry for publicity-not to mention profession-
al campaigners, incorrigible fools, youths eager
to rebel against anything, and outright Soviet
agents. Surprisingly, this odd mixture constitutes
a fairly sizable population in any Western
society, and in no time at all the new peace cam-
paign had reached grandiose proportions. It be-
came fashionable to join it and rather risky to
decline.
The purpose of all this peace pandemonium
was well calculated in the Kremlin. First, the
threat of nuclear war (of which the Soviets peri-
odically created a reminder by fomenting an inter-
national crisis) combined with the scope of the
peace movement should both frighten the bour-
geoisie and make it more tractable. Second, the
recent Soviet subjugation of Central European
countries should be accepted with more serenity
by Western public opinion and quickly forgotten.
Third, the movement should help to stir up anti-
American sentiment among the Europeans, along
with a mistrust of their own governments, thus
moving the political spectrum to the Left. Fourth,
it should make military expenditures and the
placement of strategic nuclear weapons so un-
popular, so politically embarrassing, that in the
end the process of strengthening Western defenses
would be considerably slowed, giving the Soviets
crucial time to catch up. Fifth, since the odd mix-
ture of fools and knaves described above is usually
drawn from the most socially active element in the
population, its activism should be given the right
direction.
The results were to exceed all expectations.
Soviet money had clearly been well spent. The
perception of the Soviet Union as an ally of the
West (rather than of Nazi Germany) was still fresh
in peoples' minds, which undoubtedly contributed,,
to the success of the "struggle for peace."
Subsequently, the death of Stalin, the shock cre-
ated by the official disclosure of his crimes, the
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Khrushchev "thaw" in international relations, and,
above all, the fact that the Soviets had caught up
with the West in nuclear weapons, were to make
the peace movement temporarily redundant; it
ceased to exist just as suddenly as it had once
appeared. Meanwhile, the inefficiency of the Soviet
economy once again brought it to the point of
collapse. The Soviet Union badly needed Western
goods, technology, and credits. Without these,
there would have to be very substantial economic
reform, dangerous to continued party control over
the entire economic life of the Soviet Union. At
the same time, it was from the strategic point of
view important for the Soviets to legitimize their
territorial holdings in Eastern Europe and to
secure fo:- themselves the freedom to move further.
Something new was called for. Out of the depths
of the Kremlin, the doctrine of detente was born.
rrHOUGH the peace movement was put in
Fold storage, the issue of peace was
nevertheless central to this new Kremlin policy as
well. The West had grown so exhausted by the con-
stant tension of the previous decades that the temp-
tation to relax, when offered by the Kremlin, was
simply irresistible. And after a decade of a ruthless
"struggle for peace," no Western government could
get away with rejecting a proposal to limit the
arms race-however well some of them understood
that it would be senseless to try to reach an agree-
ment with the Soviets while the essentially aggres-
sive nature of Communist power remained in
force. Probably some such recognition explains why
the Western governments insisted on linking par-
ticipation in the Helsinki agreements to the observ-
ance of human-rights agreements inside the Com-
munist b;.oc. Their idea was to force the internal
relaxation of the Soviet regime and so make it more
open and less aggressive. In exchange the West pro-
vided almost everything Brezhnev demanded in his
"Peace Program" of the 24th Party Congress in
1971. "The inviolability of the postwar frontiers in
Europe"--that is, the legitimation of the Soviet
territorial annexations between 1939 and 1948-as
well as a substantial increase in economic, scientific,
and cultural cooperation were solemnly granted by
the Western countries in Helsinki in 1975. Earlier
a separate treaty had perpetuated the artificial di-
vision of Germany without even a reference to the
Berlin Wall.
The Western democracies had displayed such
readiness :o accommodate their Soviet partners that
their behavior was perceived as weakness. Probably
the most disgusting features of detente could be
seen in Germany where the "free flow of people
and ideas" had very quickly degenerated into trad-
ing people like cattle, the right to visit one's rela-
tives in tie East becoming a kind of reward condi-
tional on the "good behavior" of the West German
government. By playing on this sensitive issue the
Soviets were able to blackmail the whole country
and to "modify" the policies of its government. Un-
fortunately, Germany is a key factor in East-West
relations because in order to avoid a major split in
the Western alliance the other members have to
adjust their positions in accordance with Ger-
many's. So it was that Soviet influence came to be
exerted through the back door, and the West was
politically paralyzed.
In addition, far from making the Soviets more
dependent-as the proponents of detente had as-
sured us-increased trade, and particularly huge
Western credits, have made the West more and
more dependent on the Soviet Union. The dimen-
sions of this disaster became clear only recently,
when the discussion of economic sanctions against
the Polish military rulers and their Soviet masters
revealed the inability of the Western countries to
reduce once-established economic relations with
the Eastern bloc without harming themselves even
more. In fact, by now the Soviets are in a position
to threaten the West with economic sanctions. Un-
doubtedly, they will take advantage of it very soon.
In the meantime, far from relaxing internally,
the Soviet regime had stepped up its repressive
policies, totally ignoring the weak Western protests
against Soviet violations of the human-rights agree-
ments. The weakness of these protests had in turn
served only as further incitement for the Soviets to
proceed in their course of repression without re-
straint. Clearly, the ideological war waged by the
Soviets through all those earlier years had only in-
creased in intensity during the era of detente. Nor
did they try to camouflage this warfare. On the
contrary, Leonid Brezhnev stated openly in his
speech to the 25th Party Congress, on February 24,
1977: ". . . it is clear as can be that detente and
peaceful coexistence relate to interstate relations.
Detente in no way rescinds, or can rescind, the laws
of the class struggle."
Furthermore, as it transpired, instead of reducing
their military expenditures and arms build-up, as
the Western nations had during those years, the
Soviet Union, taking advantage of Western relaxa-
tion, had significantly increased its arsenal. So much
so that if in the 1960's it could be said that a cer-
tain parity between East and West had been
achieved, by now the Soviets have reached a point
of clear advantage over the West. We also now
know that the benefits to the Soviet Union of trade
with the West were invariably put to military use..
For example, the Kama River truck factory built
by Americans in the 1970's has recently begun
manufacturing the military trucks that were ob-
served in action during the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan.
Y THE end of the 1970's the West was
B becoming increasingly aware of these
dangerous developments. The usefulness of de-
tente, long challenged by some, was now being
questioned by many. And then came the final
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THE PEACE MOVEMEr THE SOVIET UNION/29
blow-on Christmas 1979. Just at the moment
when most people in the West were preoccupied
with such things as Christmas cards and presents,
something like 100,000 Soviet soldiers moved in to
occupy neighborirg Afghanistan, an officially "non-
aligned" country with a population of about 17
million. The world was shocked and the USSR
was immediately placed in isolation. Even the
Communist parties of many countries condemned
the Soviet action as a piece of blatant aggression.
The invasion of Afghanistan, followed by the ar-
bitrary banishment to internal exile of Nobel
laureate Andrei Sakharov, followed still later by
the threatening of Poland (leading, finally, to the
imposition of martial law), virtually terminated
the era of detente.
This termination has cost the Soviets dear. In
fact, they have lost almost everything they had
gradually managed to gain while the West was
enjoying its bout of unilateral relaxation. Ratifi-
cation of the SALT II agreement was suspended
indefinitely. The Americans were awakened from
their prolonged lethargy to discover with horror
how weak, ineffective, and unproductive their
country had become. In this new psychological at-
mosphere, the victory of Ronald Reagan was inevit-
able, promising an end to American defense cut-
backs, the deploytr..ent of a new, previously shelved,
generation of weapons like the B-I bomber, the
cruise missile, the MX, and the neutron bomb.
It seemed equally inevitable that the military
budgets of all the other Western countries would
be increased, while the trade, technology, and
credit arrangements with the Soviets would be re-
duced, or at least be made more difficult to obtain.
Thus, if this trend were to continue, the Soviets
would lose their position of military superiority-
especially in view of the fact that their economy is
so much less efficient than that of "rotten capital-
ism." Add to this the new wave of international
hostility noticeable especially in the Muslim world
(the United Nations General Assembly voted
against the Soviets on Afghanistan, for the first
time since the Korean war), a continuing crisis in
Poland, a hopeless war in Afghanistan, and a
growing unrest among the population at home
caused by food shortages, and the picture grew so
gloomy as to be just short of disaster. Clearly the
Soviet rulers had to undertake something dramatic
to avoid a total catastrophe.
I myself, to tell the truth, was not very much
surprised when suddenly, within a year, a mighty
peace movement came into being in Western
Europe. Especially since, by some strange coin-
cidence, this movement showed itself first of all
precisely in those European countries where the
old missiles were to be replaced by newer Per-
shings and cruise missiles. I make no claim to spe-
cial prescience; it is just that after 34 years of life
in my beloved Communist motherland, I have
some sense of its government's bag of tricks,
pranks, and stunts. In fact, it was not a very diffi-
cult thing to predict, for the Soviet state is not a
particularly intelligent creature. If you think of it
rather as a huge, brainless, antediluvian reptile
with a more or less fixed set of reflexes, you can-
not go far wrong. "Well, here we are, back to the
1950's again," I thought to myself.
What was much more amusing to observe was
the ease with which presumably mature and re-
sponsible people had by the thousands fallen into
the Soviet booby-trap. It is as if history were re-
peating itself before our eyes, offering us a chance
to see how the Russian state collapsed in 1917, or
how France collapsed within one month in 1940.
It is also quite amusing, if one has a taste for
such amusement, to be reminded of how people
are practically incapable of deriving any useful
knowledge from even the recent lessons of history.
Once again, the universal craving for peace right
now, this very moment, and at any price, has ren-
dered people utterly illogical and irrational, and
left them simply unable to think calmly. Their
current arguments, if one may call them that, are
so childish, senseless, selfish, that an involuntary
smile comes immediately to one's lips. Even at
best what one hears is a parroting of the kind of
old moldy Soviet slogans and cliches that even
schoolchildren in the Soviet Union would laugh
at.
O BEGIN WITH, why is it that everyone
Thas suddenly begun to be so apprehen-
sive about nuclear war again? What has happened
to make it more real than it was, say, two or three
years ago? The entire history of East-\Vest rela-
tions shows that the only way to force the Soviets
to respect agreements is to deal from a position of
strength. So are we to understand that because the
Soviets might cease to be militarily superior to us,
nuclear war is once again a reality? Should we,
then, take this proposition to its logical conclusion
and say that the only guarantee of peace is Soviet
military superiority?
Meanwhile, countless TV programs have sud-
denly sprung up that unfold before us images of
the great treasures of our civilization-paintings,
sculptures, pyramids, antiquities, etc.-and at the
end of each the narrator reminds us, his voice
trembling with noble passion, how terrible it
would be if all these treasures were to be destroyed
along with the great civilization that produced
them. And on other channels, we are treated to
documentary after documentary about nuclear ex-
plosions and the consequences of radiation. After
such relentless programming, naturally public-
opinion polls show a sudden increase in the num-
ber of those who believe that nuclear war is im-
minent.
Then there is the catchy new idea that "Our
deterrent does not cleter? anymore." Why? Has a
nuclear war begun already? Have the Soviets at-
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30/COMMENTARY MAY '
tacked any NATO country? Or is it simply because
those who like to say the deterrent no longer deters
have seen their full quota of televised nuclear
explosions?
It is so easy to start a panic. The question is:
who is served by this panic? The Soviet-controlled
World Peace Council declared in 1980 (and the
whole European peace movement repeats it as if
under a hypnotic spell): "The people of the world
are alarmed. Never before has there been so great
a danger of a world nuclear holocaust. The nu-
clear arms build-up, the accumulation of deadly
arsenals, has reached a critical point. Further es-
calation in the arms build-up could create a most
dangerous situation, facing humanity with the
threat o' annihilation."
Never before. But was not the world in as much
danger 3 year earlier? The leaders of the Euro-
pean peace movement themselves claim that the
nuclear potential accumulated on both sides is suf-
ficient for them to destroy one another ten times.
Is there any technical reason why "twenty times"
is more dangerous than, say, "five times"? Or is it
that, like a nuclear charge itself, the accumulation
must reach a "critical mass" in order to explode?
Somel-ow, in the midst of all this nuclear hys-
teria it :;eems to be totally forgotten that bombs
themselves are quite harmless, unless somebody
wishes to drop them. So why are we suddenly
alarmed by the stockpile of hardware and not by
the Soviet military move toward the Persian Gulf?
Again, quite suddenly, voices begin to cry out
in a huge chorus, "Nuclear weapons are immor-
all" Wait a minute. Did these weapons just be-
come immoral? Are conventional weapons moral?
Why should this idea come all at once into
the minds of so many people? Take as another
example the question of the new missiles to be de-
ployed in Europe. Why is it more dangerous to
replace the old missiles with the new ones than
to leave the old ones where they are? Are not the
old ones equipped with nuclear warheads as well?
To be sr: re, the new missiles are more accurate. So
what? We can thank God that they are on our
side. They may make life more difficult for the
Kremlin adventurers, but why should millions of
people in the West perceive that as a tragedy
and dancer?
Deep in their hearts most of these terrified peo-
ple have a very simple answer to all these "whys."
They know that the only real source of danger is
the Soviet Union and that anything which might
make the Soviets angry is dangerous for that very
reason. But fear is a paralyzing and deranging
force. So deranging as to lead some people to ad-
vocate the abolition of the police because the
criminals are becoming too aggressive.
Indeec., the most amazing aspect of the present
antiwar hysteria-aside from the fact that it has
arisen at a time so remarkably favorable for Mos-
cow-is the direction of the campaign. Millions of
people in Great Britain, Germany, Holland, Bel-
gium, France, and Italy, supposedly of sound mind
and with no evidence of the influence of LSD,
march about claiming that the threat of war comes
from . . . their own governments and the govern-
ment of the U.S.! A psychoanalyst might char-
acterize this behavior as the Freudian replacement
of a real object of fear with an imaginary one.
Except that even a psychoanalyst might conclude
that pro-Soviet propaganda had something to do
with the delusion in this particular case.
The facts are too obvious to discuss here. One
may like or dislike President Reagan or Chancellor
Schmidt, but unlike comrade Brezhnev, they were
elected by the majority of their respective popula-
tions and are fully accountable in their actions to
the parliaments and to the people. They simply
cannot declare a war on their own. Besides, it is
quite enough to look around to see the real source
of aggression. Was it American or Soviet troops
who occupied half of Germany and built a wall
in Berlin? Is it not the Soviets who still occupy
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, not to
mention Afghanistan, very much against the wishes
of the people in these countries? Was it East or
West German troops who took part in the occu-
pation of Czechoslovakia and who are prepared
to invade Poland?
Everything in the West is (lone quite openly-
one might say, far too openly. But what do we
know about the decisions made by 14 old fools in
the Politburo whom nobody ever elected to make
these decisions and whom nobody can call to ac-
count? No press is allowed to criticize them, no
demonstrations to protest against their dictate.
Anyone refusing to obey their secret orders would
instantly disappear forever. There is in fact very
little difference between the Soviet system and
that of Nazi Germany. Is there anyone who sup-
poses that he should have trusted Hitler more
than the democracies?
AFTER the experience of speaking several
times with members of the current
European peace movement, however, I know only
too well how futile is the recourse to rational argu-
ment. They announce unabashedly that there is
no Soviet military superiority. It is all, they say,
CIA propaganda; the only reliable source of infor-
mation as far as they are concerned seems to be the
KGB. They refer one to the findings of a certain
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,
leaving one to guess at the kind of methods em-
ployed by this institute for assessing the Soviet
arsenal. Since the Institute has no satellites at its
disposal, its "researchers" are undoubtedly left in
a painful dilemma: whether to obtain their infor-
mation from the blue sky, or from the Sputniks.
Nobody in the European peace movement, it
seems, has ever wondered about the reliability of
this obscure establishment.
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But this is just a trifle. More seriously, our
peace-lovers-repeating word for word an old
Pravda cliche-maintain that the "crazy American
generals" are so trigger-happy as to push the but-
ton just for the fun of it. I have never been able to
understand why generals must invariably be crazy
-American generals, of course, not the Soviet
kind, who seem to have some innate immunity
from craziness-and if they are crazy, why they did
not push the damn button long ago. In any case, it
is hard to imagine that the generals, who at least
have some technical education, are less equipped
to understand nuclear problems than the primary-
school teachers who are so heavily represented in
the peace movement.
Some of the "peace-makers" sincerely believe that
as soon as the West disarms itself, the Soviets will
follow suit, and with an almost literally incredible
naivete they urge us to "try" this suicidal experi-
ment. Others, far more sophisticated, know perfect-
ly well that their Soviet comrades need to gain
time so as to enjoy a more advantageous posture in
future negotiations with the Americans. What they
urge is that the West start negotiations first and
improve the Western position later. Still others are
more candidly selfish and object only to the de-
ployment of nuclear weapons near their own vil-
lage, so to speak--as if being protected is more
dangerous than not being protected. Or better still,
as if any single village, city, or country could
maintain neutrality during a nuclear war. "Let the
Americans fight the Russians," they say, implying
that the entire problem of the modern world grows
out of some stupid far-off quarrel between "Ameri-
cans and Russians," who are apparently in some
kind of conspiracy to destroy the poor Europeans.
Surely if comrade Brezhnev promised to respect the
"nuclear-free zones" in case of war, people could
heave a sigh of relief and go to sleep untroubled.
If Brezhnev says so, there will be no nuclear-armed
submarines off your shores. After all, has comrade
Brezhnev ever broken his word? Of course not. He
is an honest man. He is so honest he can even
guarantee you in what direction the contaminated
clouds will move and locate for you the radio-
active fallout. "Why should the Russians attack
us, if we are disarmed?" Why indeed? Ask the
Afghan peasants, i:hey would probably know the
answer.
There is no sense in rehearsing all the various
"peace arguments," so contradictory and even in-
compatible that one wonders how those who make
them manage to get along together in the same
movement. Only one thing these various strands
have in common: panic, and a readiness to capitu-
late to the Soviet threat even before such capitula-
tion is demanded. Better red than dead. That is
why current Soviet propaganda has so quickly be-
come so remarkably successful.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a more openly
pro-Soviet line than that of the European peace
movement. It is even more pro-Soviet than that of
the local Communist parties, who after all at least
have to camouflage themselves with a cover of
independence from Moscow. Nothing is more ob-
vious, for example, than that the present increase
in international tension was brought about by the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There is hardly
a country, a political party (including some Com-
munist parties), or an international organization
that did not condemn the Soviet aggression un-
equivocally. The only public movement in West-
ern Europe that never condemned the invasion,
paradoxically, is the one that calls itself the
"peace movement." No such condemnation has
ever been pronounced at a peace-movement rally
in Western Europe, or passed as a resolution, or
published in one of the movement's major publica-
tions, or circulated as a mass petition. Perhaps you
will imagine that the peace groups condemned the
invasion in their hearts? On the contrary, the evi-
dence is far more convincing that they simply
justify this international crime.
N OT long ago I myself was publicly
charged by the leaders of the British
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) with
having distorted their position on Afghanistan.
Therefore I find it particularly useful to quote
from an official CND booklet, Why We Need Ac-
tion, Not Words, by Betty England: "The inter-
vention in Afghanistan may well have been caused
partly by the Soviet Union's fear of its growing
encirclement. The fear cannot be called unreason-
able after Sir Neil Cameron's statement in Pek-
ing ..." (p. 12). In other words, the poor Russians
whom Sir Neil, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, so
frightened with a speech critical of them, must
have good reason for what they do. By this logic,
we ought to be imposing strict censorship on anti-
Soviet speeches lest we be faced with Soviet occupa-
tion of the entire world. But the implications are
even more important. The idea buried in Miss
England's passage is that the only way to keep the
peace is gradually to accept the Soviet system and
Soviet demands.
Even more outspoken than the CND is the
World Peace Council. Its booklet, Program of Ac-
tion 1981, contains a direct instruction to support
the present puppet government of Afghanistan (p.
25). This program was unanimously adopted in
1980 by a gathering in Sofia, Bulgaria of represen-
tatives of most of the peace groups (about this
gathering, more later). After this it comes as no
surprise that at the recent International Peace
Conference in Denmark it was decided to convene
the next meeting in Kabul, the capital of Afghan-
istan, within six months.
It is obvious that a Soviet invasion of Poland
would bring its closer to world war, or, to be more
precise, would make any real relaxation of inter-
national tension quite impossible for ten or fifteen
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82/COMMENTARY MAY .
years. And once again, the only public movement
that has never condemned the continuous Soviet
threat to Poland (and is still uncertain about its
reaction to the Soviet-dictated imposition of mar-
tial law) is the peace movement. The leaders of
the biggest British peace group, CND, went even
further, publicly praising themselves for not "over-
reacting" to the events in Poland (B. Kent, letter
to the London Times, December 9, 1981) only a
few days before the imposition of martial law, and
displaying their "impartiality" by equating the
Polish crisis with that in East Timor. Perhaps the
leaders cf the movement seeking to promote peace
in Europe should be reminded that in 1975 the 35
countries of Europe, together with Canada and
the U.S., solemnly recognized an inseparable link
between security in Europe and respect for human
rights in the participating countries. Should we
assume that the CND leadership refuses to accept
the Helsinki agreement, or are we to conclude
that it is indifferent to the question of European
security?
At least about Poland not all in the movement
can be accused of indifference. I have, for instance,
never heard of a case in which a representative of
the Chilean or Argentinean government was in-
vited to expound his government's views before
any international peace conference. But for some
strange reason, an exception was recently made
for a representative of the Polish junta, who was
invited by the World Peace Council to address the
International Peace Conference in Denmark. His
vicious lies about Solidarity and personal slanders
against Lech Walesa (see the Guardian, January
11, 1982) were greeted with hearty applause by the
peace-lovers (BBC report).
i T is simple common sense to try to re-
l strain both sides of any would-be con-
flict if one wishes to preserve peace. But the Euro-
pean pe2.ce movement is so remarkably unilateral
that it seems barely conscious of "the other side."
It cries shame on the Americans for as yet non-
existent weapons like the neutron bomb, or the
not-yet-deployed cruise and Pershing missiles, but
speaks only in whispers, if that, of the hundreds of
Soviet SS-20's already aimed at Europe.
Since, again, I have provoked an angry reaction
from the CND leaders for pointing out this par-
ticular instance of extreme unilateralism (Lon-
don Times, December 9, 1981), 1 looked through
the major CND publications once more. The
booklet by Betty England quoted above does not
contain a single mention of the SS-20's, though it
is virtually saturated with the names of American
missiles. Nor does a widely distributed report on
the CNI) annual conference of 1981 (the latest
to my knowledge), nor the official CND leaflet,
Nuclear War and You, dropped into my mailbox
by some caring hand. Only recently I have learned
that a decision to mention the SS-20 was finally
taken by CND after many heated debates and very
much against the wishes of the CND leadership,
many of whom are also members of the British
Communist party.
Oddly enough, there are many in the European
peace movement who have worked (some still do)
with Amnesty International in support of prison-
ers of conscience in the Communist countries. Un-
fortunately, this by itself does not seem to prevent
one from making dangerous political mistakes, nor,
to judge from the results, does it guarantee any
moderating influence on the movement's leader-
ship. Be that as it may, the fact is that the Euro-
pean peace movement (including its large consti-
tuent organizations) has never said a word in sup-
port of the thousands of people in the USSR who
are imprisoned for opposing aggressive Soviet
policies, for refusing to serve in the army on er-
rands of aggression, or to shoot civilians in Af-
ghanistan. During all the time that hundreds of
thousands of "peace-lovers" were noisily express-
ing their one-sided feelings on the streets of Lon-
don, Bonn, Amsterdam, and Brussels, not one
word was said about Sakharov, still in exile and
on a hunger strike-Sakharov, who has (lone more
than anyone in the world to halt nuclear testing.
These peaceful souls would happily throw stones
at General Haig, but they would welcome Marshal
Brezhnev with servile smiles.
This is not to deny that there are plenty of well-
intentioned, and genuinely concerned and fright-
ened people in the movement's ranks. I am certain
that the overwhelming majority of them are. Just
as it did in the 1950's, the movement today prob-
ably consists of the same odd mixture of Commu-
nists, fellow-travelers, muddleheaded intellectuals,
hypocrites seeking popularity, professional polit-
ical speculators, frightened bourgeois, and youths
eager to rebel just for the sake of rebelling. There
are also the inevitable Catholic priests with a
"mission" and other religious people who believe
that God has chosen them to make peace on earth
right now. But there is also not the slightest doubt
that this motley crowd is manipulated by a handful
of scoundrels instructed directly from Moscow.
In fact, just as this essay was going to press, John
Vinocur reported in the New York Times (April
6, 1982) "the first public substantiation from in-
side the antinuclear movement . . . that the West
German Communist party, at the direction of the
Soviet Union, has attempted to coopt public senti-
ment against nuclear weapons." The enviromnent-
alist party known as the Greens "charged that the
West German Communist party, which is aligned
with Moscow, dominated and manipulated a meet-
ing [in Bonn] Sunday [April 4] in which repre-
sentatives of 37 groups, describing themselves as
elements of the antimissile movement, planned a
major demonstration against President Reagan
when he visits Bonn . . . June 10." The Greens,
who participated in the meeting, acknowledge
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7 HE PEACE MOVEMENT ' THE SOVIET UNION/33
that they themse.ves have cooperated with the
Communists "on certain local issues," but what
happened in Bonr. was "scandalous" even to them.
"The Communist; dominated the meeting com-
pletely. It took place under seemingly democratic
rules, but that was a joke. We could barely get a
word in." The meeting-at which were repre-
sented such groups as the German Student Feder-
ation, the Evangelical Student Committee, the
Federation of German Youth Groups, and the
German Peace Society-rejected resolutions con-
demning Soviet interference in Poland and Soviet
intervention in Afghanistan, and the delegates re-
fused to express support for Solidarity. "They
adopted, however, by a large majority, a motion
condemning Unii:ed States actions in Central
America, the Middle East, southern Africa, and
other regions."
Earlier, as I was in the process of writing this
essay, news came that one of the Danish leaders of
the movement, Arne Petersen, was arrested along
with his wife for channeling Soviet money into the
funds of the peace movement. His master, the
Second Secretary of the Soviet embassy in Copen-
hagen, was expelled from the country. Now and
then we hear about subsidized trips taken by peace
activists to the best Soviet resorts where they are
wined and dined royally-and, of course, shown
kindergartens, schools, and hospitals (no munitions
factories).
The majority of the European peace movement
is undoubtedly not aware of these facts. Probably
they will ignore the charges of the Greens, just as
they missed the reports of Mr. Petersen's activities,
which involved p,.acing paid advertisements (out
of Soviet donations) for the Danish peace move-
ment in the Danish papers, ads signed by a num-
ber of prominent Danish intellectuals (who for
sure knew nothing about it). And even our angry
CND leaders "know nothing of the subsidized
trips to Soviet resorts" (London Times, December
9, 1981). Well, sometimes it is very comfortable-
even for professional intellectuals-not to know
things... .
Fox those, however, who do wish to
know, let us track down the origin of
the current revival of the "struggle for peace."
Anyone who has read thus far will not be sur-
prised to hear that the earliest traces of this revival
are to be found in Soviet publications, quite clear
for those who know how to read them:
The first bright colors of autumn have already
touched the eme:-ald green parks of Sofia. The
golden leaves of maples and aspens are trem-
bling on the breeze. And everywhere the tender-
blue streamers bearing the insignia of the World
Peace Council. Sofia is expecting an important
event: the World Parliament of the Peoples for
Peace will be working here from 23 to 27 of
September. It is the biggest and the most repre-
sentative meeting of the world's peace forces
convened in the last years by the World Peace
Council. (Izvestia, September 23, 1980)
The same day Pravda referred to "the biggest
gathering in history of the fighters for peace."
Indeed, the most peaceful and independent coun-
try of the world, Bulgaria, played host during
those September days to 2,260 peace-lovers from
137 countries, claiming to represent 330 political
parties, 100 international and over 3,000 national
non-governmental organizations. To be sure, this
was no ordinary meeting of the international
Communist movement. The political spectrum of
those represented was exceptionally wide: 200
members of different national parliaments, 200
trade-union leaders, 129 leading Social Democrats
(33 of them members of their respective national
executive bodies), 150 writers and poets, 33 repre-
sentatives of different liberation movements (in-
cluding the Association in Defense of Civil Rights
from Northern Ireland), women's organizations
(like the National Assembly of British Women),
youth organizations, the World Council of
Churches and other religious organizations, 18 rep-
resentatives of different UN specialized committees
and commissions, representatives of the Organiza-
tion of African Unity and of OPEC, ex-military
people, some of them generals, and representatives
of 83 Communist parties (Pravda, September 23,
24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, November 5, 1980; Izvestia,
September 23, 24, 27, 28, 1980).
It had all started about a year earlier, as we are
informed by a talkative Bulgarian, the chairman
of the Organizational Bureau, responsible for the
"practical preparation" for this show (Pravda, Sep-
tember 23, 1980). They had expected, you see,
only 1,500 delegates, but 2,200 came. No wonder
the chairman wished to talk about his success.
Yet a year earlier-in 1979-none of the condi-
tions now cited to explain the current miraculous
resurrection of the peace movement existed. There
was no so-called "new strategy of the Pentagon,"
the famous presidential directive 59; there was
no new escalation of the arms race; there was
no neutron bomb. The Vienna summit meeting
had just been successfully concluded with the sign-
ing of SALT 11. September 1979 was a time of
universal happiness, the sky was cloudless. Only
one significant thing happened in September 1979:
a sudden wave of mass arrests in the Soviet Union
and, as we have learned now, a decision to reacti-
vate the peace movement. Who could have pre-
dicted in September 1979 that within a year the
cold war would be back-who else but those in-
volved in "practical preparations" for the invasion
of Afghanistan? Given the nature of the Soviet
planned economy, with its fabulously inflexible,
slow, and inefficient workings, the Soviets must
prepare everything well in advance. Why should
they have allocated such a large sum of money to
hold a Bulgarian peace show in the middle of
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happy times, if not in anticipation of grave polit-
ical trouble ahead?
Furthermore, we learn from comrade Zhivkov,
the Bulgarian Communist leader who opened the
meeting with a long speech, about an appropriate
decision taken by the Political Consultative Com-
mittee of the Warsaw Bloc countries in May 1980
(Pravda, September 24, 1980), as well as an appro-
priate resolution of the Plenary Session of the Cen-
tral Committee in June 1980 (Pravda, September
29, 1980). Comrade Zhivkov was simply revealing
the way decisions and resolutions first travel
through the Communist bureaucratic machinery
on their way to rubberstamping by a "representa-
tive" body-in this case, the Sofia "Parliament" in
September.
I ,,DEED, the whole show was depressingly
familiar to anyone acquainted with the
methods the Kremlin producers applied to the
same scenario in the time of Stalin. Even the dra-
matis personae were the same. There was the same
World Peace Council with its immortal President
Ramesh Chandra; there was the same chief con-
ductor, Boris Ponomarev, former official of the
Comintern (now responsible in the Politburo for
contacts with fraternal Communist parties as well
as for intelligence). Even the slogan adopted for
the occasion, "The people have the power to pre-
serve peace-their basic right," was remarkably
similar to the unforgettable words of comrade
Stalin in 1952.
Only this time the personal message that com-
rade Ponomarev brought to those convened was
from comrade Brezhnev, not comrade Stalin. The
latter, of course, would never have tolerated even
the mention of the term "rights"-basic or any
other--in his slogans. Well, the times have
changed after all. Still, those damned "human
rights" had gotten out of hand. Hence, better to
find something like "basic rights."
The first to speak, as I said, was comrade Zhiv-
kov, a:nd he spilled the beans about the Soviets'
real concern (Pravda, September 24, 1980). The
aggressive circles in America, he said, refuse to ac-
cept the present balance of forces in the world.
They don't wish to submit to their historically
predestined defeat. They have become so arrogant
as to reject all of the recent Soviet peace proposals.
They 1-.ave decided to replace detente with a policy
based on a "position of strength." They don't
observe agreements on cooperation; they interrupt
political and economic contacts; they interfere
with cultural and scientific exchange; they dis-
solve sporting and tourist connections (in other
words, the grain embargo, the Olympic boycott,
the scientific boycott, etc., responses to the inva-
sion of Afghanistan and the persecution of scien-
tists in the USSR).
This theme was taken up by most of the speak-
ers with only minor variations. The main speaker,
comrade Ponomarev, suggested a whole program
of action intended to bring America's aggressive
circles into compliance. He appealed for unity
among all those concerned with preservation of
peace, irrespective of their political views. "The
time has come for action, not words," he said.
(Wait a minute, have we not met this sentiment
somewhere already? Surely not in the CND official
booklet?)
The show proceeded smoothly, exhibiting the
whole gallery of monsters, from the greatest peace-
lover of our time, Yasir Arafat, to a ,representa-
tive" of Afghanistan.
How did all these 2,260 representatives of Social
Democrats, trade unions, youth, women, and reli-
gious organizations react? Did they rush out in dis-
gust? Did they demand the withdrawal of the
Soviet troops from Afghanistan in order to remove
the main obstacle to detente? Did they express con-
cern about the massive Soviet arms build-up and
the deployment of SS-20's? By no means. This self-
appointed World Parliament issued an Appeal in
which the main ideas of comrade Ponomarev's
speech were repeated. Thus, the "Parliament" is
opposed "to the vast machine and arms build-up
of the most aggressive forces of imperialism which
seek to take the world toward a nuclear abyss; to
the falsehoods and lies of the propaganda in favor
of the arms build-up, which are disseminated
through imperialist-controlled mass media."
Translated from party jargon, this constitutes a
clear directive to work against the armament pro-
grams of the Western countries (first of all, of
course, the U.S.-the "most aggressive forces of
imperialism"), and to reject any "lies" of the mass
media about the Soviet arms build-up.
Beyond this, the "parliamentarians" set "the
new tasks and duties ... for action of the peoples
of all continents" and worked out the Charter of
the Peoples for Peace which was adopted unani-
mously (!) together with the Peoples' Program for
Peace for the 1980's. The year 1981 was chosen to
be "the springboard of the 80's, a year of a deci-
sive offensive of the peace forces to achieve a break-
through in curbing the arms build-up."
Most of the program was carried out, the mass
demonstrations of October 1981 in the European
capitals having been planned within a framework
of what is called in the Soviet program "UN Dis-
armament Week (October 24-31)." How on earth
could the Soviets have known in 1980 about events
that would take place at the end of 1981, unless
they were running the whole show?
My pointing out this strange coincidence, which
I did in an article in the London Times (December
4, 1981), was bound to provoke heated denials; and
did so. The Soviets in Literaturnaya Gazetta (De-
cember 23, 1981), as well as the CND leaders in the
London Times (December 9, 1981), made much of
the fact that UN Disarmament Week had original-
ly been designated as an annual observance by the
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ins rrAL,r, mvvLi',1Livi tst auviLs uNION/85
UN General Assembly as early as June 1978. Now,
the UN flag may seem to many to be a perfect
cover. One must ask, however, why virtually noth-
ing happened during that all-important week in
1978 or 1979-even the Sofia meeting was sched-
uled in September, not October, of 1980-until
details for its observance were specified by the
Soviet-inspired program? Moreover, if one looks
through the Final Document of the Assembly Ses-
sion on Disarmament (May 23-July 1, 1978), issued
by the UN, one can find hundreds of designated
weeks, months, years, and decades, all totally ig-
nored by our peace-lovers, whereas the suggestion
singled out by the Soviets was the one, the only
one, to gather thousands in the streets. For exam-
ple, was anyone aware that the decade 1969 to
1979 was solemnly declared by the United Nations
to be "The Decale of Disarmament"? If there
were any huge rallies or vigorous campaigns dur-
ing these ten years, they seem to have escaped
notice.
B UT let its return to this remarkable pro-
gram, unanimously adopted by the
international community of peace-lovers. (It is
published by the World Peace Council in Hel-
sinki, as already noted, and is available in English
under the title, Program of Action 1981.)
This program ircludes such items as the "elim-
ination of all artificial barriers to world trade," an
amazingly frank recognition of the Soviet need
for Western goods and technology and its desire
to be granted the status of most favored nation.
But what this has to do with the problem of peace
and why all peace-loving people should fight for
it tooth and nail is hardly made clear.
As could be expected, the program contains a
clear definition of ''just" and "unjust" wars: "The
policy of destabilization of progressive regimes in
developing countries actually constitutes an aggres-
sion, waged by psychological, economic, political,
and other means, including armed intervention."
However, similar acts against "racist and fascist"
regimes are quite justified because the mere exis-
tence of non-progressive regimes "is abhorrent to
the conscience of humankind." Accordingly, the
sale of arms to there "abhorrent" countries should
be banned, but nothing need restrain the peace-
loving from selling arms to "progressive" regimes
and to "liberation movements."
And, of course, there are directives to the mass
media, which "mutt serve the cause of peace and
not the military-industrial complex by confusing
public opinion with lies and disinformation." (In
other words, the media should not report on the
Soviet arms build-L.p.) A similar directive is issued
to those "who bear responsibility for educating a
new generation."
The program further specifies precisely which
events and campaigns to undertake, and designates
weeks for the collection of signatures on various
petitions, etc., all around the world. It constantly
emphasizes the urgent need for "further intensifi-
cation of actions against the deployment of the
new U.S. weapons of mass annihilation in West-
ern Europe" and plans for "strengthening and
broadening of national movements into a world-
wide network of peace organizations."
It is not possible here to discuss all the details
of this remarkable document. It simply introduces
each and every aspect of Soviet foreign policy
wrapped around with the phraseology of peace.
Not surprisingly, therefore, it includes Afghanis-
tan under the guise of a "week of solidarity, with
special emphasis on support for a political settle-
ment as proposed by the Afghan government." For
Ethiopia it proposes "a week of solidarity with the
Ethiopian revolution" and "support for the strug-
gle of the Ethiopian people against imperialist
and reactionary conspiracies and plans in the
Horn of Africa." For Kampuchea there should
be an "international campaign of solidarity with
the government and people of Kampuchea led by
the National United Front for National Salvation
and an international campaign for recognition of
the People's Revolutionary Council of Kampuchea
and the seating of its representatives in the UN;
exposure of the conspiracies of the Peking hege-
monists who are working in collusion with the
U.S. imperialists against Kampuchea." For Israel:
"Support for the peace forces in Israel in their
struggle for the complete withdrawal of Israel
from the occupied territories and for the realiza-
tion of the inalienable national rights of the Pales-
tinian people." Whereas for the Middle East in
general: a "campaign of solidarity with the Arab
peoples in their struggle to liquidate the political
and military consequences of the Camp David and
Washington accords; solidarity actions with Libya
against the threats of aggression by the Egyptian
regime and U.S. imperialism." As for the U.S.,
even in so totally pro-Soviet a document as this
the instruction to campaign for the "release of
political prisoners in the United States of Amer-
ica" reads like a bad joke. Clearly, the love of
peace dulls the sense of humor. The only countries
where violations of human rights are recognized by
the unanimous vote of 2,260 delegates from 137
countries are: Bolivia, Chile, El Salvador, Guate-
mala, Haiti, Israel, Paraguay, Uruguay, Indonesia,
South Korea, Northern Ireland, and the U.S. Has
the world not undergone a remarkable improve-
ment?
After the successful adoption of this program,
what followed was simple. Returning from Sofia,
the enthusiastic delegates threw themselves into
a hectic round of implementing the program,
pressing for appropriate resolutions, actions, and
commitments in each of their respective organiza-
tions (Pravda, November 5, 1980). An additional
impetus was given to the campaign by an endorse-
ment from the World Council of Churches at their
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meeting in Dresden (East Germany) on August 28,
1981, thus committing a huge number of adherents
of the various Christian denominations to follow-
ing the Soviet line. And in no time hundreds of
thousands in the West came honestly to believe
that they were out to save world peace.
ELL, is there any further need to ex-
plain V plain why the Soviet Union is so
interested in the peace movement? There is a
term in party jargon coined by Lenin himself: "a
useful idiot." Now, in spite all their blunders,
senseless adventures, economic disasters, the Polish
crisis and the stubborn resistance of the Afghan
peasants, Reagan's rearmament plan and UN reso-
lutions, the Soviet rulers have scored a spectacular
victory: they have recruited millions of useful
idiots to implement their bankrupt foreign policy.
They are no longer isolated and there is still a big
question as to whether the Americans will be al-
lowed to place missiles in Europe.
True enough, the American economy is vastly
more productive and efficient than the Soviet, but
the Americans don't have a weapon like the "strug-
gle for peace." True again, this peace movement
will be expensive for the Soviet people (the meet-
ing in Bulgaria alone must have cost them mil-
lions, to say nothing of subsidizing all peace ac-
tivists on those jaunts to the best Soviet resorts;
the cost of running this worldwide campaign must
be simply astronomical). Still, it is cheaper than
another round of the arms race, let alone the
cost of maintaining a priceless military superiority.
And the result will be long-lasting.
Mind }ou, we are into only the second year of a
planned ten-year "struggle for peace." Within a
few years, the whole earth will be trembling under
the marching feet of the useful idiots, for their
resources are inexhaustible.
I remember in the 50's, when the previous peace
campaign was still in full swing, there was a popu-
lar joke which people in the Soviet Union whis-
pered to each other: "A Jew came to his rabbi and
asked: 'Rabbi, you are a very wise man. Tell me,
is there going to be a war?' 'There will be no war,'
replied the rabbi, 'but there will be such a strug-
gle for peace that no stone will be left standing.' "
0 NE of the most serious mistakes of the
Western peace movement' and of its
ideologists is the obdurate refusal to understand
the nature of the Soviet regime, and the concomi-
tant effort to lift the question of peace out of the
context of the broader problem of East-West rela-
tions. After several decades of listening to what
they believe to be "anti-Communist propaganda,"
they have simply got "fed-up with it." They ascribe
everything they hear about the East to a "cold-
war-type 'irainwashing," and make no attempt to
distinguish what is true from what is not. This
attitude, which I can only describe as a combina-
tion of ignorance and arrogance, makes them an
easy target for any pseudo-theory (or outright
Soviet propaganda) that happens to be fashion-
able at any given moment. Besides, baffled by end-
less and contradictory arguments among the "spe-
cialists" about the nature of the Soviet system, the
leaders of the peace movement believe they have
found a "new approach" which makes the entire
problem irrelevant.
A few months ago in England, I attended a pub-
lic debate on the problem of unilateral disarm-
ament. The leader of a big peace group opened
his speech by saying that from his standpoint, it
is irrelevant who is the aggressor and who the vic-
tim. He said: "It is like when two boys have a
fight in the churchyard. It is impossible to find
out who started the fight, nor is there any need
to do so. What we should do is to stop them."
This metaphor reflects very well the prevailing
attitude among peace-movement members. They
believe they have gotten around a baffling prob-
lem, whereas they have in fact inadvertently
adopted the concept of the "normal opponent."
From the "churchyard" standpoint, the present
conflict seems very ordinary: two bullies have be-
come so embittered by their prolonged quarrel-
in which anyway the essence of the disagreement
has been lost or forgotten-that they are quite
prepared to kill each other and everybody else
around. They are temporarily insane, mad, but are
basically normal human beings. Pride and fury
will not permit them to come to their senses, un-
less we, the sane people around them, are prepared
to intervene. Let us make them talk to one an-
other, let us pin clown their hands, let us distract
them from their quarrel. We cannot, to be sure,
pin down the hands of one of them. Then, in the
best Christian tradition, let its make the other re-
pent, in all good Christian humility. Let its disarm
him to convince his adversary of his peaceful in-
tentions. Let us turn the other cheek. Sooner or
later the other will come to feel ashamed.
This view sums up exactly what I mean by a
combination of ignorance and arrogance. Indeed,
if we look upon the world from the "churchyard"
standpoint, there probably is no need to find out
who is the aggressor and who the victim. There is
no need for police or armed forces. All we can see
is a row of graves with the dead lying orderly in
them and a couple of children quarreling with
each other. Unfortunately, outside the church
walls there is a bigger and far more dangerous
world with gangsters, murderers, rapists, and other
perverse characters.
Needless to say, this churchyard model simply
does not merit serious consideration. Unfortunate-
ly, it is a widespread belief (and not only within
the peace movement) that the Soviet government,
like any other government, is preoccupied with
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THE PEACE MOVEMF & THE SOVIET UNION/37
the well-being of its people, and will therefore be
eager to reduce military expenditures. This notion
comes so naturally to our peace-makers that they
just do not notice they have taken on a view of
the Soviet system which is both very old and un-
questionably wrong. If they only took the trouble
to study a little Soviet history, they would know
immediately how misleading this seemingly nat-
ural view is. Nat only are the Soviet rulers indif-
ferent to the living condition of their populace,
they deliberately keep it low; on the other hand,
disarmament (irrespective of the problem of well-
being) would lead very rapidly to the collapse of
the Soviet empire.
Normally we try to understand an opponent by
taking his placc, getting into his shoes, so to speak.
That is why most people try to explain Soviet be-
havior in terms of "normal human motives," that
is, by motives familiar to them. And that is exactly
why they constantly pile one mistake upon an-
other. For it is extremely difficult for a "normal"
human being to put himself inside the skin of a
mentally ill one. It is almost as in nature itself:
when we test natural phenomena under extreme
conditions, we suddenly find some unpredictable
anomaly that is baffling to us. Logic itself be-
comes abnormal in certain extreme cases. If we
add up two numbers, say, or multiply or divide
them, we invariably obtain a new number. But if
we use zero or infinity our whole rule suddenly
goes wrong.
B UT let us take an example relevant to
the present discussion. Let us take
the key question: why is the Soviet Union so ag-
gressive, so eager to expand? We see how many
schools of thought there are among those studying
the problem (and we see, too, how all of them are
wrong).
There are some people who believe that the
present Soviet expansionism is just a continuation
of the Russian pre-revolutionary colonial policy.
In other word;, it is a bad legacy. Indeed, this
notion about Soviet expansionism was the domi-
nant one for a very long time-and still is in some
quarters. In line with it, there have been repeated
attempts to offer the Soviets a division of the
world into spheres of influence. We owe to it the
Yalta agreemert, the Potsdam agreement, and as-
sorted other disasters. Each time the Soviets have
accepted the civision into spheres of influence,
and each time they have violated it. Is this because
they need more mineral resources, more territory,
a wider market for their goods? No. Their own
territory . is undeveloped, their own mineral re-
sources are in the earth, they do not have enough
goods for their own internal market. There are
no useful mineral deposits in Cuba or Afghanis-
tan. There is no Russian national interest in
Angola or Vietnam. In fact, these new "colonies"
cost the Soviet people many millions of dollars a
clay apiece. So, Soviet. policy is no classical case
of colonialism.
Then there is another theory, far more perni-
cious because much more widely accepted and be-
cause to reject it one needs a real knowledge of
Soviet life. I mean the theory acording to which
Soviet aggressiveness is the result of the fear
of hostile encirclement. The proponents of this
theory argue that Russian history, particularly the
history of repeated invasions of Russian territory
within the last century, has made the Russian peo-
ple almost paranoid about an external threat.
This theory sounds very scientific because many
facts may be cited to back it up. Still, it is no more
than a shrewd combination of obvious lies, wrong
interpretations, and very perfunctory knowledge.
It is mainly based on an overestimation of the im-
portance of history for any given nation and on
an oversimplification of the Soviet system.
To begin with, there is an obvious lie in this
theory-that is, a deliberate confusion between the
people and the government in the USSR. Those
who know the Soviet system only moderately well
may still need to be reminded that the people
have no privilege of representation in the govern-
ment-that is, have no free elections. Thus, the
government does not reflect the feelings of the
population. So if we are to believe that the popu-
lation is frightened by the long history of inva-
sions, the government has no reason to share these
fears. The Soviet government, with its vast and
omnipresent intelligence system, is extremely well-
informed about every move and every smallest in-
tention of the West (anyway not very difficult to
achieve in view of the remarkable openness of
Western societies). By 1978-79, when their arms
build-up was at a high pitch, whom were they sup-
posed to be so afraid of? Their great friend, the
French President Giscard? Or their even better
friend in West Germany, Willy Brandt? Britain,
with its puny armed forces (and ongoing discus-
sion on unilateral disarmament), or perhaps
Nixon and Carter, who between them shelved all
the major armament programs? Japan, which has
no army at all?
Clearly the Soviet government had no reason to
be frightened. In fact, the theory of Soviet para-
noia does not imply a frightened government, but
rather a frightened nation. In a "normal" coun-
try this might drive the government to become ag-
gressive. But in the Soviet Union the people mean
nothing and have no way of pressuring their gov-
ernment to do anything. They would not be al-
lowed to voice any fears. So, who is so frightened
in the Soviet Union? Besides, as far as the rulers
are concerned, their own experience of war,
World War II, could not frighten them for a very
simple reason: they won the war. Can you show
me any victorious general who is so afraid of war
as to become paranoid? The psychology of Soviet
rulers is in any case totally different.
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38/COMMENTARY MAY 15
One need only look at a map of the world to
see how ridiculous this theory is. Can we honestly
believe tl:.at the poor Communists in the Kremlin
are so frightened that they must protect themselves
by sending their troops to Cuba and Cuban troops
to Angola? By sending military equipment and ad-
visers to Ethiopia and Vietnam and then by send-
ing Vietnamese troops to Kampuchea? Take an-
other look at that map: it is not at all obvious
that the USSR is encircled by hostile powers.
Rather the other way around: it is the Western
world that is encircled by the hostile hordes of the
Communists. Well, if their paranoia can be satis-
fied only by surrendering the whole world to their
control, what difference can it make to us whether
they act out of fear or out of endemic aggressive-
ness?
Finally, and most importantly for an under-
standing of this pernicious theory, is the fact that
it was invented by the Kremlin propaganda ex-
perts. It was very successfully exploited in the
years of detente, when Western governments, act-
ing under its influence, deliberately permitted the
Soviets to achieve military superiority. They would
probably deny it now, but I remember very well
the discussions of that period. The argument of
the ideologists of detente was that once the Soviets
caught up, they would relax; this would in turn
lead to the internal as well as external relaxation
of the Communist regime, i.e., to liberalization.
The resu:xs of this brilliant experiment we can
see now.
The Soviet population, too, has been subjected,
day after clay for sixty-five years, to an intense
propaganda campaign about this putative "hostile
encirclement." The Communist rulers unscrupu-
lously exploit the tragedy of the Soviet people in
World Wir II for the purpose of justifying both
their oppressive regime and their monstrous mili-
tary spending. They try their best to instill into
the people a pathological fear of the "capitalist
world." Fortunately, the people are sane enough
to laugh at the very idea. Thus, contrary to this
theory, there is no paranoid population demand-
ing to be protected in the Soviet Union, despite
the best efforts of a perfectly sober and cruel gov-
ernment.
No, it is not the fear of invasion or a World
War II hangover that has driven the Soviet rulers
to wage an undeclared war against the whole
world for half a century now. It is their commit-
ment-repeated quite openly every five years at
each Party Congress since the beginning of this
century-to support the "forces of progress and
socialism," to support "liberation movements,"
everywhere on the globe.
RE we then to assume that the Soviet
.t leadership consists of fanatics aiming
at global control? Even such a model, crazy as it
might sound, still imputes too much "normality"
to the Soviet leaders. Or, more precisely, it is too
big a simplification. This theory, too-fortunately
for us-does not fit a number of the facts. Para-
doxically, none of the present Communist leaders
believes any longer in Communist doctrine. Fortu-
nately, because no real fanatic would ever tolerate
the destruction of the object of his obsession.
He would rather witness the destruction of the
entire world.
The Soviet rulers are a totally cynical lot, much
more preoccupied with their own privileges and
pleasures than with Marxist ideas. They probably
hate Communist dogma more than any Western
capitalist. Moreover, the majority of the Soviet
people are as cynical as their leaders. There are
many more sincere Communists to be found in the
West than in the USSR.
But this fact has also created false hopes among
Western politicians and the public. The same
false hopes encouraged by the theory of encircle-
ment-that it will be possible to treat the Soviets
as normal partners at last, that it will be possible
to negotiate, to cooperate, and to relax. Both
theories lead equally to the same mistaken policy.
So what is the truth about the damned Soviet
system?
Certainly, there was a period when the Soviet
leaders were Communist fanatics, ready to sacrifice
the whole world to their faith. There was a period,,
too, when at least some part of the population was
prepared to greet this new idea with considerable
enthusiasm. The people of my country, I suppose,
could be excused for their delusion, because Com-
munism was indeed a new idea and one that might
be thought by the inexperienced to appeal to the
best qualities in human nature. Is it after all not
a worthy purpose, to secure unalloyed happiness
for all future generations, to liberate and unite the
whole of mankind? Naturally, such a thing will
not be easy, but it is worth a great deal of sacrifice
to achieve. Just as naturally there will be many
selfish people to oppose it and we should learn to
be ruthless with them. Only millions of individual
wills fused into a single invincible "we," united
by the iron fist of a Leader, can achieve so difficult
an end.
This period of ecstasy, however, was very short-
lived. One by one, the various elements of the
Soviet population cooled down, sobered up, and
then could not believe in their own former en-
thusiasm. The besieged minority reacted to this
desertion of the public by becoming even more
ruthless and single-minded: "\Ve will make them
happy against their will; their children will be
grateful to us." I will not describe the mass
slaughter that resulted from this great determina-
tion. It has been described many times. A terror-
ized majority obeyed with sham enthusiasm, be-
cause it was a crime to look gloomy. But under-
neath there was a silent, passive resistance. The
minority of "believers" over time became simply a
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I7HE PEACE MOVEMENT THE SOVIET UNION/39
ruling clique which had lost its ideals in the con-
stant fight for survival, in corruption, and in its
abuses of power and its privileges. The ensuing
political situation can best be described as a latent
civil war in which a kind of balance has been
maintained by political terror.
In this way the Soviet Union reached a condi-
tion in which absolute power was exercised by ab-
solutely cynical people over absolutely cynical peo-
ple, each side vociferously assuring the other that
they were all still sincerely building an ideal
future society. But the ideology exists now almost
as in a work of science fiction: it has separated
itself from its substratum and has petrified in the
structure of the society. It has become an institu-
tion in which nobody (not even the top executive)
is allowed verbally to deviate from the dead dog-
ma. The will of millions is still being taken
from them and welded into the iron fist of
abstraction.
There is practically no free human being inside
the entire country. The state-the only employer
-will not allow anyone to be financially inde-
pendent-as indeed no independence of any kind
will be tolerated. 'Everybody must be carrying out
a useful task, performing a needed function. Sev-
eral nationwide networks of security and secret
police spy first on each other and then together
on everybody else. Such a system has created a new
type of a man, who thinks one thing, publicly ex-
presses another, and does a third.
The enormous inertia of this system is not sur-
prising. There is no internal "class enemy" any
more; there is no need to terrorize so many mil-
lions. Still, there are huge concentration camps,
because they have become an integral part of the
country's economic, political, and spiritual life.
Nobody believes now in the ultimate victory of
Communism in the world, but the policy of exter-
nal subversion and the promotion of "socialist
forces" everywhere has become an integral part of
the state machinery. The system rules, the people.
BEYOND inertia, there is something else,
something even more decisive: the in-
stinct of self-preservation of the ruling clique.
Once you are riding a tiger, it is difficult to jump
off. Any attempt at internal liberalization might
prove fatal. If the central power were to weaken,
the sheer amount of hatred accumulated within
the population for these sixty-five years of the
socialist experiment would be so dangerous, the
results of any reform so unpredictable-and, above
all, the power, the fabulous privileges, the very
physical survival of the ruling clique would be-
come so tenuous--that one would be mad to ex-
pect the Soviet leaders to play with liberal ideas.
Only the imminent threat of total collapse might
force them to introduce internal reforms.
The two sides of the Soviet regime-internal op-
pression and external aggression-are inseparably
interlocked, creating a sort of vicious circle. The
more the regime becomes rotten inside, the more
pains are taken by its leaders to present a formid-
able facade to the outside world. They need inter-
national tension as a thief needs the darkness of
the night. In the political climate of latent civil
war, given the enormous and senseless sacrifices of
the last fifty years, the constant economic difficul-
ties, and the lack of basic rights-not to mention,
again, the extraordinary privileges enjoyed by the
ruling clique-the only hope for stability lies in
the need to cope with an external threat: "hostile
encirclement" and the subversive activity of "world
imperialism." In this artificially created state of
war, the worker's demand for a better deal, or a
captive nation's demand for its independence, can
then be treated as an act of subversion, "playing
into the hands of the enemy."
Nor is it enough to create a devil in order to
maintain one's religious zeal. This imaginary
enemy must be defeated over and over again or
there will be the risk that he will seduce you.
American "imperialism" must be defeated at any
cost, and the liberation of proletarians in the
capitalist countries must be promoted by all
means. The failure to support a "friendly govern-
ment," to establish Communist rule in a new
country, will immediately be perceived as a weak-
ening of Soviet power, and therefore an encour-
agement to the sullen and embittered population
at home. Any failure of the Soviet international
adventure may thus trigger a chain reaction lead-
ing to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet rulers.
This is why they cannot allow a popular uprising
in Hungary, a "Prague Spring" in Czechoslovakia,
an anti-Communist "Holy War" in Afghanistan,
or an independent alternative center of power in
Poland. Immediate repercussions would be felt in
all the other countries of the Socialist camp as well
as in the Ukraine, the Baltic states, Central Asia,
and other occupied territories. The scenario of ag-
gression is depressingly uniform. First, the Soviets
undermine a democratic state, helping the friendly
"progressive forces" come to power. Next, they
have to save their bankrupt "progressive" friends,
when the resistance of the population threatens to
overthrow them.
Are they frightened to the point of aggressive-
ness? Yes, but not by your piles of hardware, not
by your clumsy attempts at defense. They are
frightened by their own people, because they know
the end is inevitable. That is why they must score
victory after victory over the "hostile encircle-
ment." Behind every victory is a very simple mes-
sage addressed to their own enslaved population:
"Look, we are still very strong and nobody dares
to challenge our might."
If they are afraid of you, it is because they are
afraid of your freedom and your prosperity. They
cannot tolerate a democratic state close to their
borders (and then, close to the borders of their
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40/COMMENTARY MAY
buffer-states), because a bad example of thriving
democn.cy so close at hand might prove to be too
provocative.
KNOWING all this, let us ask ourselves a
question: what would happen if the
West were to disarm unilaterally? Could the
Soviets follow suit? Certainly not. It would mean
the rapid disintegration of their empire and a gen-
eral coLapse of their power. Does this mean they
will simply roll over the now defenseless Western
countries? Again, the answer is: no. They don't
need your territory, which would be difficult to
hold anyway. Above all, where would they acquire
goods, technology, credits, grain, etc., if they were
to impose on you their inefficient economic sys-
tem? They need you in the way China needs Hong
Kong. Eut from that very moment you will gradu-
ally begin to lose your freedom, being exposed to
constant and unrestrained Soviet blackmail.
You may like or dislike your trade unions, but
would you like them to have to consider a possi-
bility o: foreign invasion every time they wanted
to declare a strike-as Solidarity had to do in
Poland for eighteen- months? You may like or dis-
like your mass media, but would you like to see
the self-censorship of your press in order to avoid
an angry reaction by a powerful neighbor-as in
Finland? You may like or dislike your system of
representation, but at least you are free to elect
those whom you choose without considering the
desires of a foreign power. Nobody threatens to
come into your country and impose a government
of its choosing-as in Afghanistan. The nature of
the Soviet system is such that it can never be satis-
fied until you are similar to them and are totally
under their control.
So, we come to a very important conclusion: the
issue now is not "peace versus war," but rather
"freedom versus slavery." Peace and freedom ap-
pear to be inseparable, and the old formula "Bet-
ter red than dead" is simply fatuous. Those who
live by it will be both red and dead. Whether we
like it or not, there will be no peace in our world,
no relaxation of international tension, no fruitful
cooperation between East and .West, until the
Soviet internal system changes drastically.
Has this simple and self-evident truth ever been
understood by Western decision-makers? I doubt
it. In a way, I can share some of the concern of
the peace movement. Because for the West to react
stereotypically by increasing military spending and
stockpiling new hardware every time the Soviet in-
stability-aggression complex manifests itself is sim-
ply to miss the target. At any rate, it is not
enough. It is not going to change the Soviet sys-
tem. It is not going to prevent Soviet expansion,
especiaLy in the Third World. Soviet ideological
warfare is far shrewder than a big nuclear bludg-
eon. Would we, for instance, consider a nuclear
bombardment if tomorrow there were to be a
revolt of various tribes in Pakistan, instigated by
Moscow? Or a Communist takeover in Iran?
There are plenty of "natural" troubles in the
world, brought on by local conditions. But the in-
fluence of Moscow immediately turns them into
major strategic problems. It would be senseless to
try to solve all such problems by military means
all over the globe. Simple logic suggests that we
must deal first of all with the source of the world's
major trouble-i.e., the Soviet system. We must
find an effective way to help the Soviet population
in its struggle for change. After all, they are our
biggest ally.
Unfortunately, this has so far never been appre-
ciated by the West, which has instead been contin-
uously strengthening the Soviet system by credits,
trade, technology. Why should the Soviets bother
to introduce any internal reforms if their inefficient
economy is periodically saved by the West? The
West is still rich enough to help them out, and
Siberia is also rich enough in turn to sell natural
gas, gold, diamonds.
E MAY shake with indignation when-
W ever we hear about the Soviet inva-
sion of yet another country. We hate these little
obedient soldiers, ever ready to do whatever they
are told. Are they robots? But what do we propose
that they should do? Do we honestly expect them
to rebel and face a firing squad, while the entire
world continues to provide their executioners with
goods, credits, and modern technology? Don't we
demand of them much more than we demand of
ourselves? Somewhere, somehow, this vicious circle
must be broken, if we are to survive as human
beings. Why not start where it is easier?
There are 90,000 of these "robots" trapped in
Afghanistan at this very moment. They cannot
rebel because they will be shot down. Even so,
there are occasional rebellions (and executions).
They cannot desert, because they will either be
killed in the process or, if they are lucky and
manage to reach Pakistan, the Pakistani authori-
ties will return them to the Soviet command (that
is, again, to the firing squad). Does any govern-
ment try to help them? No. Instead, several Euro-
pean governments have decided to buy Soviet nat-
ural gas, perhaps the very same gas that is being
pumped out of Afghanistan by the Soviet occupa-
tion authorities as compensation for "liberating"
Afghanistan.
There is a lot of noise about Poland right now.
A lot of noise, and a lot of smoke screens. But
does any government sacrifice anything? After issu-
ing thunderous condemnations, the European gov-
ernments decided not to apply economic sanctions
against the Eastern bloc, because sanctions would
"harm us, probably, more than them." Why
should you establish the kind of relations that only
make you more vulnerable than the enemy? Why
do you continue to sign new agreements of the
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THE PEACE MOVEMI & THE SOVIET UNION/41
same type (natural gas, for example)? The Ameri-
can banks recently decided to cover the huge Pol-
ish deficit because the "bankruptcy of Poland
would undermine the world financial system."
What would happen, I wonder, if tomorrow the
Soviet-bloc cou itries were to refuse to pay their
debts and to suspend all trade?
This is what the struggle for peace and freedom
boils down to: the people in the East should sacri-
fice their lives, but you should not sacrifice your
profits. Small wonder that the Polish army does
not rebel.
In fact, the imposition of economic sanctions on
the Polish military junta and on their Soviet mas-
ters is not just a possible step; it is the actual
obligation of the Western countries under the
terms of the Helsinki agreement. A direct link
among security, economic cooperation, and the ob-
servance of human rights is the very essence of this
agreement. If ti-at is forgotten now, of what point
is all the noise 'ately heard from Madrid?
To tell the truth, I do not believe that any of
it has been forgotten. Neither do I believe that the
Western banks, industrialists, and governments are
so "stupid" as to tie themselves to the Eastern
chariot wheels by mistake. It is their deliberate
policy, overtly articulated in the time of detente,
and covertly now. Moreover, it is their philosophy.
They love stability, these bankers and business-
men. And they are much against any resistance
movement in th? Communist countries, very much
against any prospect of liberation for the enslaved
nations of the East. They are the greatest peace-
lovers of all, f~Lr more powerful than all those
crowds on the streets of the European capitals.
Thanks to them, we descend slowly into the Age
of Darkness.
His article is not addressed to the bank-
Ters, or to the governments. I do not ex-
pect any help from them. In spite of all the harsh
words used in it, I wish it to be read by sincere
people who are seriously concerned with the prob-
lems of peace and freedom. They will probably
dislike many of the things I have said here. I hope,
however, that they will understand its main point:
that peace has never been preserved by a hysterical
desire to survive at any price. Nor has it ever
been promoted by catchy phrases and cheap slo-
gans. There are 400 million people in the East
whose freedom was stolen from them and whose
existence is miserable. It so happens that peace is
impossible while they remain enslaved, and only
with them (not with their executioners) should
you work to secure real peace in our world.
Your recent mass demonstrations were disas-
trous, because in them you identified yourselves,
willingly or unwillingly, with the rulers of the
Eastern countries. To make broad alliances with
any public (or governmental) forces just for the
sake of power is a tremendous mistake. This mis-
take must be corrected if we are to live in peace
and freedom. We should know who are our
friends and who are our enemies. The fate of
Solidarity should open our eyes.
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Corr~nentary
VOLUME 73 NUMBER FIVE MAY 1982
25 The Peace Movement & the Soviet Union Vladimir Bukovsky
42 With the American Press in Vietnam H. J. Kaplan
50 Vanishing Acts Edgar Rosenberg
63 The Atlantic Alliance and Its Critics Robert W. Tucker
73 Ethnicity-North, South, West Nathan Glazer
79 Shakespeare as Remedial Reading Ronald Berman
81 Santayana and the Genteel Tradition Kenneth S. Lynn
84 Rediscovering Judaism Ruth R. Wisse
6 from Rolf Wiklund, Joseph Forbes, Edward N. Luttwak, Joel Freedman,
Jacob B. Agus, Jacob Katz, F. Robert Rodman, Bernard E. Norwitch,
William Barrett, Emilie Barnett, Edith U. Fierst, Murray Friedman,
Franz M. Oppenheimer, Susan Seidner Adler, and others
88 The Kingdom, by Robert Lacey J. B. Kelly
91 The Turbulent Decades: Jewish Communal Services in America, 1958-78,
edited by Graenum Berger Julius Weinberg
94 The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1857, Volume I, by jean-Paul
Sartre Renee Winegarten
96 The Brandeis-Frankfurter Connection, by Bruce Allen Murphy
Nelson W. Polsby
98 Prime Time Preachers, by Jeffrey K. Hadden and Charles K. Swann;
Fundamentalism and American Culture, by George Marsden Peter Skerry
Executive Editor:
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Cover:
Neal Kozodoy
Marion Magid
Brenda Brown
Robert Alter
Milton Himmelfarb
Walter Laqueur
Philip Shamis
Bruce Lodi
Helene Hansen
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