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Warning to the West
July 9, 1975
Mr. Solzhenitsyn delivered this speech in New York City at a luncheon which was given in his honor by the AFL-CIO and hosted by Lane Kirkland, the union’s secretary-treasurer. It possible or impossible to transmit the experience of those who have suffered to those who have yet to stiffer? Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience of another or can it not? Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger?
How many witnesses have been sent to the West in the last sixty years? How many waves of immigrants? How many millions of persons? They are all here. You meet them every day. You know who they are: if not by their spiritual disorientation, their grief, their melancholy, then you can distinguish them by their accents or their external appearance. Coming from different countries, without consulting with one another, they have brought out exactly the same experience; they tell you exactly the same thing: they warn you of what is now taking place and of what has taken place in the past. But the proud skyscrapers stand on, jut into the sky, and say: It will never happen here. This will never come to us. It is not possible here.
It can happen. It is possible. As a Russian proverb says: "When it happens to you, you'll know ifs true."
But do we really have to wait for the moment when the knife is at our throat? Couldn't it be possible, ahead of time, to assess soberly the world-wide menace that threatens to swallow the whole world'? I was swallowed myself. I have been in the dragon's belly, in its red-hot innards. It was unable to digest me and threw me up. I have come to you as a witness to what it is like there, in the dragon's belly.
It is astonishing that Communism has been writing about itself in the most open way, in black and white, for 125 years, and even more openly, more candidly in the beginning. The Communist Manifesto, for instance, which everyone knows by name, and which almost no one ever takes the trouble to read, contains even more terrible things than what has actually been done. It is perfectly amazing. The whole world can read, everyone is literate, yet somehow no one wants to understand. Humanity acts as if it does not understand what Communism is, as if it does not want to understand, is not capable of understanding.
I think it is not only a question of the disguises that Communism has assumed in the last decades. It is rather that the essence of Communism is quite beyond the limits of human understanding. It is hard to believe that people could actually plan such things and carry them out. And it is precisely because its essence is beyond comprehension, perhaps, that Communism is so difficult to understand.
In my last address in Washington I spoke a great deal about the Soviet state system, how it was created and what it is today. But it is perhaps more important to discuss with you the ideology that inspired the system, created it, and still governs it. It is much more important to understand the essence, and above all the legacy, of this ideology which has not changed at all in 125 years. It has not changed since the day it was created.
That Marxism is not a science is entirely clear to intelligent people in the Soviet Union. One would even feel awkward to refer to it as a science. Leaving aside the exact sciences, such as physics, mathematics, and the natural sciences, even the social sciences can predict an event — when, in what way, and how an event might occur. Communism has never made any such forecasts. It has never said where, when, and precisely what is going to happen. Nothing but declamations. Rhetoric to the effect that the world proletariat will overthrow the world bourgeoisie and the most happy and radiant society will then arise. The fantasies of Marx, Engels, and Lenin break off at this point, not one of them goes any further to describe what this society would be like. They simply said: the most radiant, most happy society. Everything for the sake of man.
I wouldn't want to enumerate for you all the unsuccessful predictions of Marxism, but I can give you a few. For example, it was claimed that the conditions of the working class in the West would deteriorate steadily, get more and more unbearable, until the workers would be reduced to total poverty. (If only in our country we could feed and clothe our working class, provide it with everything, and give it as much leisure as you do!)
Or the famous prediction that Communist revolutions would begin in such advanced industrial countries as England, France, America, Germany. (But it worked out exactly the other way, as you know.) Or the prediction that socialist states would not even exist. As soon as capitalism was overthrown, the state would at once wither away. (Look about you: where can you see states as powerful as in the so-called socialist or Communist countries?) Or the prediction that wars are inherent only to capitalism; as soon as Communism is introduced, all wars will come to an end. (We have also seen enough of this: in Budapest, in Prague, on the Soviet-Chinese border, in the occupation of the Baltic countries, and when Poland was stabbed in the back. We have seen enough of this already, and we will surely see more yet.)
Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perform his delicate operations with a meat ax. All that is subtle in human psychology and in the structure of society (which is even more complex), all of this is reduced to crude economic processes. This whole created being — man — is reduced to matter. It is characteristic that Communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks arguments and hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement.
Marxism has always opposed freedom. I will quote just a few words from the founding fathers of Communism, Marx and Engels (I quote from the first Soviet edition of 1929): "Reforms are a sign of weakness" (vol. 23, p. 339); "Democracy is more to be feared than monarchy and aristocracy" (vol. 2, p. 369); "Political liberty is a false liberty, worse than the most abject slavery" (vol. 2, p. 394). In their correspondence Marx and Engels frequently stated that terror would be indispensable after achieving power, that "it will be necessary to repeat the year 1793. After achieving power, we'll be considered monsters, but we couldn't care less" (vol. 25,p. 187).
Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of "good" and "evil" as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending upon circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or could be bad. It all depends upon class ideology. And who defines this ideology? The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment. A handful of people determine what is good and what is bad. But I must say that in this very respect Communism has been most successful. It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil. Today, many people apart from the Communists are carried away by this idea. Among progressive people, it is considered rather awkward to use seriously such words as "good" and "evil." Communism has managed to persuade all of us that these concepts are old-fashioned and laughable. But if we are to be deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be left? Nothing but the manipulation of one another. We will sink to the status of animals.
Both the theory and the practice of Communism are completely inhuman for that reason. There is a word very commonly used these days: "anti-Communism." That is a poor, tasteless locution. It makes it appear as though Communism were something original, fundamental. Therefore, it is taken as the point of departure, and anti-Communism is defined in relation to Communism. I say that this word was poorly selected, that it was put together by people who do not understand etymology. The primary, the eternal concept is humanity, and Communism is anti-humanity. Whoever says "anti-Communism is saying, in effect, anti-anti-humanity. A poor construction. So we should say: That which is against Communism is for humanity. Not to accept, but to reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. Such a rejection is more than a political act. It is a protest of our souls against those who would have us forget the concepts of good and evil.
But what is amazing is that apart from all its writings, Communism has offered a multitude of examples for modern man to see. The tanks have rumbled through Budapest. This is nothing. The tanks roar into Czechoslovakia. This is nothing. No one else would have been forgiven, but Communism can be excused. With some kind of strange deliberation, as though God decided to punish them by taking away their reason, the Communists erected the Berlin Wall. It is indeed a monstrous symbol that demonstrates the true meaning of Communism. For fourteen years people have been machine-gunned there, and not only those who wanted to leave the happy Communist society. Recently some foreign boy from the Western side fell into the Spree River. Some people wanted to pull him out, but the East German border guards opened fire. "No, no, don't save him." And so this innocent boy drowned.
Has the Berlin Wall convinced anyone? No again. It is ignored. It's there, but it doesn't affect us: we'll never have a wall like that, and the tanks from Budapest and Prague won't come here either. On all the borders of the Communist countries, the European ones at least, you can find electronic devices for killing anyone who goes across. But people say: "That doesn't threaten us either, we are not afraid of that." In the Communist countries they have developed a system of forced treatment in insane asylums. That's nothing. We're living quietly. Three times a day — right at this very moment — the doctors are making their rounds and injecting substances that destroy the brain. Pay no attention to it. We'll continue to live in peace and quiet here.
There's a certain woman here named Angela Davis. I don't know if you are familiar with her in this country, but in our country, literally, for an entire year, we heard of nothing at all except Angela Davis. There was only Angela Davis in the whole world and she was suffering. We had our ears stuffed with Angela Davis. Little children in school were told to sign petitions in defense of Angela Davis. Little boys and girls, eight and nine years old, were asked to do this. She was set free, as you know. Although she didn't have too difficult a time in this country's jails, she came to recuperate in Soviet resorts. Some Soviet dissidents — but more important, a group of Czech dissidents — addressed an appeal to her: "Comrade Davis, you were in prison. You know how unpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when you consider yourself innocent. You have such great authority now. Could you help our Czech prisoners? Could you stand up for those people in Czechoslovakia who are being persecuted by the state?" Angela Davis answered: "They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison." That is the face of Communism. That is the heart of Communism for you.
I would particularly like to remind you today that Communism develops in a straight line and as a single entity, without altering, as people now like to say. Lenin did indeed develop Marxism, but primarily along the lines of ideological intolerance. If you read Lenin, you will be astonished at how much hatred there was in him for the least deviation, whenever some view differed from his even by a hair's breadth. Lenin also developed Marxism in the direction of inhumanity. Before the October Revolution in Russia, Lenin wrote a book called The Lessons of the Paris Commune. There he analyzed why the Paris Commune was defeated in 1871. His principal conclusion was that the Commune had not shot, had not killed enough of its enemies. It had destroyed too few people, at a time when it was necessary to kill entire classes and groups. And when he came to power, Lenin did just this.
And then the word "Stalinism" was thought up. This is a term that became very popular. Even in the West they often say now: "If only the Soviet Union doesn't return to Stalinism." But there was never any such thing as Stalinism. It was contrived by Khrushchev and his group in order to blame all the characteristic traits and principal defects of Communism on Stalin — it was a very effective move. But in reality Lenin had managed to give shape to all the main features before Stalin came to power. It is Lenin who deceived the peasants about their land, and the workers about self-management. He is the one who turned the trade unions into organs of oppression. He is the one who created the Cheka, the secret police, and the concentration camps. It is he who sent troops out to the border areas to crush any national movements for liberation and to set up an empire.
The only new thing that Stalin did was based on distrust. When it would have been enough — in order to instill general fear — to jail two people, he arrested a hundred. And those who succeeded Stalin merely returned to the previous tactic: if it is necessary to send two off to jail, then send two, not a hundred. In the eyes of the party, Stalin's entire guilt lay elsewhere: he did not trust his own Communist Party. Due to this alone, the concept of Stalinism was devised. But Stalin had never deviated from the same basic line. They used to sculpt a bas-relief of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin all together; to this one could add Mao Tse-tung, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh; they are all in the same line of development.
The following theory is also accepted in the West. It is said that China is a sort of purified, puritanical type of Communism, one which has not degenerated. But China is simply a delayed phase of that so-called War Communism established by Lenin in Russia but which remained in force only until 1921. Lenin established it not at all because the military situation required it but because this is how he envisioned the future of their society. But when economic pressure required him to retreat, he introduced the so-called New Economic Policy and he retreated. In China this initial phase has simply lasted longer. China is characterized by all the same traits: massive compulsory labor which is not paid in accordance with its value; work on holidays; forced living in communes; and the incessant dinning of slogans and dogmas that abolish the human essence and deny all individuality to man.
The most frightening aspect of the world Communist system is its unity, its cohesion. Enrico Berlinguer said quite recently that the sun had set on the Comintern. Not at all. It hasn't set. Its energy has been transformed into electricity, which is now pulsing through underground cables. The sun of the Comintern today spreads its energy everywhere in the form of high-voltage electricity. Quite recently there was an incident when Western Communists indignantly denied that Portugal was operating on instructions from Moscow. Of course, Moscow also denied this. And then it was discovered that those very orders had been openly published in the Soviet magazine Problems of Peace and Socialism. These were the very instructions that Ponomarev had given. All the apparent differences among the Communist Parties of the world are imaginary. All are united on one point: your social order must be destroyed.
Why should we be surprised if the world does not understand this? Even the socialists, who are the closest to Communism, do not understand it. They cannot grasp the true nature of Communism, Recently, the leader of the Swedish socialists, Olof Palme, said that the only way that Communism can survive is by adopting the principles of democracy. That is the same thing as saying that the only way in which a wolf can survive is to stop eating meat and become a lamb. And yet Palme lives right next door, Sweden is quite close to the Soviet Union. I think that he, and Mitterrand, and the Italian socialists will live to the day when they will be in the position that Portugal's Mario Soares is in today. Soares's situation, by the way, is not yet at its worst. An even more terrible future awaits him and his party. Only the Russian socialists — the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries — could have told them of the fate that awaits them. But they cannot tell of it: they are all dead; they've all been killed. Read The Gulag Archipelago.
Of course in the present situation the Communists have to use various disguises. Sometimes we hear words like the "popular front," at other times "dialogue with Christianity." For Communists a dialogue with Christianity! In the Soviet Union this dialogue was a simple matter: they used machine guns and revolvers. And today, in Portugal, unarmed Catholics are stoned by the Communists. This is dialogue . . . And when the French and the Italian Communists say that they are going to have a dialogue, let them only get into power and we shall see what this dialogue will look like.
When I traveled to Italy this past April, I was amazed to see hammers and sickles painted on the doors of churches, insults to priests scrawled on the doors of their houses. In general, offensive Communist graffiti cover the walls of Italian cities. This is today, before they have attained power. This is today . . . When Italy's leaders were in Moscow, Palmiro Togliatti agreed to all of Stalin's executions. Just let them have power in Italy and we shall see what the dialogue will look like then.
All of the Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises.
We Russians, with our historical experience, find it tragic to see what is going on in Portugal. We were always told, "Well, this happened to you Russians. It's just that you couldn't maintain democracy in your country. You had it for eight months and then it was stifled. That's Eastern Europe for you. But look at Portugal, at the very westernmost edge of Europe, and what do we see there? A kind of caricature, a slightly altered version of what happened in Russia. For us it sounds like a re-run. We recognize what's going on and can make the proper substitutions, placing our socialists in Soares's position.
The same things were said in Russia. The Bolsheviks pursued power under the slogan "All Power to the Constituent Assembly." But when the elections took place, they got 25 percent of the vote, and so they dispersed the Constituent Assembly. The Communists in Portugal got 12 percent of the vote. So they made their parliament entirely powerless. What irony: the socialists have won the elections. Soares is the leader of the victorious party. Yet he has been deprived of his own newspaper. Just imagine: the leader of a victorious party has been stripped of his own newspaper! And the fact that an assembly has been elected and will sit in session has no significance whatever. Yet the Western press writes seriously that the first free elections took place in Portugal. Lord save us from such free elections!
Specific instances of duplicity, of trickery, can change of course from one set of circumstances to another. But we recognize the Communist character in the episode when the Portuguese military leaders, who are allegedly not Communists, decided to settle the dispute within the newspaper Republica in the following manner. "Come at twelve o'clock tomorrow," they said, "we'll open the doors for you and you settle it all as you see fit." But they opened the doors at ten o'clock and for some reason only the Communists, not the socialists, knew of this. The Communists entered, burned all the incriminating documents, and then the socialists arrived. Ah yes, it was of course only an error. An accident, they didn't check the time.
These are the sort of tricks — and there are thousands — which make up the history of the Russian Revolution. There will be many more such incidents in Portugal. Take the following example: the current military leadership of Portugal, in order not to lose Western assistance (they have already ruined Portugal and there is nothing to eat, so they need help), have declared, "Yes, we will keep our multi-party system." And the unfortunate Soares, the leader of the victorious party, now has to demonstrate that he is pleased with this declaration in favor of a multi-party system. But on the same day the same source declared that the construction of a classless society will begin immediately. Anyone who is the least bit familiar with Marxism knows that "classless society" implies that there will not be any parties. That is to say, on the very same day they said: There will be a multi-party system and we will suppress every party. But the former is heard and the latter is not. Everybody repeats only that there will be a multi-party system. This is a typical Communist method.
Portugal has, in effect, fallen out of NATO already. I don't wish to be a prophet of doom but these events are irreversible. Very shortly Portugal will be considered a member of the Warsaw Pact. It is painful to look at this tragic and ironic repetition of Communist methods at opposite ends of Europe, sixty years apart. In just a few months we see the stifling of a democracy which had only begun to get on its feet.
The question of war is also well elucidated in Communist and Marxist literature. Let me show you how Communism regards the question of war. I quote Lenin: "We cannot support the slogan 'Peace' since it is a totally muddled one and a hindrance to the revolutionary struggle." (Letter to Alexandra Kollontai, July 1915.) "To reject war in principle is un-Marxist. Who objectively stands to gain from the slogan 'Peace'? In any case, not the revolutionary proletariat." (Letter to Alexander Shliapnikov, November 1914.) "There is no point in proposing a benign program of pious wishes for peace without at the same time placing at the forefront the call for illegal organization and the summons to civil war." This is Communism's view of war. War is necessary. War is an instrument for achieving a goal.
But unfortunately for Communism, this policy ran up against the American atomic bomb in 1945. Then the Communists changed their tactics and suddenly became advocates of peace at any cost. They started to convoke peace congresses, to circulate petitions for peace; and the Western world fell for this deceit. But the goal, the ideology, remained the same: to destroy your system, to destroy the way of life known in the West.
But they could not risk this in the face of your nuclear superiority. So they substituted one concept for another: what is not war, they said, is peace. That is, they opposed war to peace. But this is a mistake, only a part of the antithesis is opposed to the thesis. When an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: Is this peace?
The true antipode of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence, that is not peace.
As long as in the Soviet Union, in China, and in other Communist countries there is no limit to the use of violence — and now we find India joining in (it appears that Indira Gandhi has learned much from her trip to Moscow; she has mastered these methods very well and is now adding another 400 million people to this continent of tyranny) — as long as there is no limit to this use of violence, as long as nothing restrains it over this tremendous land mass (more than half of humanity), how can you consider yourselves secure?
America and Europe together are not yet an island in the ocean — I won't go so far as to say that. But America together with Europe is now a minority, and the process is still continuing. Until the public in those Communist countries can keep a check on the government and can have an opinion on what the government does — now it doesn't have the slightest idea what the government is up to — until that time comes, the West, and the world in general, has no guarantee at all.
We have another proverb in Russia: "Catch on you will when you're tumbling downhill."
I understand that you love freedom, but in our crowded world you have to pay a tax for freedom. You cannot love freedom for yourselves alone and quietly agree to a situation where the majority of humanity, spread over the greater part of the globe, is subjected to violence and oppression.
The Communist ideology is to destroy your social order. This has been their aim for 125 years and it has never changed; only the methods have changed a little. When there is détente, peaceful co-existence, and trade, they will still insist: the ideological war must continue! And what is ideological war? It is a concentration of hatred, a continued repetition of the oath to destroy the Western world. Just as in the Roman senate a famous speaker ended every speech with the statement: "Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed," so today, with every act — détente, trade, or whatever — the Communist press, as well as thousands of speakers at closed lectures, all repeat: "Furthermore, capitalism must be destroyed."
It is easy to understand, it's only human that people living in prosperity doubt the necessity of taking steps — here and now in our state of prosperity — to defend themselves. For even in prosperity one must be on guard.
If I were to enumerate all the treaties that have been violated by the Soviet Union, it would take me another whole speech. I understand that when your statesmen sign some treaty with the Soviet Union or China you want to believe that it will be carried out. But the Poles who signed a treaty with the Communists in Riga in 1921 also wanted to believe that the treaty would be carried out, and they were stabbed in the back. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which signed treaties of friendship with the Soviet Union, also wanted to believe that they would be carried out, but these countries were all swallowed.
And the people who sign these treaties with you now — these very men and no others — simultaneously give orders for persons to be confined in mental hospitals and prisons. Why should they be different toward you? Surely not out of love for you? Why should they act honorably and nobly toward you when they crush their own people? The advocates of détente have yet to explain this.
You want to believe and so you cut down on your armies and your research. There used to be an Institute for the Study of the Soviet Union — at least there was one such institute. You know so little about the Soviet Union. It seems dark over there. These searchlights don't penetrate that far. Knowing nothing, you eliminated the last genuine institute which could actually study this Soviet society, because there wasn't enough money to support it. But the Soviet Union is studying you. You are all wide open here, through the press and Congress. And they study you all the more, increasing the size of their staffs in the United States. They follow what's going on in your institutions. They attend meetings and conferences; they even visit congressional committees. They study everything.
Of course, peace treaties are very attractive to those who sign them. They strengthen one's prestige with the electorate. But the time will come when the names of these public figures will be erased from history. Nobody will remember them any longer. But the Western peoples will have to pay heavily for these overtrusting agreements.
Is it only a question of showing that détente is needed today, here and now? By no means. There are theoreticians who look very far into the future. The director of the Russian Institute of Columbia University, Marshall Shulman, at a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, depicted a radiant future, stating that détente would ultimately lead to cooperation between the United States and the U.S.S.R. in the establishment of a world order. But what sort of new order, in cooperation with insatiable totalitarianism, does this professor want to see established? It won't be your kind in any case.
The principal argument of the advocates of détente is well known: all of this must be done to avoid a nuclear war. But after all that has happened in recent years, I think I can set their minds at ease, and your minds at ease as well: there will not be any nuclear war. What for? Why should there be a nuclear war if for the last thirty years they have been breaking off as much of the West as they wanted — piece after piece, country after country, and the process keeps going on. In 1975 alone four countries were broken off. Four — three in Indo-china plus India — and the process keeps going on, very rapidly too. One should be aware of how rapid the tempo is. But let us assume that finally the Western world will understand and say, "No, not one step further." What will happen then?
Let me direct your attention to the following fact: You have theoreticians who say; "The U.S. must stop the process of nuclear armament. We have enough already. Today America has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other half of the world. Why should we need more than that?" Let the American nuclear specialists reason this way if they want, but for some reason the nuclear specialists of the Soviet Union — and the leaders of the Soviet Union — think differently. Ask your specialists! Leave aside their superiority in tanks and airplanes — where they surpass you by a factor of four, five, or seven. Take the SALT talks alone: in these negotiations your opponent is continually deceiving you. Either he is testing radar in a way which is forbidden by the agreement, or he is violating the limitations on the dimensions of missiles, or he is violating the limitations on their destructive force, or else he is violating the conditions on multiple warheads.
As the proverb says, "Look before you leap, or you will have bruises to keep."
At one time there was no comparison between the strength of the U.S.S.R. and your own. Then it became equal to yours. Now, as all recognize, it is becoming superior to yours. Perhaps today the ratio is just greater than equal, but soon it will be 2 to 1. Then 3 to 1. Finally it will be 5 to 1. I'm not a specialist in this area, and I suppose you're not specialists either, but this can hardly be accidental. I think that if the armaments they had before were enough, they would not have driven things further. There must be some reason for it. With such nuclear superiority it will be possible to block the use of your weapons, and on some unlucky morning they will declare: "Attention. We're sending our troops into Europe, and if you make a move, we will annihilate you." And this ratio of 3 to 1 or 5 to 1 will have its effect: you will not make a move. Indeed, theoreticians will be found to say, "If only we could have that blessed silence".
To make a comparison with chess, this is like two players who are sitting at a chessboard, one of whom has a tremendously high opinion of himself and a rather low opinion of his opponent. Of course, he thinks he will outplay his opponent. He thinks he is so clever, so calculating, so inventive, that he will certainly win. He sits there, calculating his moves. With these two knights he will make four forks. He can hardly wait for his opponent to move.
He's squirming on his chair from happiness. He takes off his glasses, wipes them, and puts them back on again. He doesn't even admit the possibility that his opponent may be more clever. He doesn't even see that his pawns are being taken one after the other and that his castle is under threat. It all seems to him, "Aha, that's what we'll do. We'll set Moscow, Peking, Pyongyang, Hanoi one against the other."
But what a joke! No one will do any such thing! In the meantime, you've been outplayed in West Berlin, you've been very skillfully outplayed in Portugal. In the Near East you're being outplayed. One shouldn't have such a low opinion of one's opponent.
But even if this chess player is able to win the game on the board, he forgets to raise his eyes, carried away as he is by the game; he forgets to look at his opponent and doesn't see that he has the eyes of a killer. And if this opponent cannot win the game on the board, he will take a club from behind his back and shatter the skull of our chess player, ending the game that way. Our very calculating chess player also forgets to raise his eyes to the barometer. It has fallen. He doesn't see that it's already dark outside, that clouds are gathering, that a hurricane is rising. That's what it means to be too self-confident in chess.
In addition to the grave political situation in the world today, we are also witnessing the emergence of a crisis of unknown nature, one completely new, and entirely non-political. We are approaching a major turning point in world history, in the history of civilization. It has already been noted by specialists in various areas. I could compare it only with the turning from the Middle Ages to the modem era, a shift in our civilization. It is a juncture at which settled concepts suddenly become hazy, lose their precise contours, at which our familiar and commonly used words lose their meaning, become empty shells, and methods which have been reliable for many centuries no longer work. It's the sort of turning point where the hierarchy of values which we have venerated, and which we use to determine what is important to us and what causes our hearts to beat is starting to rock and may collapse.
These two crises, the political crisis of today's world and the oncoming spiritual crisis, are occurring at the same time. It is our generation that will have to confront them. The leadership of your country, which is entering the third century of existence as a nation, will perhaps have to bear a burden greater than ever before in American history. Your leaders will need profound intuition, spiritual foresight, high qualities of mind and soul. May God grant that in those times you will have at the helm personalities as great as those who created your country.
In recent weeks, I have traveled through various states, and I am aware that the two cities in which I have made my addresses — Washington and New York — do not reflect your country as a whole with its tremendous diversity and possibilities. Just as old St. Petersburg did not express the whole of Russia, just as Moscow does not reflect the Soviet Union of today, and just as Paris more than once abused its claim to represent all of France.
I was profoundly impressed by my contact with those places which are, and have always been, the wellsprings of your history. It makes one think that the men who created your country never lost sight of their moral bearings. They did not laugh at the absolute nature of the concepts of "good" and "evil." Their practical policies were checked against that moral compass. And how surprising it is that a practical policy computed on the basis of moral considerations turned out to be the most farsighted and the most salutary. This is true even though in the short term one may wonder: Why all this morality? Let's just get on with the immediate job.
The leaders who created your country never said: "Let slavery reign right next door, and we will enter into détente with it as long as it doesn't come here."
I have traveled enough through the different states of your country and in its various regions to have became convinced that the American heartland is healthy, strong, and broad in its outlook. I am convinced that these healthy, generous, and inexhaustible forces will help you to elevate the whole style of your government leadership.
Yet, when one travels in your country and sees your free and independent life, all the dangers which I talked about today seem imaginary. I've talked to people, and I see this is so. In your wide-open spaces even I get a little infected, the dangers seem somehow unreal. On this continent it is hard to believe all the things which are happening in the world. But, ladies and gentlemen, this carefree life cannot continue in your country any more than in ours. The destinies of our two countries are going to be extremely difficult, and it is better to prepare for this beforehand.
I understand, I sense that you're tired. But you have not yet really suffered the terrible trials of the twentieth century which have rained down on the old continent. You're tired, but not as tired as we are, crushed for sixty years. You're tired, but the Communists who want to destroy your system are not; they're not tired at all.
I understand that this is the most unfavorable time to come to this country and to make this sort of address. But if it were a better, more appropriate time, there would be no need for me to speak.
Precisely because this is the worst possible time I have come to tell you about our experience over there. If our experience in the East could flow over to you by itself, it would be unnecessary for me to assume the unpleasant and inappropriate role of orator. I am a writer, and I would prefer to sit and write books.
But a concentration of world evil is taking place, full of hatred for humanity. It is fully determined to destroy your society. Must you wait until it comes to smash through your borders, until the young men of America have to fall defending the borders of their continent?
After my first address, as always, there were some superficial comments in the newspapers which did not really get to its essence. One of them asserted that I had come here with an appeal to the United States to liberate us from Communism. Anyone who has followed what I have said and written these many years, first in the Soviet Union and now in the West, will know that I've always said the exact opposite. I have appealed to my own countrymen — those whose courage has failed at difficult moments, and who have looked imploringly to the West — and urged them: "Don't wait for assistance, and don't ask for it; we must stand on our own feet. The West has enough troubles without us. If they support us, they have our heartfelt thanks. But to plead for help, to appeal for it — never."
I said the last time that two processes are occurring in the world today. One is a process of spiritual liberation in the U.S.S.R. and in the other Communist countries. The second is the assistance being extended by the West to the Communist rulers, a process of concessions, of détente, of yielding whole countries. And I only said: "Remember, we have to pull ourselves up by our own efforts — but if you do defend us, you defend your own future."
We are slaves there from birth. We are born slaves. I'm not young any more, and I myself was born a slave; this is even more true for those who are younger. We are slaves, but we are striving for freedom. You, however, were born free. So why do you let yourselves be used by slavery? Why do you help our slaveowners?
In my last address I only requested one thing and I make the same request now: when they bury us in the ground alive — I compared the forthcoming European agreement with a mass grave for all the countries of Eastern Europe as you know, this is a very unpleasant sensation: your mouth gets filled with earth while you're still alive — please do not send them shovels. Please do not send them the latest earth-moving equipment.
By a peculiar coincidence, the very day when I was giving my address in Washington, Mikhail Susby was talking with your senators in the Kremlin. And he said, "In fact, the significance of our trade is more political than economic. We can get along without your trade." That's a lie. The whole existence of our slaveowners from beginning to end relies on Western economic assistance. As I said the last time, beginning with the first spare parts used to reconstruct our factories in the 1920's, from the construction in Magnitostroy, Dneprostroy, the automobile and tractor factories built during the first five-year plans, on into the postwar years and to this day, what they need from you is economically absolutely indispensable — not politically, but economically indispensable — to the Soviet system. The Soviet economy has an extremely low level of efficiency. What is done here by a few people, by a few machines, in our country takes tremendous crowds of workers and enormous amounts of material. Therefore, the Soviet economy cannot deal with every problem at once: war, space (which is part of the war effort), heavy industry, light industry, and at the same time the need to feed and clothe its own population. The forces of the entire Soviet economy are concentrated on war, where you don't help them. But everything lacking, everything needed to fill the gaps, everything necessary to feed the people, or for other types of industry, they get from you. So indirectly you are helping their military preparations. You are helping the Soviet police state.
I'll give you an example of the clumsiness of the Soviet economy: What kind of country is it, what kind of great power, with tremendous military potential, that conquers outer space but has nothing to sell? All heavy equipment, all complex and delicate technology, is purchased abroad. Then it must be an agricultural country? Not at all; it also has to buy grain. What then can we sell? What kind of economy is it? Can we sell anything which has been created by socialism? No! Only that which God put in the Russian ground at the very beginning, that's what we squander and that's what we sell. When all this comes to an end, there won't be anything left to sell.
The president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, has quite rightly said that it is not loans which the United States gives to the Soviet Union, it is economic assistance, foreign aid, given at a lower interest level than what American workers can get for their home mortgages. That is direct aid.
But this is not all. I said in my last address, and would like to repeat, that we have to look at every event from the other point of view — from the point of view of the Soviet Union. Our country takes your assistance, but in the schools they teach and in the newspapers they write and in lectures they say: "Look at the Western world, it's beginning to rot. Look at the economy of the Western world, it's coming to an end. The great predictions of Marx, Engels, and Lenin are coming true. Capitalism is breathing its last. It's already dead. And our socialist economy is flourishing. It has demonstrated once and for all the triumph of Communism." I think, ladies and gentlemen, and I particularly address those of you who have a socialist outlook, that we should at least permit this socialist economy to prove its superiority. Let's allow it to show that it is advanced, that it is omnipotent, that it has defeated you, that it has overtaken you. Let us not interfere with it. Let us stop selling to it and giving it loans. If it's all that powerful, then let it stand on its own feet for ten or fifteen years. Then we will see what it looks like. I can tell you what it will look like. I am being quite serious now. When the Soviet economy will no longer be able to deal with everything, it will have to reduce its military preparations. It will have to abandon the useless space effort and it will have to feed and clothe its own people. And the system will be forced to relax.
Thus, all I ask you is that as long as this Soviet economy is so proud, so flourishing, and yours is so rotten and so moribund — stop helping it. When has a cripple ever helped along an athlete?
Another distortion appeared in your press with respect to my last address. Someone wrote that "one more advocate of the Cold War has come here. One more person has arrived to call on us to resume the Cold War." That is a misunderstanding. The Cold War — the war of hatred — is still going on, but only on the Communist side. What is the Cold War? It's a war of abuse and they still abuse you. They trade with you, they sign agreements and treaties, but they still abuse you, they still curse you. In sources which you can read, and even more in those which are unavailable to you, and which you don't hear of, in the depths of the Soviet Union, the Cold War has never stopped, not for one second. They never call you anything but "American imperialists." One day, if they want, all the Soviet newspapers could say that America wants to subjugate the world and our people would have nowhere to get any other information. Do I call upon you to return to the Cold War? By no means, God forbid! What for? The only thing I'm asking you to do is to give the Soviet economy a chance to develop. Do not bury us in the ground, just let the Soviet economy develop, and then let's see.
But can the free and varied Western system follow such a policy? Can all the Western countries together say: It's true, let us stop competing. Let us stop playing up to them. Let us stop elbowing each other and clamoring, "Me, me, let me have a concession, please give it to me" ... It's very possible that this cannot be done. And if this sort of unity cannot be achieved in the West, if, in the frenzied competition of one company with another, they will continue to rush in loans and advanced technology, if they will present earth-moving equipment to our gravediggers, then I'm afraid that Lenin will turn out to have been right. He said: "The bourgeoisie will sell us rope, and then we will let the bourgeoisie hang itself."
In ancient times trade used to begin with the meeting of two persons who had come out of a forest or had arrived by sea. They would show one another that they didn't have a stone or club in their hand, that they were unarmed; as a sign of this, each extended an open hand. This was the beginning of the handclasp. Today's word "détente" literally means a reduction in the tension of a taut rope. (What an ominous coincidence: a rope again!)
So "détente" means a relaxation of tension. But I would say that what we need instead is an image of the open hand. Relations between the Soviet Union and the United States should be such that there would be no deceit in the question of armaments, that there would be no concentration camps, no psychiatric wards for healthy people. Relations should be such that the throats of our women would no longer be constricted with tears, that there would be an end to the incessant ideological warfare waged against you, and that an address such as mine today would in no way be an exception.
People would simply be able to come to you from the Soviet Union, from China, and from other Communist countries and would be able to talk freely, without any tutoring from the KGB, without any special approval from the Central Committee of the party. Rather, they would simply come of their own accord and would tell you the truth about what is going on in these countries.
This would be, I say, a period in which we would be able to present "open hands" to each other.