Mankind must overcome disunity to survive

This concept of survival is laid down in Andrei Sakharov’s Nobel speech (Dec. 11, 1975), entitled “Peace, Progress, Human Rights.” It appears to be very topical decades later, today, for all countries, particularly for Ukraine. Below The Day’s experts try to explain why this society has failed to hear and understand Sakharov’s reasoning on the eve of the academician’s 90th anniversary.

How should a three-time Hero of Socialist Labor, a person who made a particularly important contribution to the creation of the superpower’s defense shield (especially in what regards the creation of hydrogen and atomic weapons), and who belongs to the highest, “closed” caste in the state behave according to Soviet mores? Obviously, first of all, one should thank the government for the exceptional honors; even if he has a “special opinion” on the country’s and the world’s development he should not make them public, and, if necessary, state them in “closed” reports addressed to the top authorities (the limit of what is allowed!); and if there is no answer or this answer is reduced to severe political charges — keep silent forever because everyone appreciates prosperity, a career, freedom, and life itself!

The scholar Andrei Sakharov, whose 90th anniversary will be commemorated in Russia (how exactly this will be done will also become an indicator of the real situation in this state) and many countries around the world, didn’t challenge the system — that would be too soft a statement. He simply refused to follow these unwritten rules. When Sakharov came to the conclusion that the policy of some Soviet leader was wrong, he first wrote secret letters to chieftains (for example, in 1962 he sent a message to Khrushchev, insisting on an immediate end to nuclear weapon tests; Khrushchev reacted in a truly totalitarian manner: “Sakharov is a famous physicist but let him mind his own business!”). Then he was supposed to keep silent, so as “not to bring grist to the West’s mill.” Sakharov did the opposite. From 1968 onward he became a public and soon after world-renowned thinker, humanist, and human rights defender. This is all the more impressive since he grew up in a society were conformism was a survival technique.

Yet it is not the questions relating to Sakharov’s biography, amazing as it is, that are the most pressing. Indeed, the real question is why, in the whole post-Soviet space (barring the Baltic countries and to some extent Georgia), are Sakharov’s works not read, his philosophy spurned, and his ideals ignored. What is the matter, why can’t society decipher this message?

One of the rather grounded versions of the answer is that in all these 20 years we lived and continued living, ignorant of our situation, in the “Soviet world,” and hence in the “Russian world.” Not in the “Russian world” of Herzen, Metropolitan Phillip II (who challenged Ivan the Terrible), Chekhov, Sakharov, and Tolstoy, but in the “Russian world” of Stalin, Andropov, Arakcheyev and Stolypin. And only a very naive person canfind the very peculiar fact accidental that out of all the former Soviet republics only Ukraine has not changed the name of the highest legislative body from its Soviet form of “Supreme Council” (even in Belarus, with its backward political order, the parliament changed it long ago). Moreover, after almost 20 years of working in the building of the former Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the presidential administration has still not decided to move.

In other words, a Soviet way of thinking dominated, inseparable from different forms of deceit and self-deceit, and just plain lies. All the other features of the current post-Soviet society (including total corruption, poverty, banditry, Latin American-style social stratification, political intrigues, disregard forfreedom of speech and thought…) are inevitable and logical consequences of the global, all-penetrating lie, against which Sakharov once raised his voice. All the rest (including the abnormal “voucher” privatization of 1992-94, which divided society, the obvious intellectual degradation of the ruling class, and the political and economic disfranchisement of ordinary citizens) are simply “derivatives” of this major phenomenon. Ukrainian society could not rid itself of all those lies.

Society is also clearly becoming atomized (which, by the way, blocks the free development of a human personality, for which Andrei Sakharov stood) because people continue to ignore their common interests, both local and national, focusing rather on personal ones. We badly lack the feeling Ivan Franko brilliantly described in 1905:

From shame
That will burn descendants
I can’t fall asleep!

Andrei Sakharov was conscience personified, beyond time and space.

“HE KNEW HOW TO GATHER DECENT PEOPLE AROUND HIM. THIS WAS THE BIGGEST BOMB IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE”

Yevhen SVERSTIUK, doctor of philosophy, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Nasha vira, president of the Ukrainian Pen Club, former political prisoner of the Soviet regime:

“Andrei Sakharov, as a free person, had a huge influence on society, he expressed his thoughts aloud and ignored state police bans. Sakharov was someone whom people respected, who dared to say what he really thought. Perhaps there were more people who thought like him, but were they heard? Sakharov was heard all over the world. Speaking about his ideas, he, actually, was a neophyte of democracy in Russia. At first he thought little about ideology — he was a very successful physicist. But as a very conscientious person he understood that he had given a devastating weapon to people with unlimited authority. At first he was guided, as most Russians, by the thought that one needs power to balance the military power of the US. But when he saw that they were not going to listen to him any more (they didn’t need him), he started to teach. As a result, people started respecting him. And since he had a grand name and serious connections with foreign reporters, he possessed an unprecedented freedom. In Russia it was rare that a person had such freedom.

“Speaking about the ideas of convergence he offered in his publications, they were reduced to the statement that both sides (the USSR and the US) should provide free access to ideas. But the Kremlin realized very well that America had free access to communist ideas anyway (and nothing could be done about it) but such persons as Andrei Sakharov wanted to break the wall and destroy the chief policeman of the USSR — censorship — and provide free access to ideas that would decompose and soften the communist ideology. It’s clear that the Soviet authorities were struggling against the ideas of Andrei Sakharov because Soviet state wisdom was based on struggling against someone’s ideas, so as to have an enemy, and hence, mobilize the empire for war against this enemy. For Sakharov it was very important to democratize the over-armed empire in an evolutionary way. As a humane and simple person (this is a rare gift), he could gather decent people around him. This was the biggest bomb in the Russian empire: the decent people gathering around Andrei Sakharov.

“I knew Sakharov personally. I cannot find another person whose place I could visit so easily and with whom I could speak as easily as with that unfamiliar man. I came in with my friend Serhii Kovaliov, with whom I was in a concentration camp, and we exchanged letters with Sakharov. Though, I must say, it was not easy at all. My letter to Sakharov was a ‘value’ one (we sent them as insured letters). This was in exile. All workers there (recruited, of course) picked on me: ‘Why do you appraise the letter for a hundred rubles?’ I say: ‘I don’t appraise my letter. I don’t sell it to you, I just want the post to be honest, as you declare it yourselves, but to guarantee this honesty – a hundred rubles.’ They had to give that letter in a few months. Later Andrei Sakharov sent people to some prisoners to learn about the conditions of their stay in exile. Soon he found himself in exile as well. And later, when Sakharov returned, I met him and his wife in his Moscow apartment. Generally, I must say that Moscow was always strange and awful for me, but I never encountered, though I was in many cities in the world, such a friendly welcome as the one my friends organized for me, a dissident. We were a family. I was given the keys to the apartment of the former commissar of foreign affairs Litvinov. For a few weeks I was the master in this home. This is an example of frankness and ease of relations.

“Sakharov’s ideas were never acceptable in the USSR. I remember how at the sittings of the Supreme Council Gorbachev, who conducted the perestroika, didn’t even give the floor to Sakharov because for them what Sakharov said was unacceptable. And he said things which were really challenging: ‘Withdraw your troops from Afghanistan!’ Russia has an imperial wail that silences democratic voices. When censorship disappeared, one could finally publish. But they didn’t like Sakharov. I happened to be in Canada when Sakharov was there. He left a few days before that and died. I asked to be hosted at a radio station with a word on Sakharov, and the Russian radio station, preliminarily having found out who I was, refused to speak about Sakharov. This reminds me of how Nicholas I forbade writing obituaries on the death of Gogol. Sakharov’s ideas are not acceptable for contemporary officials in Russia, who didn’t repent and didn’t change. But a small amount of Russian democrats and the democratic world treat them with a great sympathy. Certainly they don’t deny his name, it is part of the Russian glory. But they deny his ideas.”

“IN ALL RUSSIA THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MONUMENTS NOT TO LENIN, BUT TO SAKHAROV”

Yurii SHCHERBAK, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Ukraine:

“Andrei Sakharov is an incredible and unique figure in Russian history. Almost 90 percent of Russian thinkers, philosophers and writers of that time were infected with the virus of imperial, chauvinistic thinking. Sakharov didn’t belong to them. He belonged to a very small group of thinkers. I’d compare him with such figures in Russian history as Aleksandr Gerzen and Leo Tolstoy. He was deprived of the complex of superiority over other peoples, the thought of a messianic mission of Russia in history, of its uniqueness that all peoples and states in the world must profess. Sakharov was the opposite of that. For me he still remains a puzzle. Where did his special views come from? I read many of his works and recollections. Maybe from a great love for Russia, his Motherland, despised, humiliated and occupied by Bolsheviks? Perhaps from the understanding of physical processes of the universe’s creation, where peoples and states which claim messianic places cannot exist? Few people thought about this phenomenon. Maybe from the fear of God that he acquired after he created the hydrogen bomb, which could destroy the entire Earth? After the tests in Novaya Zemlya they saw the full capacity of this bomb and realized that they underestimated its power. Maybe this gave him such knowledge and understanding of the world?

“Andrei Sakharov is a phenomenon of our epoch. He was our contemporary, so we can be proud we could see and know him. For me it is incredible that I worked in Sakharov’s union, the Interregional Group of People’s Deputies of the USSR. We all came from the Soviet Union, from that system of enslavement. When we came to the Kremlin we were not free people (someone was more free, someone less, but we still had Soviet rudiments). When Sakharov was saying some things, even his adherents (members of the Interregional Group) couldn’t understand him or didn’t share his views.

“In that time we all saw that terrible and chauvinistic grimace of so-called imperial Russia, which bristled up against Sakharov. We saw this during his speeches at the sittings of the Congress of People’s Deputies. We saw how the liberal, compared to other party officials, Mikhail Gorbachev yelled at him, as Soviet-Russian generals, full of hatred, did. We also saw how Ukrainian party officials, red heads of collective farms, yelled at Sakharov and tried to intimidate him. This was horrible. He was a very humble person. Therefore sometimes after such reactions he even seemed confused, but, on the other hand, he didn’t yield. Sakharov was very lonely. A few dozen adherents supported him, so, unfortunately, his ideas didn’t spread far. Sakharov’s proposals regarding the state rebuilding of the former Soviet Union, regarding providing freedom to republics and peoples of the USSR, seemed idealistic for that time. They were ahead of the times. In Russia, as well as in the entire world, there was no sufficient number of people who would understand and support this prominent person. And one bright star, as it is known, cannot change the entire sky.

“After Sakharov, prominent followers, who at least to some extent were on the same level with this giant figure, never appeared. If one speaks about Yeltsin, Sobchak or other leaders of the Interregional Deputies Group, they were already moderate politicians. Yes, for that time they were prominent politicians but they couldn’t be compared with Sakharov, his philosophy and prophetical figure. It might take some time before Russia will understand such a vivid figure in its history as Sakharov. If it had reached this understanding, in all Russia there would have been monuments not to Lenin, but to Sakharov. There wouldn’t be those signs of the Soviet Union which are abundant throughout Russia, and Nicholas II wouldn’t be glorified more than Sakharov. Russians would have different views. Sakharov didn’t appeal to the past, to glorifying the tsarist times. (These views were strange to him. He didn’t think that the tsarist times were better than those of Lenin and Stalin.) He defended human rights.”

“SOCIAL INERTIA IS INEVITABLE FOR ONE OR TWO GENERATIONS”

Semen HLUZMAN, human rights activist, former dissident and political prisoner, prominent psychiatrist:

“The point is that the official propaganda didn’t hear what Sakharov said, of course. Suslov and his team didn’t hear. But millions of Soviet people who had an opportunity to overcome the silence, to listen to the radio programs of Voice of America, the BBC, Radio Liberty, heard and accepted this. The other thing is that in that system one couldn’t speak aloud about it. That system died as an old crock because it didn’t modernize, didn’t get accustomed to the changes in the world, to the potential demands of its citizens. Obviously, not everything we wanted was realized, but even in contemporary Russia, which, in my opinion, is far from a democratic ideal, new opportunities appeared that hadn’t existed before. And the fact that people turned out not to be ready for these opportunities, which appeared after the collapse of the Soviet empire, this is not the problem of Sakharov’s ideas, this is inertia. Social inertia is inevitable for one or two generations. Those 40 years in the desert. A slave can be freed, given some document saying that he is a free person, but he is a slave from birth, in his life experience, mentality, and psychology. However, changes do take place. They take place slowly, and in this sense Sakharov was not a beautiful dreamer like Saint-Simon, Fourier and others who dreamt of an ideal society. Sakharov never spoke about an ideal society. He spoke about civilization, democracy, those imperfect opportunities the civilized mankind has. And these opportunities are gradually coming true today. By the way, the fact that we discuss this with you over the telephone are also the opportunities of a different civilization, a different country. ”

“SAKHAROV WAS OF A GREAT IMPORTANCE FOR US”

Levko LUKIANENKO, dissident, public and political activist:

“The invention of the hydrogen bomb made the name of Sakharov famous all over the world. He supported the democratization of the Soviet Union. Hundreds, thousands of other people also supported the democratization of the USSR; they were imprisoned, sent to concentration camps. This is how the communist government dealt with these people, finding some false justification for the repressions. Sakharov couldn’t simply be imprisoned as it was done with many others, because he was an academician known throughout the world. For us, those who were in prison, his speech on democratization was of extreme importance. The Soviet government couldn’t ignore such a prominent person. This was his huge historical merit for the democratic movement in the Soviet Union. We always honored him, celebrated his birthdays. When Sakharov was finally placed under house arrest, we organized a statement with a request to stop repressions at least regarding people who were like an entire epoch in the history of humanity.

“In the history of Russia, pre-revolutionary and communist, there always was a democratic trend. Before the revolution these representatives were called ‘westerners,’ and in the time of the Soviet Union — democrats. But the democratic trend was always smaller, weak and couldn’t determine the fate of Russia. Russia is a country of Asiatic political culture, it is characterized by centralized thinking, disrespect of human rights. Only the state, not a human being with his rights, is of value for the Asiatic civilization. Sakharov in the Soviet period was a pillar of the democratic camp and, of course, he was in the minority. This democratic minority still exists in Russia, but it still doesn’t determine the political movement in Russia. Sakharov’s strength lied in his defending democratic values. He was highly respected in democratic circles. Certainly, all democrats, including Sakharov, understood that it was actually impossible to change the Asiatic Russia because it was formed already in the times of Muscovy. Nevertheless, Andrei Sakharov will stay in Russian history forever.”

“THE WORLD DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE VALUE AND POTENTIAL POWER OF FREEDOM”

Mustafa DZHEMILIOV, people’s deputy of Ukraine, head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people:

“I always remember Sakharov, how marvelously he could analyze a huge mass of information about the condition of the world and come to seemingly paradoxical but extremely profound conclusions. Having read his Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, I understood that Sakharov left the world public opinion behind. He was a real leader of the world civilization, not only in the area of science but also in the area of world order. Unfortunately, the world still didn’t hear and didn’t decipher his ideas — they remain unrealized. His two major ideas that, first, the disunity of mankind threatens it with destruction, and second, that human society needs intellectual freedom, remain topical, but not fully realized until now. Sakharov dreamt that a power would appear in the world which could direct its development, but this thought turned out to be premature. Many people thought that Sakharov spoke about some world order, but this idea shouldn’t be understood in such a primitive way. The role of the power governing the world, according to Sakharov, should be embodied in politics, the economic and social sphere — an ideal intellectual freedom.

“‘Human society needs intellectual freedom, the freedom of gaining and spreading information, freedom of unbiased and fearless discussion, freedom from pressure of authorities and superstitions. This triple freedom of thought is the only guarantee from infecting people with mass myths, which in the hands of hypocritical demagogues can be easily transformed into bloody dictatorship. This is the only way toward a scientific and democratic approach to politics, economics and culture,’ Sakharov supposed. Unfortunately, the world didn’t understand the value and potential power of freedom, a considerable part of the world still remains enslaved and dependent on money, weather, dictators, and unconsidered reforms; until now, by the way, the armament drive is not over, and it means that the world is endangered by nuclear war as it was before. The world is not united, this is the reason for a dependence Sakharov found long ago.

“Before these threats any action aggravating the disunity of people and the discourse of any incompatibility is insanity, a crime, Andrei Sakharov stressed. And only the world’s cooperation in conditions of intellectual freedom can make humanity free and the world safe. ‘Overcoming disunity means walking away from the edge of this abyss,’ Sakharov supposed. But the world not only failed to overcome this abyss, the 21st century brought even more disunity to it — between religions, countries, and peoples. Perhaps this is the last attempt to tempt fate, to understand how reasonable the genius of Sakharov was. I believe that the 21st century should become the century of Andrei Sakharov, when the world, finally, will appreciate and realize his ideas.”