The blind alleys of “doublethink”

A leader or a ruling clique determines not only the future but also the past. “If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.” This is not an imaginary prospect if you recall what we have seen in the past few years.

The above-quoted words belong by no means to a peevish representative of the small and vanishing tribe of Russian oppositionists resentful of a new totally absurd decree that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued “to counter the falsification of history” in the new states, i.e., former USSR republics (above all, the Baltic countries, Ukraine, and, partially, Georgia), and “to protect the Russian Federation’s national interests.”

No, the author of this dictum, which, incidentally, could be by far the best comment to Medvedev’s decree, is George Orwell, a wonderful thinker and prophetic writer who was one of the first to penetrate deep into the very essence of a terrible society of “doublethink,” fear, apathy, and never-ending lies, as normal and natural as are air and water. He wrote about a society of turned-upside-down notions, where the Ministry of Truth decides, by the right of the highest authority, which model of the past is to be considered a true one (and the slightest doubt about this model is a crime, or “thoughtcrime” — a striking word coined by this superb British writer — punishable exclusively by death) and which event is to be considered the one that did or did not happen; where the Ministry of Peace is getting ready day in and day out for a future horrible war; where the Ministry of Plenty forces the already exhausted citizens to strictly economize on everything; finally, where the Ministry of Love is a center of sadistic and inhumane tortures that inspire beastly fear in everybody, after which people are “poured into stratosphere,” not just shot dead! To cut a long story short, there is an occasion for a serious talk even if we were not on the eve of a most interesting anniversary: 60 years ago, in May—June 1949, George Orwell’s famous and now classic novel 1984 was simultaneously published in London and New York.

Have the current Russian leaders Medvedev and Putin, undoubtedly well-educated people, really not read Orwell? Do they seriously believe that if they announce (through decrees, laws, the president’s Internet blogs, or any other modern instruments, including, incidentally, the use of armed force) that certain events, which are a headache for the current Kremlin authorities, “had never happened,” they will be erased from human memory? Such events include the following: the exchange of greeting telegrams between Stalin and Hitler in December 1939 to mark the 60th birthday of the Leader of All Peoples (the telegrams also mentioned, among other things, “the jointly spilt blood which links our nations” — an eloquent, if a bit forgotten, fact!); Molotov’s statement at the USSR Supreme Soviet session on Oct. 31, 1939, in which he said that antifascism and fighting against the Nazi aggression was “not only a shortsighted but even downright criminal policy in the present-day conditions” (moreover, the No. 2 person in the Kremlin hierarchy essentially put the blame for unleashing World War II on France and Britain rather than on Germany); the aggression against Finland in 1939, and the occupation (is there a better word for an operation “brilliantly” accomplished by Stalin’s henchmen Zhdanov, Vyshynsky, and Dekanozov?) of the Baltic countries in 1940.

There is no end to examples, but the conclusion is harsh and unequivocal: it is not up to the leadership of modern Russia to teach other nations to be “antifascist” and counter the “falsifications” of history, for it is a country where xenophobia and great-power chauvinism are rising at an unprecedented pace, while aggressive national extremist movements under the slogan “Russia for Russians” encounter very weak, to put it mildly, resistance of the official, especially judicial, authorities. Russia is also a country that has not, in fact, repented of any crimes of the totalitarian regime.

But let us get back to Orwell. At least some features of the “upside-down system” created by the prominent British writer’s imagination remind us of something we know only too painfully well from our totalitarian past — and, in broader terms, from our totalitarian everyday life.

Take, for instance, the notorious Two Minutes Hate. “Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room,” Orwell says. “The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.” Orwell drew a striking picture: it is only important to understand whether this is a view of the long-gone past or a prophetic vision of the future.

Here is the picture of “charming” totalitarianism in the sphere of thought and spirit, i.e., the most subtle and delicate sphere. The point is not only that there is the terrible “thought police” that follow every step of an individual around the clock (all apartments are equipped with special devices known as “telescreens” that record the dweller’s every word and gesture — so it is practically impossible to hide from being monitored). The point is that they created the so-called “Newspeak,” a specific language, the most reliable pillar of the tyrannical power. This is what an Orwellian character says about this: “‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime (read: dissent — Author) literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control.”

Here are the two notes on these words. First, the very essence of Newspeak is that words have a “false bottom” and, in reality, their meaning is often opposite to the formal one. A striking example is “countering the falsification of history” from Medvedev’s decree. Second, Orwell singled out a very interesting problem — formalizing the language as a factor to reinforce totalitarianism.

Orwell regarded the overall sensation of fear as the root cause of tyranny as violence without any physical and spiritual bounds. This global fear, which is not clearly motivated or localized, stifles all human feelings except for the instinct of self-preservation. (Incidentally, the problem of “fear and its sources in present-day Russia” requires a very serious study, as does another problem: “public apathy and its roots in 2009 Ukraine,” for is apathy anything other than the result and a side-effect of fear?)

This invisible omnipresent fear demands displaying your inner self-imposed “chameleonness” day by day and year by year until you finally lose the ability to see things the way they are in reality. Let us add that in 1984 Orwell also expounds the doctrine of “mobile history” whereby memory is criminal if it corresponds to the truth and the past does not exist at all — except for the one the government has devised today. And again: read Medvedev’s decree!

It is impossible to fathom the Orwellian society without fully assessing the cult of violence, murders, and cruelty that the government is deliberately instilling. Winston, one of the characters in 1984, records in his diary his impressions from viewing a run-of-the-mill “war film” (incidentally, the government also considers keeping a diary a grave crime punishable with 16-year imprisonment). He says: “Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank.” Hatred, personal humiliation, search, and denunciation form a fertile medium that generates totalitarianism, tyranny, and, naturally, all-embracing lies. Orwell was only too well aware of this.

Newspeak, doublethink, mutability of the past: these are the three “whales” that support (eternally? unbreakably?) the power of the Big Brother who “sees through you,” sees you always, and knows not only your actions but also your thoughts, even the most hidden ones (it is often suggested that the Big Brother is just an invention, a terrible generalized image of the government as such).

To win freedom, one must “drown” these three whales. The historical truth, which opposes the poisonous “mutability” of the past is an obligatory, albeit insufficient, condition on the way to freedom. “And the destruction of intellectual liberty cripples the journalist, the sociological writer, the historian, the novelist, the critic, and the poet, in that order.” This is also the opinion of George Orwell. God forbid these words are a prophesy for our future.