Of Human Bondage

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Tuesday, Jun. 11, 2002
As folklore has it, once upon a time a remote Soviet village woke up to the announcement of a lecture on creative diversity in love-making. Not spoiled for choice in regard to entertainment, the villagers did not spare their last crumpled rubles to pay the admittance. "There exists a sexual love," started the speaker, "a platonic love, and the Soviet people's undying love of the Party, the State, and personally of the Leader. The latter will be the subject of our presentation today." Though the Soviet regime is long dead, the Russian people still remain trapped into paying for their undying love of the State and the Leader. He who openly flaunts his disdain for that tribute, still risks his business, job, public standing, or freedom.

People are free of such bondage in the West. However, now that Russia has sided with the West in the antiterrorist campaign and is emerging as a prospective oil supplier, there is many an expression of love of the Russian state and personally of President Vladimir Putin, reminiscent of the Western admiration of the Soviet Union and Stalin during World War II. At the time, the mere expediency of having the U.S.S.R. on their side as the decisive factor in the fight against Nazism forced the Western democracies to forget that it was the inane Soviet policies that had encouraged Nazism, and provoked the war. They also confused the genuine heroism and sacrifice of the Soviet people with the terrorist and aggressive Soviet regime.

Rare voices of warning were ignored and suppressed in the West. Alexander Barmin, once a Soviet military intelligence general and ranking diplomat who defected to the United States in the 1930s, lost his job with the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor of the CIA) in 1944 for publishing an article in Reader's Digest on how the U.S.S.R. was using the alliance to advance its subversive objectives in America. Expedience grew into wishful thinking that the U.S.S.R. was no different from the democracies, and that Stalin was as accountable to the electorate as Roosevelt or Churchill. This led to the surrender of Eastern Europe to Moscow, and to such ignominies as extraditing hundreds thousands refugees from the Soviet regime back to Stalin. Most of those people perished in labor camps. Only the outbreak of the cold war in 1946 reigned that wishful thinking in.

It is as much wishful thinking today to believe in Russia's democracy. The West will be right to leave it to the Russian people themselves to deal with the continuing bloodshed in Chechnya, suppression of free speech, corruption, and growing state controls over free enterprise — if the Russians ever have the will and the guts to do so, that is. But the West will be wrong to turn a blind eye to all that for the sake of expediency. It is also wishful thinking to believe that Putin is as Western and accountable to the electorate as Bush or Blair. Putin is no more Western than, say, Emperor Alexander I who spoke Western languages, had polished Western manners, and was too busy writing liberal constitutions for European countries to set Russian serfs free.

It is also wishful thinking to believe that Russia is firmly set to join the West. Russia will be ready for it, when and if its fundamental values get closer to the Western ones in real life rather than in the statements signed by Bush and Putin last month. As long as Russia maintains supremacy of the state over the individual, there is no way Russia can join the democratic club, even if it sits on all the European and Atlantic bodies. As Russia was welcomed into NATO councils in Rome last month, Putin joked that from now on they would be known as "The House of Soviets" ("Council" stands for "Soviet" in Russian). "Every joke has a grain of a joke," as we say in Russia.

Back in 1944, Barmin warned that America's wishful thinking on the U.S.S.R. could facilitate the bacillus of communism penetrating its society. The Bush administration must be given high marks for mobilizing the country and the world to stand up to the threat of global terrorism — and for bringing Russia along. But there are also strong elements within this administration who favor strengthening the state at the expense of individual liberties, as expedient to the war effort. Combined with wishful thinking on Russia and Putin, they could facilitate the bacillus of statism penetrating American society, making the people pay dearly one day.