Document created: 2 June 04
Air University Review, November-December 1972

Dissidence and Fear in the U.S.S.R.

 Colonel Donald L. Clark

The Soviet musical “Moi Bezumni Brat”¹ is a vicious assault on the United States, using every known cliché of Soviet propaganda to paint life in the West as vile and base. Yet, in the two and a half hours of the play there is one line that makes the whole mishmash worth sitting through. The line comes late in the show when the antagonist, a wealthy American banker who planned to start a third World War, finds himself suffering the fate he had planned for his twin brother as inmate of an insane asylum. He joins a group of real patients, who are arguing over who owns a large rubber inflatable bunny. The argument is about to lead to violence when one of the demented group suggests a solution. His words go something like this, “Why are we fighting over personal ownership like dirty capitalists? Why can’t we all share this bunny?” Amazed by his wisdom, the rest decide that is the solution. Then the man clasping the bunny steps forward and dryly says to the audience, “Yes, only in a crazy house can you successfully have a communal bunny.” The audience roars.

Dr. Abraham Rothberg in his book The Heirs of Stalin * has done us all a great favor by extracting those marvelous one-liners—or several pages—that make Soviet films, poems, essays, articles, letters, books, etc., worth reading and placing them all under one cover. For this he is to be congratulated and admired. One has only to read a few issues of Pravda or an article or two out of Komunist to be convinced that the close and detailed examination of Soviet writings is dull, dreary, and seldom very edifying. But to examine this carefully selected collection of jewels is another story and well worth the effort.

*Abraham Rothberg, The Heirs of Stalin: Dissidence and the Soviet Regime, 1953-1970 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, $14.50), xiii and 450 pages.

Like any raw jewel, however, this book is not without flaws. It is often difficult reading, and the reader is hard pressed to keep his interest at a high peak. This result can only be blamed on the author, not on the promising material. He has made the mistake of describing the same events with only slightly different words in separate chapters and parts of the book. A little better overall editorial polishing and this flaw could have been buffed away. The author also chose to divide the story of Soviet dissidence into artistic, political, and scientific groupings rather than use the chronological approach, which would have obviated the need for so much repetition and given the story a smoother flow. Dr. Rothberg makes it quite clear that each of his various dissident groupings is really protesting the same things—the lack of the rule of law, censorship, and the re-emergence of Stalinism—so the divisions hardly seem needed.

Another minor flaw (which slightly reduces the value of the book) can be traced to Rothberg’s apparently sincere but too obvious dislike for Communism, Russian style. The author has a way of coloring events, acts, and people so as to make them sound ominous, faulty, or underhanded even when the accuracy of his insinuation is in doubt. For example, he frequently refers to a distinguished author and expert on Soviet affairs as an “apologist,” yet he quotes the man on several occasions as being critical of an act by the Communist party. Could it be that this specialist, unlike Dr. Rothberg, has only maintained the proper objectivity of an observer?

But enough about the flaws. Even a marred precious jewel is worth a great deal, and so is this book. Although it appears to have been written primarily for other scholars and serious students of Soviet studies, it deserves a wider reading audience. Dr. Rothberg’s list of sources alone is outstanding. Anyone interested in learning more about Soviet dissidence, Soviet literature, samizdat,² or even a relatively obscure Soviet author, artist, or scientist of merit is very likely to find a source among Dr. Rothberg’s bibliography that will satisfy his thirst. He introduces the reader not only to Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Ehrenburg, Sakharov, Daniel, and Sinyavskiy, the famous dissidents, but also to many lesser yet equally courageous and outspoken men and women, like Margarita Aliger, Olga Beggolts, Andrei Amalrik, Pyotr Yakir, Vladimir Bukovsky, Valeria Novodvorskaya, and Viktor Krasin.

When one considers that this list deals with only a fraction of the people discussed in Rothberg’s book, it is quite simple to jump to the false conclusion that the U.S.S.R. is in trouble, that revolution is just around the corner. Dr. Rothberg, however, has carefully avoided this misconception. He goes to great pains to point out to the reader how tiny the dissident movement is, what little effect it has had on the Soviet masses to date, and that the Western reader must understand it as a movement (with few exceptions) to reform Communism and not to overthrow it.

The book carefully and repeatedly constructs its case that the Communist party of the U.S.S.R. still contains the seeds of the ruthlessness of the Stalin era and has recently shown signs that under the right circumstances the party could return to that rule of terror. Rothberg obviously believes that Khrushchev erred—at least from the party point of view—when he castigated Stalin and started the first thaw. He posits that Khrushchev started de-Stalinization in order to weaken his enemies and win some allies in his bid for the top leadership. Later, Khrushchev himself apparently recognized that he had opened a Pandora’s box, and he spent the better part of the rest of his reign trying to put the lid back on without breaking the jar or labeling himself as one of Stalin’s heirs. Khrushchev’s successors, according to Rothberg, recognized the mistake of the thaw even better than the former Premier did; and although the dissident movement has grown under their rule, they have on occasion been much more ruthless in dealing with it.

The book then goes on to describe the mini-war that has been waged since the thaw was first authorized. The narrative breathes some life into the heroes and villains of the real-life tragedy. Sprinkled throughout the pages are some marvelous quotes from poems, science fiction, novels, court testimonies, KGB interviews, and even from the running squabbles between rival journals like the liberal Noviy Mir (“New World”) and Oktyabr (“October”)—quotes that go far to explain the basic failings of Soviet Communism as a system and the real greatness of that two-legged creature called man.

In this book one man’s words shine forth and rise above all the others, the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One of my regrets about the book is that there are so few quotes from The Cancer Ward, The First Circle, and even fewer from For the Good of the Cause. But since these writings are available to us all, perhaps Professor Rothberg was wise to select quotations from writings less available. One quotation that I think is most revealing about the Soviet system is in Solzhenitsyn’s epilogue to his book August 1914, a story about Russia and her people of that time. The Nobel laureate says:

This book cannot at the present time be published in our native land except in Samizdat because of censorship objections. . . and which, in addition, demand that the word God be unfailingly written without a capital letter. To this indignity, I cannot stoop. (p. 358)

 Another timely and revealing quotation comes from the words of the party Secretary General, Leonid Brezhnev, a man who today is attempting through treaties, conferences, and propaganda to create an image of the U.S.S.R. as the shining example of a peace-loving, free, and democratic nation. He said to the party elite in 1968, “Our Party has always warned that in the field of ideology there can be no peaceful coexistence.” (p. 236)

As one reads these pages, a seed is planted, and finally an unexpected truth begins to take form: the truth that the leaders of this great and powerful Communist party—a small elite with terrifying reputations, who took a relatively weak nation and changed it into a military and industrial superpower—are men who are somehow unsure and very much afraid. In fact, they have a giant inferiority complex. They fear the word “God” with a capital letter. They fear the truth about the Stalin era, the Lenin era, the Khrushchev era, indeed even the current era. They fear contact between their people and the West. And they fear any man who has the courage to refuse to follow their dictates. That fear, in spite of their power and strength, often overrides their rationality. As a result they have to strike out, silence, ridicule, and somehow dispense with anyone or any thought that challenges their stubborn claim to infallibility.

As Dr. Rothberg notes, the number of dissidents and even their samizdat publications have grown: the Chronicle, for example, has been published like clockwork every two months for several years, with stories and articles of protest, but still the dissonant impact on the mass society is negligible.³ Most Soviets have never heard of the majority of the dissidents, have never seen their essays or heard their protest statements. When the worker or peasant does hear, he usually rejects such people as troublemakers and schemers. But in spite of this attitude of the masses, the leaders continue to fear the protesters. Dr. Rothberg asks why. Is it because they remember how small a group the Communists were in 1917 and yet they overthrew the mighty czar? Is it because the rebels are mostly from the intelligentsia and potentially can influence more people? Is it because more and more scientists and skilled technicians are entering the movement and such men are becoming ever more important as the Soviet Union enters the cybernetic, super industrial, technotronic age? Or is it simply a fear based on the evils of the past? The Politburo members and apparatchiki are insecure and must seek constant praise and acceptance; in their minds they magnify the slightest resistance so that it appears as the beginning of the end. The author leaves it to us to answer these questions, but he leads us to believe that the answer is that irrational fear.

Professor Rothberg also asks the “why” of the dissidents themselves. His indicated answer here disappoints me. He suggests that most of the dissidents suffered some severe tragedy under Communism; that some dear relative died in a purge or a labor camp, that they or some close loved one suffered indignities, innocent imprisonment or disgrace and that this crime and suffering is the basis for their resistance. Yet, if this is so, the movement should be much larger because, as Rothberg notes, millions died in the Stalinist purges, and almost every family in the U.S.S.R. suffered in one or more of the purges or KGB iniquities.⁴ Therefore, to single out that suffering in their past as the key to their protest now seems to me a bit too anodyne.

In my opinion the dissidents speak out because they are men and women who must. Such people exist in every country, and they cannot help it if the accident of their birth places them in a land where such acts still lead to imprisonment or confinement in a mental institution. Rothberg quotes Valeriy Tarsis as saying that maybe the party is right in placing so many in insane asylums, since, after all, anyone who speaks against the system in the U.S.S.R. must know his ultimate fate and must be a little crazy or he would remain silent. Rothberg quotes Andre Amalrik eloquently addressing that dilemma in these words:

When I was writing my books and intending to hand them over for publication I realized that I was risking imprisonment, and I was ready for it and am ready for it now. But I thank God for every day of freedom which is given to me and which I spend at home with my wife. . . I think that the people in the KGB are reasonably sensible from the police point of view, and they will arrest me when the fuss abroad has died down, and interest in me and my books has fallen away; and they will not try me for my books but will trump up some minor pretext. . . As far as the date of my arrest is concerned, a bureaucratic regime does not hurry by its very nature and because it knows that no one will escape it. (p. 266)

Such men do not speak because of previous imprisonments or the death or suffering of a loved one. They speak because something inside them has to be said. They cannot be silenced.

There is another weakness in the book that needs to be noted. The author pays proper attention to the famous essay of Dr. Andrei Sakharov and other protest notes, acts, and movements which he has initiated, but in my opinion Dr. Rothberg mislabels Sakharov’s most famous essay: he frequently refers to it as a “convergence essay.” I agree that the article speaks of a democratized U.S.S.R. and a socialized U.S., but I think much more important points are made in its several thousand words. It is perhaps one of the most important documents to come out of the U.S.S.R. since 1917, and it should be read by anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the current thinking of some of the best minds in the Soviet Union. To label it simply as an essay on “convergence” is to do the author an injustice and might cause many who have rejected that oversimplified theory (and most of the leading authorities on the U.S.S.R. have rejected it) to ignore the Sakharov essay. It is far more than a comment on convergence; it is a moving and eloquent plea for world peace, understanding, and cooperation. It is an incredibly well-informed appraisal of current events produced by men who should have been prevented by their government’s policies from knowing such facts, reaching such conclusions, and above all from discussing, writing, and publishing such shocking ideas of liberty, equality, and alleged fallibility of the dictatorship of the few. Yet it was written.

There is a special brand of dissidence afoot in the U.S.S.R., but in my opinion The Heirs of Stalin fails to give it adequate coverage. While pointing out this or that incident, Dr. Rothberg frequently alludes to the problem between the “fathers and sons,” the generation gap of the U.S.S.R., yet somehow the real impact of that dilemma on Soviet society does not come across. The basic problem of the generation gap in the U.S.S.R. is the disillusionment of the youth. It is a disillusion similar to the one so often described in the West, yet remarkably leading to almost the opposite result. American youth are rejecting what they feel was the overemphasis of their fathers on material wealth, and they seek in its stead a human philosophy, a better style rather than standard of living. The youth of Soviet Russia, on the other hand, are rejecting the idealism of Communism that their fathers accepted and are seeking in its stead material improvements in the standard of living, the “good” life. While American youth are demonstrating for much the same ideals that young Bukovsky went to jail for (pp. 197-99), he is an exception among youth in the U.S.S.R. His contemporaries are saying “To hell with all that philosophy garbage. We want a better life: cars, radios, cameras, leisure time, good books, better jobs—all those things they have in the West.” And they add “Now, not after another generation of building Communism but now, now; yesterday would have been better, and tomorrow is too late.”

The disaffection of Soviet youth, although not nearly so well documented as the problem in our Western world, may well prove more damaging to the Communist side than the revolt of Western youth can ever be to our democracies. Democracy may resist but always eventually accommodates to change. The youth movement in the West, dramatic as it has been, may lead to certain fundamental changes, like a volunteer military force; but in the U.S.S.R. it has already led to a new draft law—a knee-jerk reaction by the party leaders designed to draft more of the youth but for a shorter period, in the frail hope that Red Army discipline can overcome their lack of Communist zeal.⁵ The effect on their Communist zeal may be in doubt, but the effect on the Soviet military’s readiness is not. Militarily in this complex and technical era it is far better to keep a man for a longer period and give him experience than to expose greater numbers to lessened training and proficiency. Therefore, over the long haul, the generation gap in the U.S.S.R. may actually damage her military capability, and the Soviet youth’s estrangement may prove even more destructive than the open protests of men like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn.

One day at Sheremetevo airport outside Moscow I asked a young Soviet acquaintance what he thought was the difference between life in the U.S.S.R. today and under Stalin. His reply brought a laugh, but a scary laugh, from both of us. He said under Stalin everyone lived in fear of the knock on the door in the middle of the night—it meant terror, disappearance, and tragedy. “Today it’s much better—they knock on the door in the daytime.”

Abraham Rothberg’s book is a confirmation of that youth’s statement. The Soviet Union of today is different from that of the thirties. This is proven by the very existence of the squabbles over the decision or requirement to reveal the crimes of Stalin that are presented in the Noviy Mir, Yunost, Oktyabr, and Pravda selections in The Heirs of Stalin. The difference is also substantiated by the intermittent thaws and freezes, the retirement of party leaders versus their previous public confession and death. It is exposed in the press comments on the generation gap—the disillusionment of Soviet youth. But somehow all of these signs, when interlaced like the control of party and government in the U.S.S.R., also turn out to be signs that Soviet society is only a sunset away from the Stalin era. Proof of this can be found in The Heirs of Stalin, even if the going is occasionally tough. Read this book, and somewhere along the line—if only by osmosis—you will begin to understand better the conundrum of that other superpower.

Washington, D.C.

Notes

1. The English title of the musical would be “My Crazy Brother.” It was a fairly popular production shown throughout the U.S.S.R. in 1968. In the story a rich American banker attempts to start World War III in order to destroy the U.S.S.R. and enable the U.S. to enslave the world. He expects some nuclear retaliation and tries to keep his family safe. His twin brother, the good guy, hearing of the plot, passes himself off as the banker, sends the villain to an insane asylum, and averts the war.

2. “Samizdat” is a Russian word describing the underground publication of a book, mainly typewritten, which often numbers several thousand copies. It comes from the Russian words “sam” meaning “self” and “izdat” meaning “to publish.”

3. Chronicle of Current Events, authors unknown, a journal published via samizdat every two months in the U.S.S.R, containing news of the dissidents, including who has been jailed, where, and for what. The first consistently antiparty publication inside Russia in modern Soviet times.

4. Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror (New York: Macmillan, 1968) probably carries the most accurate account of these slaughters. It is very authoritatively referred to in Dr. Andrei D. Sakharov’s essay, Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968).

5. Zakon SSSR O Vseobshchei Voinskoi Obyazannosti (Moscow, U.S.S.R.: Military Press, 1967), Ministry of Defense. It reduced military service in all services by one year.

Contributor

Colonel Donald L. Clark (M.A., George Washington University) is a member of the Joint Staff, J-5, International Negotiations Division. A graduate of the Defense Language Institute, he was Assistant Air Attaché in Moscow (1966-68) and later Chief, Communist Studies, Air Command and Staff College. Other assignments have been as Research Associate, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and in USAFSS, SAC, ATC, and Hq USAF. Colonel Clark is a graduate of SOS, ACSC, and AEC Seminar.