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 Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian. .
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My November 1978 ÒCommentaryÓ article, reprinted or outlined in about 500 Western periodicals and leading to my meeting with Ronald Reagan, ridiculed the CIA's testimony in Congress about Soviet Russia and China.
Much is thought, said, and done in a human society according to a current think-fashion. From 1945 to 1949, Stalin shivered in his boots because he had no nuclear weapons. But the CIA fantasized how Stalin was attacking the West, for such was the Western think-fashion. In the 1970s the Soviet rulers began the development of post-nuclear superweapons, but in its congressional testimony (which I ridiculed in my ÒCommentaryÓ article of 1978) the CIA describedÑon the basis of Soviet propaganda, foisted by the CIA on Congress as intelligence-espionage dataÑhow peaceful Soviet Russia was. Such was the think-fashion in the 1970s.
My article crossed out not only the Western intelligence-espionage as nonexistent, but also the Western Sovietology and Sinology, foreign policy, geostrategy, etc., for today the intelligence-espionage agencies must be the eyes of the West, while the blind West is doomed. This is what I concluded in 1978, and in the quarter-century since then, my conclusion has been confirmed.
But in 1978 my article was an intellectual nuclear bomb, and I was sure that the Western political establishment would meet my article with a massive attack. And here I was reading in ÒCommentaryÓ a letter (of the size of a full magazine page) to the editor from ÒAlbert Weeks,Ó a professor ranging from Russian studies to the history of Western civilization, and deeply rooted in academia (University of Chicago, Columbia University, New York University) and in the political-military establishment (U.S. Department of State, West Point Military Academy).
It might seem that he would be the first to attack my article to protect his numberless academic degrees in the humanities, political-military posts, and publications at university presses. What? A Russian immigrant without a single academic degree or political post or university-press publication dares to represent the CIA as a hoax or a fraud! Then what are we, the academic-political-military establishment, taking the CIA's testimony in Congress so seriously?
Instead, not only did Professor Albert Weeks endorse in his letter to the editor my iconoclastic article, but he also generalized the case in comments like: ÒFinally, Mr. Navrozov implies that outright stupidity seems to be a chronic illness in contemporary America.Ó Or: ÒTo use the Marxist term, we have become 'cretinized'.Ó
That is, he spoke of what I have been calling, after John Stuart Mill, Òsocietal mental regression,Ó the word ÒsocietalÓ implying that the term refers not to publicly inaudible and invisible Westerners, but to those in the government, legislature, intelligence-espionage, academia, and the commercial mainstream media.
Naturally, I wanted to meet such a remarkable person who tells the truth no matter how ugly and how detrimental to his class and hence to himself.
Nor was his courage confined to his career. It was also direct physical courage, making me recall that he was a military aircraft navigator during the Second World War, which I call Hitler's War for World Domination. When the Western think-fashion was the peacefulness of Soviet Russia (developing post-nuclear superweapons, unbeknownst to the CIA, of course!) he led a group of twenty New York University students for a month's stay n Soviet Russia. When the Soviet side poured out Òpeace and friendshipÓ in the House of Friendship (!), Moscow, and Al was supposed to reciprocate in the same key, he told the truth (in Moscow!).
The truth was and is that every large dictatorship in the past hundred years had unlimited opportunities to engage in secret preparations for world domination and used those opportunities, for without world domination any such dictatorship may collapse (as it happened in Soviet Russia in 1991). Before 1939 Hitler's Germany had been regarded as a peaceful country. The military aircraft navigator Weeks saw the ugly truth.
Yes, but how could Al tell the ugly truth in the U.S. media in the 1980s? While even the ÒNew York TimesÓ has published his three op-eds (in fifty years?), he told me that no periodical wanted to publish his regular column. No wonder! For all his degrees and posts, he spoke the truth, and too few individuals like the truth to make the printing of it commercially worthwhile.
What was my way out? I was writing a weekly and then three-times-a-week column for the ÒNew York City TribuneÓ and advised him to do the same.
ÒWas the newspaper founded by Reverent Moon?Ó he asked. ÒYes,Ó I said. ÒIndeed, our op-ed editor, Carol, is a member of the Unification Church, and you will see what an excellent editor and charming woman she is. I asked her to edit my article, which had nothing to do with the newspaper, and I wanted to pay for her editing, but she said: 'First, I will take no money from you; and, second, if I take it, I won't know what to do with it.' You must agree that this is refreshing in a country obsessed with money.Ó
Al began writing a regular column for the ÒNew York City Tribune.Ó He could tell the truth, no matter how ugly and how detrimental to the academic-political class to which he belonged. Unfortunately, the ÒNew York City TribuneÓ folded more than ten years ago.
Al's latest book is ÒStalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939-41.Ó On the basis of carefully collected and carefully examined evidence, Al has established that Stalin was going to attack Hitler. But Hitler attacked him first. That much we know. But why did Hitler anticipate Stalin?
The supreme difficulty is that the game was played not on the chessboard, but within the brains of the two players. At any moment Stalin or Hitler could cancel all his earlier moves and take a new move.
Owing to his broad mind, common sense and psychological flair, Al is eminently suitable for the analysis of this brain chess. No wonder in his review in ÒComparative StrategyÓ journal, C. Dale Walton of Southwest Missouri State University calls Al's analysis of the game within the two brains and the discussion of this game in the past sixty-odd years Òan excellent study that thoroughly covers the subject matter under discussion.Ó
As for my contribution to the analysis of the game within two brains, I can mention my NewsMax.com article of June 4, 2002: ÒHow Hitler Nearly Won the War in Russia Owing to Churchill: A Bit of History That is Still News.Ó
Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.