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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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Matthew Maly, a NewsMax and World Tribune reader of mine who sent me his new (third) book about Russia, ÒRussia As It Is,Ó was born in Moscow. As I was. He emigrated from Soviet Russia to the United States. As I did, with my family. He graduated from Columbia and received a master's degree (in sociology) from Yale in 1991.
Here the similarity between our live-lines ends, since I have ridiculed the university humanities, in particular, those of Columbia, where I gave a lecture about the Soviet development of post-nuclear weapons to the dismay and disbelief of the Columbia Sovietologists, and those of Yale, from which my son graduated.
I consider only one value of American civilization universal and important for all countries: the impossibility (ascending to the English Magna Carta of 1215) of Stalin, Hitler, or Mao in the United States (unless and until dictatorship is established in the United States as it was in Germany in the 1930s).
All the other aspects of American or Western civilization are fair targets for devastating criticism, and since I was a ruthless critic of Soviet-Russian institutions, admired by many outstanding Westerners, I can well be expected to be a no less ruthless critic of the American university humanities, such as those at Columbia or Yale.
Having heard of Matthew Maly's university credentials, you can well suppose that he became a tenured Columbia or Yale professor, that is, a Ò100 percent American,Ó enjoying a good academic salary and social benefits, and publishing his book (that no one reads) on their university presses. Instead, he writes: ÒI have lived in Russia and Ukraine since 1992, and: ÒI currently live in Kiev, Ukraine.Ó He also gives his e-mail: info@matthew-maly.ru.
Just as many Englishmen once assumed that the overwhelming majority of mankind wants to be part of the British Empire and many Russians assumed that this majority wants to be part of the World Soviet Union, many Americans assume that this majority wants to be part of the West, and only the villains (like Saddam Hussein, as he was imagined before having been found as a living corpse) prevent, with torture and mass killings, the happy ending of world history.
Maly's book is a good antidote to this British, Soviet, and now American dream (which has gone awry even in Iraq with its population of 24 million as against 1.4 billion of all Moslems).
Maly reminds us that the values and standards of civilizations change. As of October 1941, continental Europe from Madrid to the environs of Moscow was Nazi and Fascist. ÒMass executions and genocide were commonplace, racial hatred and national hatred were acceptable. Even in the United States, a country that was not being bombed or invaded, Japanese Americans were interned in camps and African-Americans were still segregated.Ó
Surely this was also ÒWestern civilization,Ó which might have conquered the world, and become world Western civilization with its values and standards obligatory for all.
On the other hand, a Westerner of today approaching other civilizations must also take into account Òthe fact that human societies are much more different than we tend to admit.Ó A non-Western civilization may cherish what the West considers just a backward archaic inconvenience. As an example, Maly mentions the Chinese hieroglyphs instead of the Western alphabet. To a Westerner, to draw a horse's head sticking out of the window to mean ÒsurpriseÓ may seem as archaic cumbersome waste. Not so to the Chinese. I have heard that asked why he returned to China from the United States, a prominent scientist answered that he could not bear the thought that his son would not be able to read and write. He meant hieroglyphs. The Western alphabetic reading and writing was to him like reading and writing mathematical or other symbolsÑefficient, but insufficient.
Every civilization has superfluities dear to a certain part of its population. Take, for example, Western opera today. Neither Athens nor Rome had opera. Most Americans, West Europeans, and Russians cannot stand opera and classical music. Inversely, many lovers of opera and classical music cannot stand Òpop songsÓ and Òpop music.Ó
If the values and standards are so different within one civilization, how can another civilization be expected to accept the values and standards of the West?
The aversion to proprietary inequality in Russia is as strong a in Western Europe, that is, much stronger than in the United States. Marx and Lenin did not create this aversion Ñ Lenin simply used it as a tool to create his dictatorship. But it is na•ve on the part of Americans to regard this aversion in Russia and Western Europe to proprietary inequality as parochial, archaic, transient.
On the other hand, in the United States there has always been a strong hostility toward prostitution, narcotics, alcohol (during Prohibition), and recently to some extent, even tobacco.
The American laws forbidding prostitution, narcotics, alcohol, and even smoking in public places are premised on the conviction that though the Declaration of Independence proclaims the pursuit of happiness to be man's inalienable right, man's will cannot cope with such temptations and hence they should be forbidden or restricted against man's will. Now, in Europe and in Russia, it is believed by many that proprietary inequality is a far more destructive temptation with which man's will cannot cope than prostitution, narcotics, alcohol, and tobacco put together. Even in the United States, Faulkner, Steinbeck, or Saul Bellow have added many books to the library showing how proprietary inequality warps all human relations, including justice for the outcome of a legal case may depend on how many lawyers a litigant is able to ÒretainÓ and how expensive they are.
All in all, the United States should fear and hate only one aspect of Russia: dictatorship in this comparatively large country, with immense scientific and technological resources a dictator will be able to mobilize for the development of post-nuclear superweapons, that is, to continue what was done up to 1991.
As long as the head of state is an elected official and not a dictator, he has no fear for world domination. Yeltsin was elected for his two terms, and, indeed, retired even before his second term was over. But a dictator is worried every minute of his dictatorship about the subversion of his power from within and without, for where is its legitimacy? Why he, and not anyone else?
It is difficult to predict a way by which dictatorship may come. In Russia, in the summer of 1917, a mass desertion from the war front began and was growing. Lenin declared that the war was unjust (ÒimperialistÓ) and so that deserters were not homeless criminals in the cold Russian month of October, but heroes who had done what was right and necessary. Deserters created Lenin's huge invincible army, which smashed the Provisional Government and put Lenin at the head of the country. Then the deserters were mobilized and fought for another four years, for Lenin was now the dictator and to disobey him was to ask to be shot.
Hitler was appointed Reichschancellor, which delighted the New York Times. But the Reichschancellor transformed himself into the dictator.
Mao was the commander-in-chief. As soon as his army won, he became the dictator up to his death.
Instead of my guesswork as to how dictatorship will come back in Russia, here is my personal experience.
When the Soviet dictatorship collapsed in 1991, I began publishing in the major Soviet periodicals that had been enemy institutions for such as myself since 1918. In particular, I published a weekly column in ÒMoscow PravdaÓ (not to be confused with ÒPravda,Ó which remained Stalinist). I can testify that freedom of the press was not abridged in post-1991 or Yeltsin's Russia.
Soon after Putin was elected president, he gave an interview in which he spoke about how he had been sent by the KGB to study law at a university, and functioning there was the KGB, which Putin praised, for the KGB is necessary (as he said) in every civilized society for linking the government and the people.
As a weekly columnist of ÒMoscow Pravda,Ó I felt I had to react, especially since Putin's interview went unnoticed within Russia and in the West.
My column was in the form of an open letter to Putin. I wrote that I had defended him when it was noted in the West with apprehension and displeasure that he, a former KGB colonel, had been elected president of Russia. I said that Paul was Saul and President Yeltsin a former candidate member of the Politburo of the Communist Party-Government. But what was Putin saying in his interview? Glorifying the domestic activity of the KGB, a notorious name in the West.
ÒMoscow PravdaÓ did not publish the column, but was afraid to tell me. Out of fear, it stopped publishing me altogether, but was afraid to tell me, and I kept sending my new columns, which the newspaper hid away without telling me that they were not printed. A cluster of fears, which makes the return of dictatorship smooth, uneventful, and even unnoticeable.
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.