Telling the truth in Stalin's Russia and in the West today

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See the Lev Navrozov Archive By Lev Navrozov SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM 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.

After Stalin died in 1953 and before Khrushchev represented him in his Òsecret speechÓ of 1956 as Òour Hitler, only worse,Ó to quote our neighbor in Moscow, there was a convenient time to learn what Soviet people had been really thinking about Stalin without any pressure from above either way.

I was courting a college co-ed of mine, a beauty who responded to my courtshipÑI had heard that when her friend chided her for falling in love with an ugly man, the beauty said to her: ÒUgly? Oh, no! When he speaks he has such EYES!Ó

Goethe was asked at the age of 80 or so how he could expect his love reciprocated by a girl of 18, and he said that a woman loves in a man the intelligence of her future son.

Anyway, to show the beauty how intelligent I was, I began to explain to her that the late Stalin had been a tyrant, not the founder of a nascent paradise on earth. But instead of admiring my EYES, she burst into tears, and I could make out between her sobs: ÒI didn't know that you were so cynical!Ó

I could well assume that I was a unique freak, thinking thoughts that seem to the rest of population of the country cynical monstrosities.

The only evidence that I was not a unique freak uttering cynical monstrosities was the fact that I had three friends who understood me and shared my views.

I was lucky. I was a son of a writer (a playwright). As such, he was a member of the Writers' Union, and its members resided in the same apartment houses, and sent their children to Òwriters' children's summer camps.Ó

All of my three friends were children of writers (two of poets and one of a script-writer).

Though Soviet writers were supposed (especially under Stalin) to write propaganda or at least what did not run counter to the official Soviet propaganda, they were mentally above the average. Their children were even more above the average by nature (that is, heredity) and by nurture (that is, the books and conversations in their homes).

The Soviet power-holders made a mistake keeping the writers and their children together.

When we came in 1972 to New York from Soviet Russia I was invited to speak at a university in Canada and at Columbia University.

At the university in Canada, many of the students were French, and as soon as I began to speak, they shouted to express their scorn, disbelief, and rage. After Khrushchev's speech in 1956, it was generally accepted in the West as well that Stalin was not a pure incarnation of genius who had been creating a paradise on earth.

But I was expressing cynical monstrosities about the Soviet DICTATORSHIP (Good Heavens!) and claimed that it was developing post-nuclear superweapons to circumvent Mutual Assured Destruction! I was able to finish my lecture because an English-Canadian student had stood up and said that the University had paid me a fee for the lecture and all the expenses. Should the university money be wasted? Those who did not find the lecture worth any money could walk out! The French students toned down, especially when I began to ridicule their remarks to outbursts of laughter (so I was worth my fee after all!).

At Columbia, the audience of future degreed Sovietologists listened to my lecture in gloomy silence. A lady Sovietologist who had invited me said apologetically that I had given them Òmuch food for thought.Ó A professor of Sovietology stood up and inquired belligerently how I could compare Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany if they were the opposites. My monstrous cynicism had shocked him: I could well expect that he would burst into tears saying between the sobs that he didn't know that anyone from Soviet Russia could be so cynical.

What I am saying now about post-1949 China is much more obvious than what I said about Stalin's Russia to my beautiful co-ed after Stalin's death in 1953. Yet the silence in the West about what I am saying is as complete as was the silence about what I was saying in Soviet Russia between 1953 and 1956.

Who can doubt that the dictatorship of China, which is called by the dictators Òthe People's [!] Republic [!],Ó is the largest dictatorship in world history? Who can doubt that in order to survive it has to defend its absolutism against Tiananmen Squareølike movements, inspired by the very fact of existence of the democratic West? Who can doubt that, since 1986, post-nuclear superweapons are being developed in China in eight fields if this has been described in the Chinese media? Who can doubt that having become able to circumvent Mutual Assured Destruction by destroying the Western means of nuclear retaliation, the ÒPeople's [!] Liberation [!] ArmyÓ will ÒliberateÓ Ònot only Taiwan, which the United States defends, but the United States itself and the West in general?

Post-1949 China was created by Mao, Stalin's disciple. Stalin was called Òthe first champion of the world peace.Ó But a German Communist song, composed before Hitler came to power, and translated into the Russian, went thus:

The two worlds are in for the final clash Ñ
Our slogan is the World USSR!

Surely one has only to replace the ÒWorld USSRÓ (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) with the ÒWorld PRC Ò (People's Republic of China).

Am I an eternal unique freak? In Soviet Russia this was disproved by my three friends. In the West today this is disproved by thousands of e-mails from my readers all over the world. I will cite just one sample of these e-mail responses:

ÒFrom: Jim Lingren
To: Lev Navrozov
Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2004 10:38 PM
Subject: RE: China

I think you're the only person in public life who is aware of what China plans for this country and is willing to go public. Don't quit, don't stop, don't weaken. It's not easy being a ÒPaul Revere,Ó but history (if we survive) will always remember.

Stay strong and on course.

Jim Lingren
San Bernardino County Sheriffs DepartmentÓ