What are we allowed to say?

Open Forum in English
1

Friday Steve had a post on his blog with the same title. I believe we should be allowed to say what we want to say. The same day Steve wrote his blog entry, where I live a man was sentenced to 11 years in jail for expressing his opinion on the internet. In one of his articles he had expressed his support for another man who is also in jail for 11 years for demanding one man one vote. His wife is held under house arrest for being his wife.

This is not about my nationality versus another one. My homecountry was home to Goethe and Goebbels, Bach and Mengele. We have no moral highground. But certain rights are universal and when they are under threat we should all speak out.

2

I agree with your feelings about the Chinese regime, Friedemann. But I wonder what exactly can be done about it, short of starting a war that would make WW2 seem by comparison like a squabble at a camp for boy scouts?

Actually I have grown kind of cynical about this whole subject. When it comes to small tyrants (Iraq, Balkans, etc.) Western governments are very quick to get on their moral high horses. But when it comes to BIG tyrants, then suddenly these horrible authoritarian regimes are our much valued trading partners in a global economy. And those folks within them who struggle under persecution for reform and liberty get zero support from the Western governments - absolute zero support.

Perhaps it would be better to be consistent about these things? Provided that they pose no threat to us, maybe we should just grit our teeth and accept that we have to leave other countries to go their own way?

Even where there are relatively weak regimes that do pose a threat, there is no need to get directly involved on the ground.

In my opinion we should get the heck out of Afgahnistan. We should tell the Taliban, “Here’s the deal: we will leave you alone and you will leave us alone, understood? If you go back to setting up training camps for international jihadists, etc, these camps will be mercilessly attacked from the air with tactical nuclear weapons. You have been warned.”

3

I’m not sure if i agree with you about leaving other countries alone JayB :S. Also, I think It’d be interesting to listen to what people living under oppressive governments have to say. Is there anyone on this forum?

4

Steve’s post about this lawsuit in Canada really had me thinking. While it is annoying to see these things happening, the threat to freedom of speech in Canada is still on a completely different level than in some other countries.

Jay,

you’re right, economic interests and moral principles are not always compatible.

5

I think we also have to wait for a decision to come down. Just because someone or some group has filed a suit, doesn’t mean that the outcome has already been decided. It may be that this groups gets no money.

It is difficult for me to understand how someone could be so traumatized by an incident like that five years in the past.

6

As for Friedemann’s point, of course the situation in China is on a whole other level. Maybe I have a weird view of this, but it seems to me that we decide what sort of rights we have. I’m not so sure we can declare universal rights against people’s will. Is China a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? If it is, then ok, we can hold China to account for violations of those rights. If it isn’t, then it isn’t.

The ruler is the ruler, and the rules are the rules - just or unjust. If you, as a dissident, decide that you’re going to stand up and take the consequences, then good for you. But surely the consequences weren’t a surprise.

If the Chinese government makes it clear to the population that it will not tolerate certain kinds of criticism in public, then people have to make their own choices about how to deal with that.

There is also the issue of what the majority of Chinese want. Do they want freedom of the press, of speech, and of assembly? Do they want the freedom to vote for the representative of their choice? How important are these things to them? If the Chinese people themselves aren’t all worked up about getting a free press, then I’m not sure it’s my business to get all worked up on their behalf.

As for how we interact with China, I thought the whole idea of interacting with repressive, authoritarian countries was because this interaction would moderate them over time. If China wants to participate in the global economy, it’s going to have to establish the rule of law, enforce contracts and legal obligations, and so on. For that, it’s going to need a functioning, independent judicial system. And so on, step by step, the country opens up.

Personally, I like the idea of setting up a new international association of free countries. We can do most of our business with each other, but encourage others to reform in order to engage more with us. Kind of like what the EU did with the former communist countries. I think we’ve allowed an authoritarian (nominally communist) country to become a very major player in our economies - it seems kind of crazy to me.

But, in the end, China is China. I’m not Chinese. It’s up to Chinese people to decide what kind of country they want, and to take the steps necessary to realize their ambitions, whatever they may be.

7

@ JayB:
"We should tell the Taliban, “Here’s the deal: we will leave you alone and you will leave us alone, understood? If you go back to setting up training camps for international jihadists, etc, these camps will be mercilessly attacked from the air with tactical nuclear weapons. You have been warned.”

Good writing. I am curious what Taliban should answer, and what is the tactical nuclear weapon. So, you aren’t against talking politics on the language forums anymore ? :slight_smile:

@ Bortrun :
" Do they want freedom of the press, of speech, and of assembly? Do they want the freedom to vote for the representative of their choice? How important are these things to them? If the Chinese people themselves aren’t all worked up about getting a free press, then I’m not sure it’s my business to get all worked up on their behalf."

It maybe theoretically correct, but I think that people who have never lived under democracy are never “all worked up about getting a free press” etc. Their dissidents are, and I believe that the free speech and just the free, non-imprisoned life of the Chinese dissidents should be strongly supported by the West.

I lived among the people who had never been under democracy. What is applicable and even stereotypical for the western societies is not applicable there. Only a tiny minority of the dissidents had expressed the desire for the freedom of press, the human rights etc. in the former USSR, yet on the very eve of the Perestroika. The vast majority, if you’d imagine a poll on the issue, would have expressed “the unanimous support for the command role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union”.

A tiny minority of the dissidents and a couple of the western radio station that broadcast to USSR (“The Voice Of America” and " The Radio Freedom" had played a huge, may be a decisive role in the Perestroyka. (Of course, the economic problems were also decisive. However, nobody in the west had predicted something like the Perestroyka, especially at the time it had actually happened).

The receive of the voice of the Western Radio stations was significantly suppressed by the interference over the territory of the USSR. There are parallels. However I think that the percentage of Chinese people that have access to the western information is much higher than it was in Russia back then, and much bigger is the percentage that can travel or live abroad.

8

Bortrun,

you are right that probably a good majority of the people here support the government and its stance on freedom of expression. Maybe I should just shut up and accept it, I’ll be leaving the country in a year’s time anyway. Still, I cannot help but feel deeply for these brave people who are being brutalised for writing or saying something. I just find this so difficult to swallow. Sorry!

9

Illya_L said: “I am curious what Taliban should answer, and what is the tactical nuclear weapon. So, you aren’t against talking politics on the language forums anymore ? :-)”

A tactical nuke is just a relatively small warhead - one which is designed to take out a single military target (an air base, etc) rather than wipe out a whole major city or region.

As for talking politics: I wouldn’t allow it if this were my forum. But it isn’t my forum, it’s Steve’s forum. I am perfectly happy to play by his rules - as I have always made clear. :wink:

10

Friedemann,

It would be tough to know what to do in that situation. I suspect that if you let yourself get dragged into it too much, it could just drive you crazy. And it’s completely natural and expected that you would feel for the dissidents who are being punished and imprisoned. And if there is a way for you to support them or advocate for them (assuming that they would want Westerners to do this on their behalf), then it’d be great for you to do that. No need to apologize for your natural allegiances. One of the reasons I never ended up moving to China was because I thought I wouldn’t be able to deal with just that frustration.

11

Ilya,

"The vast majority, if you’d imagine a poll on the issue, would have expressed “the unanimous support for the command role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union”. "

Wow, is that the case? I always thought there was a lot of frustration with the Party near the end (maybe all the way along). Certainly some of the non-Russian republics weren’t happy. Interesting.

At any rate, it’s always interesting to get the opposite perspective from someone who’s lived inside a repressive, authoritarian country as a citizen. I guess I have a natural tendency to not want to go to other countries and tell them that the way they organize their society is wrong. China isn’t mass-killing its citizens, although it is imprisoning, and probably maltreating, those who criticize it.

But, on the other hand, I’m perfectly comfortable explaining why I, personally, don’t like their form of social organization. If a Chinese person asks me if I think the government should control the information people receive in the interest of social stability, I’d say “no”, and I’d explain my reasons.

I agree that we should support dissidents, but it may also taint those dissidents as being “foreign agents” or some such thing. Our help could very easily turn into a hindrance.

One thing I’m curious about: how receptive do you think the average Russian was to these messages from the West? Were they aware of them? Was the average person aware of the reasons why the West was critical of Soviet-style communism? How did people perceive dissidents?

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@ Bortrun:

“One thing I’m curious about: how receptive do you think the average Russian was to these messages from the West? Were they aware of them? Was the average person aware of the reasons why the West was critical of Soviet-style communism? How did people perceive dissidents?”

Mark, now I only shortly answer this your paragraph, but later I may add details and will try to address the other questions in your post.

It was all banned, and in all the places where I lived, an “average person” considered it to be a bad thing to listen to the foreign radio stations of the west. People would not readily confess to strangers, may be only to the best friends, if they had listened to the west.

I believe that the effect was tremendous. The characteristic of the soviet press before the perestroyka was, for example, that it did not state foreign events, but would comment on some after-events. Something like on the 5-th day of the 6-day War in the Middle East (1967) the central Soviet paper “Pravda” would throw: “The Soviet People and All the Progressive Mandkind Condemn (it was a ctachy template) the crimes of Israeli miltary”. It could be the first reflection on the event. My parents didn’t know that the war had started, neither why it had happened. But now they could not resist to troubling the weels of our old radio set behind the closed doors. I was a little boy. Listenning was always a pain because of the specially induced interference. But the effect of any information, (including even the false information) under such circumstances was significant. The atmoshere of that is nicely described in a very good humoristic novel, written before the perestroyka, by Efraim Sevella: “Stop the plain, I shall get out”. I think it must be translated into English.

“Was the average person aware of the reasons why the West was critical of Soviet-style communism?” - I believe the average one one was not. At least, even in the good cases, the reasons were not percieved as they are seen in the West.

" How did people perceive dissidents?" Before the perestroyka dissedents was percieved and treated - negatively. I might later describe how badly people treated Academician Sacharov, a very respected person, in the big city of Gorky, to where he was exiled from Moscow. I was borrowing not long ago the memoirs of Andrei Sachorov, translated into English, form the local Toronto library. Reviving reading to my memory. I might also explain how my parents’ family had happened to be in a friendly relations with a rather prominent dissident in the peripheral city of Ufa.

During the Perestroyka, the things have changed, and many people began to see dissidents as heroes. Many, but hardly a majority.

13

Ilya,

Very interesting. After our last exchange about all this, I bought a book called “Comrades”, which was sort of a history of global communism. But it mostly dealt with the politicians and major events, and it didn’t give me a good sense of how the average person in the Soviet Union perceived their government and society. Although it did follow the changes during Perestroyka.

I suppose, in a sense, it’s like any society - people get used to it, learn to navigate it, and find it fairly normal. A few people step back and decide that they can’t accept certain things about their society and they try to make a change.

So, if even during Perestroyka, a majority of people did not embrace the dissidents, how do you think people felt after they had 5 or 10 years to think about it and have access to media about Soviet history and actions?

14

Mark, you ask:

“So, if even during Perestroyka, a majority of people did not embrace the dissidents, how do you think people felt after they had 5 or 10 years to think about it and have access to media about Soviet history and actions?”

I believe that the current “former Soviet Union” sosciety is much more knowledgable and conscientious about its real history and the effect of our country, not only the positive but also the negative one, on the fate of the 20-thcentury. Simultaneously this contientiousness comes with pain, and is too often accompanied with rejection of historical facts, or a biased apologey, or nationalism and the accusation of other nations, or propagandistic attacks towards the West and especially USA. It is much harder for me to characterise this sosciety now then before Perestroyka: The sosciety is much less homogenious now then before, I do not live in it now unlike before, and I am not a journalist :slight_smile:

I believe that the word “dissident” is no longer in much use by the Russians. We mostly speak about the opposition to or the critics of Putin or Medvedev, who are yet powerless, not fully free to run for elections, but are already rarely imprisoned and free to express (their) views.

15

I again borrowed the Sakhorov’s Memoirs. I am not sure it is a good idea, it is lengthy, but it might enterainment western people. It is a dialog from Sakharov diary with a neigbor woman in Gorky, to where Sakharov was exiled, retelled by himself. May be it will be more entertaining if I just type it, and only if there are questions, explain the scale of Sakharov as a scientist and a dissident, and a specialist on nuclear weapon, and on what occasion was he approached by the neighbor woman. It is the year 1983, 4 -5 years before Perestroyka.

‘Brandishing a copy of the Izvestiya issue [the second major paper after the Pravda] she began shouting at me:’

-“I’ve been trying to catch up with you all last week, Sakharov. Our women are going to tear you apart limb to limb and hang you by your…” (I don’t remeber her exact expression, but the proprities were maintained.) “You traitor, what do you mean, supporting the Americans against us, saying they should beef up their arms when they are already armed to the teeth? You’ve got your nerve appealing to Reagan and this Drell guy. I know what war is, I’ve seen children die. Those of us who were at the front are going to show you and your Jew-wife Bonner what war means. She’s the one behind all this, couldn’t you find yourself a Russian woman? If there’s a war, we’ll all die - there won’t be any survivors. At the front, your kind - traitors - were executed; and we will execute you, scum. We’ll tear you apart…”

‘She kept on yelling. A dozen or so tenents [Sakharov and his wife were placed into a 200 appartment building] who were sitting around outside and the policeman on duty [always kept on duty to look after Sakharov] were all ears. So far, I hadn’t been able to get a word in, and I felt pressed to make some effective rejoinder. It’s hard for me to give a verbatim account; it wasn’t the most coherent of conversations. But here’s the gist of it’

[ Farther, Sakharov and the woman are abbriviated with S and W respectively :slight_smile: ]

S: "The academicians have signed their names to lies that were meant to get people angry. What this doesn’t tell you is that my article was entitled: ‘The Danger of Thermonuclear War’ "

W: “Have you got this article?”

S: “Not yet, but I will”

W: “Here’s my telephone number. I want to know if what you are telling is truth. What does your article say?”

S: “That there must be no nuclear war - it would be suicide. The west must renounce nuclear deterence; there should be parity in conventional weapons. The greatest danger is posed by powerful multiple-warhead missiles, which are currently a Soviet monopoly; so long as this remains true, there’s no hope that these weapons will be renounced. The arms race is a terrible evil, but it’s still less awful than a slide into all-out nuclear war. The article was intended as a means of provoking discussion” [The ariticle was not published in the USSR, of course, but Izvestiya published a condemnation of the article - Ilya]

W: (sarcastically) “Ah, yes, provoking discussion” (In odd contrast to her gutter-level anti-Semitism, she replied in a manner that told me she’d understood me perfectly and was familiar with the terminolgy.)

S: “I gave a great deal of thought to this article. I wasn’t expecting praise or pay. I’m a nuclear physicist, and I know my subject. My wife has nothing to do with my article”.

W: “Well, just what is Elena Boner’s role?”

S: “my faithful wife”

W: “A Jew can’t be a faithful wife”

S: “So you’re an anti-Semite, too.”

W: “Not at all. During the war I helped Jews rescue their children, and they were wonderful people; it’s the ones who head for that facist Begin. [a leader of Israel who had made the first peace agreament with an Arab country, namely Egypt. ] I know what war is like; you and your Bonner eat our Russian bread and butter, but you’ve only seen war in the movies. I was born in 1924, I was at the front when I was eighteen”.

S: "My wife was at the front right at the war, and she was eighteen too, and born in 1924. She was wounded, a sever concussion; she is oficcially a disabled veteran. [ Btw, my father was born in 1924 and was at the front at his 17. he also got a concussion, dfprtunately, less sever - Ilya].

–Might be finished later–

16

W: Which front? What was she? Maybe I know her.

S: Several: she started out carrying the wounded; then she worked as a nurse on a hospital train. You call her a Jew; in fact she is half-Jewish half-Armenian - but does that make any difference?"

W: “No it doesn’t.”

S: “And we’ve both worked hard for our bread”.

W: “Yes, Of course. What did your wife do after the war?”

S: “Worked as a doctor; she held down two jobs.”

W: (skeptical) She couldn’t have graduated from medical shool before the war.

S: “She graduated afterward”.

W: “Oh, I see. and how did she get involved in the dirty business like this at her age?”

S: “I’m the one who’s get involved in what you call ‘a dirty business’ – because my conscience dictates it, and for humanity’s sake.” ( I used this “lofty” phraseology deliberately).

W: (aggressive again, as though remembering the reason she was here): You’re a schizo! I ve been keeping a close on your psychological state for a while now, and your behavior shows clear signs of abnormality."

S: “Many thanks for your diagnosis.”

  • I got out of the car, put my hand on the woman’s shoulder, and moved her gently out of my way. “If you write any more,” I heard her yell, “we women will find you and your Bonner wherever you are and tear you to bits and your police guard won’t be a bit of use to you”

S: “Don’t tell me what to do. I’ll write if I feel I must.”

17

I want to add that though the above lengthy dialog may seem amusing, it was absoletely typical for that time. The woman was " the average person", far from being the worst.

Sakharov of course was above the average. Years before this dialog, he had been awarded the highest possible civil award in the USSR four!! times. If I am not mistaken, only one other person was awarded it that many times, through all the history of the USSR ( The person was a physicist Yakov Zeldovich, it was all about the nuclear projects, and the award was called a " Hero of a Socialist Labor". Maybe also Leonid Brezhnev also awarded himself that award a few times).

About eight years before the above dialog, Sakharov, already a dissident, got the first Russian Nobel Peace prize, which remains the only one in our history ( Or did Gorbachev also had gotten the Nobel Peace prize ?) . So it was not that simple for the Party and KGB, and " the Soviet People and All the Progresive Mankind" to silence Sakharov by that time. The time of Stalin had already passed. But the Party and KGB tried, wisely using his tactics and undrestanding what will work better for the “average person”. Also, they were themselves that average person.

18

Wow, that’s pretty out there. Thanks for typing all that out. I suppose I should go back and read some of those classic dissident works.

I also think it’d be really interesting to read memoirs of people who were not dissidents, and who were not sent to the gulag, but who were just regular people who grew up under Stalin, but also saw the end of the USSR.

I guess that you have an insight into the way the average Chinese person thinks about their government and society that I can never really have.

19

“I guess that you have an insight into the way the average Chinese person thinks about their government and society”

Mark, I do not have such the insight, of course, I’ve not lived in China. Steve or Friedeman, or saying it better, a quater of the world population must have much better insight.

Could you please reflect more about that book “Comarades”. I’ve never read it.

I currently could not think of a kind of the memoirs, translated into English, you are speeaking about.

I believe a very powerful novel translated into English is the “Life and Fate” by Vasiliy Grossman. It is mostly about the Russians under Stalin during the war, but not only. You may get a feeling how a person comes to realize, from inside of the regime, nearly without an external information, that the regime is wrong. Moreover, it is a great and serious piece of literature. It maybe more narrow than “War and Peace” by Tolstoy, but a reader cant’ help comparing the two. The two are similar in the genre and in their wide grasp of life.

Here is the easy to watch clip about Sakharov. (Don’t confuse his collegue Altshuler, with the strong Russian accent, for Sakharov).

20

Ilya,

Thanks for the link. It’s 3am in Japan now, so I’ll save it for tomorrow or the next day. Thanks also for the novel recommendation. I do plan to learn Russian someday, and I know I’ll have a great reading list waiting for me when I do.

By having an insight into China, I just meant in the sense of living in a tightly controlled society where people may not have all the much access to outside information. I haven’t had that experience, so I suspect that you might have a more accurate insight into the situation over there than I would.

The book “Comrades” is by a British historian called Robert Service. He has written books on modern Russian history as well as Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky. The reason I chose his book was primarily because he is generally considered quite conservative. He’s described as conservative by others, and he identifies himself very openly as having little sympathy with communism. I wanted to read a book by someone who was sort of an opponent of the communist movement.

I also knew Service because I saw him debate Christopher Hitchens about Trotsky. Hitchens is a journalist and writer that I like a lot, and he was involved in international Trostkyist movements for a long time, and they had an interesting discussion. Serivce, as you might expect, didn’t think very much of Trotsky and didn’t think he would’ve been much better than Stalin.

I’ve since read a few reviews of “Comrades” and people point out flaws, biases, and inaccuracies in the book. That’s to be expected, I suppose, and not too surprising. But I liked the fact that Service identified his ideological disposition in advance, but said that he would still try to be fair. I don’t know enough about the communist movement to be able to judge whether he was successful in his attempt to be impartial.

The only other real communist-related book I’ve read is the very long biography of Che Guevara written by John Lee Anderson, and that book did deal some aspects of the wider communist movement. However, I’ve also read various articles, and watched documentaries and whatnot. Even with my fairly limited background knowledge, there were parts of “Comrades” that seemed to stretch the truth, or not quite give the full story. Then again, trying to write a history of world communist at a reasonable length and for a general audience is no easy task.