Solzhenitsyn A. Words of Warning to the Western World

has increased, the oppression intensified, even in
Yugoslavia and Romania, leaving aside the other
countries . And it is precisely now that the
Austrian chancellor says, "We've got to sign this
agreement as rapidly as possible."
What sort of an agreement would this be? The
proposed agreement is the funeral of eastern
Europe. It means that western Europe would
finally, once and for all, sign away eastern
Europe, stating that it is perfectly willing to
see eastern Europe be crushed and overwhelmed once
and for all, but please don't bother us. And the
Austrian chancellor thinks that if all these
countries are pushed into a mass grave, Austria at
the very edge of this grave will survive and not
fall into it also.
And we, from our lives there, have concluded
that violence can only be withstood by firmness.
You have to understand the nature of
communism. The very ideology of communism, all of
Lenin's teachings, are that anyone is considered
to be a fool who doesn't take what's lying in
front of him. If you can take it, take it. If you
can attack, attack. But if there's a wall, then go
back. And the Communist leaders respect only
firmness and have contempt and laugh at persons
who continually give in to them. Your people are
now saying - and this is the last quotation I am
going to give you from the statements of your
leaders - "Power, without any attempt at
conciliation, will lead to a world conflict." But
I would say that power with continual subservience
is no power at all.

But from our experience I can tell you that
only firmness will make it possible to withstand
the assaults of Communist totalitarianism. We see
many historic examples, and let me give you some
of them. Look at little Finland in 1939, which by
its own forces withstood the attack. You, in 1948,
defended Berlin only by your firmness of spirit,
and there was no world conflict. In Korea in 1950
you stood up against the Communists, only by your
firmness, and there was no world conflict. In 1962
you compelled the rockets to be removed from Cuba.
Again it was only firmness, and there was no world
conflict. And the late Konrad Adenauer conducted
firm negotiations with Khrushchev and thus started
a genuine detente with Khrushchev. Khrushchev
started to make concessions and if he hadn't been
removed, that winter he was planning to go to
Germany and to continue the genuine detente.
Let me remind you of the weakness of a man
whose name is rarely associated with weakness -
the weakness of Lenin. Lenin, when he came to
power, in panic gave up to Germany everything
Germany wanted. Just what it wanted. Germany took
as much as it wanted and said, "Give Armenia to
Turkey." And Lenin said, "Fine." It's almost an
unknown fact but Lenin petitioned the Kaiser to
act as intermediary to persuade the Ukraine and,
thus, to make possible a boundary between the
Communist part of Russia and the Ukraine. It
wasn't a question of seizing the Ukraine but
lather of making a boundary with the Ukraine.
We, we the dissidents of the USSR, don't have
any tanks, we don't have any weapons, we have no
organization. We don't have anything. Our hands
are empty. We have only a heart and what we have
lived through in the half century of this system.
And when we have found the firmness within
ourselves to stand up for our rights, we have done
so. It's only by firmness of spirit that we have
withstood. And if I am standing here before you,
it's not because of the kindness or the good will
of communism, not thanks to detente, but thanks to
my own firmness and your firm support. They knew
that I would not yield one inch, not one hair. And
when they couldn't do more they themselves fell
back.
This is not easy. In our conditions this was
taught to me by the difficulties of my own life.
And if you yourselves - any one of you - were in
the same difficult situation, you would have
learned the same thing. Take Vladimir Bukovsky,
whose name is now almost forgotten. Now, I don't
want to mention a lot of names because however
many I might mention there are more still. And
when we resolve the question with two or three
names it is as if we forget and betray the others.
We should rather remember figures. There are tens
of thousands of political prisoners in our country
and - by the calculation of English specialists -
7,000 persons are now under compulsory psychiatric
treatment. Let's take Vladimir Bukovsky as an
example. It was proposed to him, "All right, we'll
free you. Go to the West and shut up." And this
young man, a youth today on the verge of death
said: "No, I won't go this way. I have written
about the persons whom you have put in insane
asylums. You release them and then I'll go West."
This is what I mean by that firmness of spirit to
stand up against granite and tanks.
Finally, to evaluate everything that I have
said to you, I would say we need not have had our
conversation on the level of business
calculations. Why did such and such a country act
in such and such a way? What were they counting
on? We should rather rise above this to the moral
level and say "In 1933 and in 1941 your leaders
and the whole western world, in an unprincipled
way, made a deal with totalitarianism." We will
have to pay for this, some day this deal will come
back to haunt us. For 30 years we have been paying
for it and we're still paying for it. And we're
going to pay for it in a worse way.
One cannot think only in the low level of
political calculations. It's necessary to think
also of what is noble, and what is honorable - not
only what is profitable. Resourceful western legal
scholars have now introduced the term "legal
realism." By legal realism, they want to push
aside any moral evaluation of affairs. They say,
"Recognize realities; if such and such laws have
been established in such and such countries by
violence, these laws still must be recognized and
respected."
At the present time it is widely accepted
among lawyers that law is higher than morality -
law is something which is worked out and
developed, whereas morality is something inchoate
and amorphous. That isn't the case. The opposite
is rather true! Morality is higher than law! While
law is our human attempt to embody in rules a part
of that moral sphere which is above us. We try to
understand this morality, bring it down to earth
and present it in a form of laws. Sometimes we are
more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes you
actually have a caricature of morality, but
morality is always higher than law. This view must
never be abandoned. We must accept it with heart
and soul.
It is almost a joke now in the western world,
in the 20th century, to use words like "good" and
"evil." They have become almost old-fashioned
concepts, but they are very real and genuine
concepts. These are concepts from a sphere which
is higher than us. And instead of getting involved
in base, petty, shortsighted political
calculations and games we have to recognize that
the concentration of World Evil and the tremendous
force of hatred is there and it's flowing from
there throughout the world. And we have to stand
up against it and not hasten to give to it, give
to it, give to it, everything that it wants to
swallow.
Today there are two major processes occurring
in the world. One is the one which I have just
described to you, which has been in progress more
than 30 years. It is a process of shortsighted
concessions; a process of giving up, and giving up
and giving up and hoping that perhaps at some
point the wolf will have eaten enough.
The second process is one which I consider
the key to everything and which, I will say now,
will bring all of us our future; under the
cast-iron shell of communism - for 20 years in the
Soviet Union and a shorter time in other Communist
countries - there is occurring a liberation of the
human spirit. New generations are growing up which
are steadfast in their struggle with evil; which
are not willing to accept unprincipled
compromises; which prefer to lose everything -
salary, conditions of existence and life itself -
but are not willing to sacrifice conscience; not
willing to make deals with evil.
This process has now gone so far that in the
Soviet Union today, Marxism has fallen so low that
it has become an anecdote, it's simply an object
of contempt. No serious person in our country
today, not even university and high school
students, can talk about Marxism without smiling,
without laughing.
But this whole process of our liberation,
which obviously will entail social
transformations, is slower than the first one -
the process of concessions. Over there, when we
see these concessions, we are frightened. Why so
quickly? Why so precipitously? Why yield several
countries a year?
I started by saying that you are the allies
of our liberation movement in the Communist
countries. And I call upon you: let us think
together and try to see how we can adjust the
relationship between these two processes. Whenever
you help the persons persecuted in the Soviet
Union, you not only display magnanimity and
nobility, you're defending not only them but
yourselves as well. You're defending your own
future.
So let us try and see how far we can go to
stop this senseless and immoral process of endless
concessions to the aggressor - these clever legal
arguments for why we should give up one country
after another. Why must we hand over to Communist
totalitarianism more and more technology -
complex, delicate, developed technology which it
needs for armaments and for crushing its own
citizens? If we can at least slow down that
process of concessions, if not stop it all
together - and make it possible for the process of
liberation to continue in the Communist countries
- ultimately these two processes will yield us our
future.
On our crowded planet there are no longer any
internal affairs. The Communist leaders say,
"Don't interfere in our internal affairs. Let us
strangle our citizens in peace and quiet." But I
tell you: Interfere more and more. Interfere as
much as you can. We beg you to come and interfere.
Understanding my own task in the same way I have
perhaps interfered today in your internal affairs,
or at least touched upon them, and I apologize for
it. I have traveled a lot around the United States
and this has been added to my earlier
understanding of it; what I have heard from
listening to the radio, from talking to
experienced persons.
America - in me and among my friends and
among people who think the way I do over there,
among all ordinary Soviet citizens - evokes a sort
of mixture of feelings of admiration and of
compassion. Admiration at the fact of your own
tremendous forces which you perhaps don't even
recognize yourselves. You're a country of the
future; a young country; a country of still
untapped possibilities; a country of tremendous
geographical distances; a country of tremendous
breadth of spirit; a country of generosity; a
country of magnanimity. But these qualities -
strength, generosity and magnanimity - usually
make a man and even a whole country trusting, and
this already several times has done you a
disservice.
I would like to call upon America to be more
careful with its trust and prevent those wise
persons who are attempting to establish even finer
degrees of justice and even finer legal shades of
equality - some because of their distorted
outlook, others because of short-sightedness and
still others out of selfinterest - from falsely
using the struggle for peace and for social
justice to lead you down a false road. Because
they are trying to weaken you; they are trying to
disarm your strong and magnificent country in the
face of this fearful threat - one which has never
been seen before in the history of the world.
Not only in the history of your country, but
in the history of the world. And I call upon you:
ordinary working men of America - as represented
here by your trade union movement - do not let
yourselves become weak. Do not let yourselves be
taken in the wrong direction. Let us try to slow
down the process of concessions and help the
process of liberation!