SOVIET HISTORY LESSONS

For several decades now, the words "liberal" and "liberalism" have been derided and used in our country only with a pejorative nuance. "Corrupt liberalism," "soft-bellied liberal": these are the most widespread formulas, widespread to such an extent that even in the circles of the "opposition," of "dissent," the liberals are judged as pure opportunists who criticize the regime within their own four walls, without ever expressing openly their disagreements, while seeking to build the basis of their own well-being on this very regime.

Russian emigre author Viktor Leontovich divides the history of Russian liberalism into its prehistory (from the beginning of the reign of Catherine II to the end of the reign of Nicholas I) and  its real history (of the reign of Alexander II and the end of the Crimean War to the beginning of the First World War). 

The first period is characterized by isolated reform attempts by the government in the field of civil rights. The second — by the formation of a broad liberal public opinion. And here, precisely at the beginning of this period full of promises, during the implementation of the reforms — not only reforms granted from above, but also designed in collaboration with a large circle of advisers, which can only be called liberals — new horizons opened up, and new fields of activity for an even wider liberal public opinion. Precisely at this time, those who are called today in the USSR "the democratic revolutionaries" — Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin — began to maliciously denigrate the liberals. 

Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote a story called The Liberal, which speaks of liberals as people whose minds are shrouded in a cloak of "cowardice." The satirical journals of the democratic revolutionaries pounced on the liberals at the very moment when the extension of press freedom would have allowed serious criticism. The liberal criticism spoke of the events and of the concrete problems of life and undertook to unmask, as one said then, all kinds of abuses. What more could one wish for? Why did the "revolutionary democrats" not get involved in this wave of denunciations? In reality, these denunciations could precisely result in timely corrections and in a general improvement of the situation. While for those who rejected the system as a whole (remember that this was during the most liberal years of Alexander II’s liberal reign), who wanted to sweep everything away and rebuild on a clean slate, for them the corrections and amendments, the whole difficult process of liberalizing the society, were unacceptable. 

Liberalization could stand in the way of the radical reconstruction of the country, of this revolution that was expected from one day to the next. At that time, the words of The Internationale had not yet been written: "We will destroy the entire world of violence to the ground and then we will build our own new world, and those who used to be nothing will become everything…".

I don't know if the "Worse is better" policy maxim was being used at that time. But the lyrics of The Internationale and this maxim represented the logic of those who began by making fun of the practice of denunciations, then made fun of the zemstvo, describing its responsibilities as a "theory of small passettes." Finally, still later, they branded the democratic constitutional party with the outrageous name of "Kadety." And it was always a question of bipolarization: pushing back the liberal forces to the left, toward revolutionary radicalism, or even to the right, to conservative positions, absolutely hostile to any reform as well as to the extension of civil rights.

Unfortunately, history has seen the triumph of this bipolar logic. The government, which was being attacked not only by these mockeries, but also by much more radical means, such as bullets and bombs, goes back on the changes already planned. Let us remember that Karakozov shot Alexander II barely five years after the liberation of the serfs and the very year of the introduction of judicial reform and the institution of zemstvo. 

And Alexander II was assassinated just as the reform of the state system was being prepared, which is practically the equivalent of the constitution that the revolutionaries said they wanted so firmly. And so it was that the empire could not put itself on the path of constitutional monarchy. (On the other hand, when the constitution was promulgated under Nicholas II, they immediately called it "one-armed": the "all or nothing" mentality triumphed once again). But the logic of polarization was also winning on another level: it propelled the liberals — namely the defenders of the zemstvo and the Kadety who could have constituted the bastion of liberalism — into the radical-revolutionary camp. One felt the obligation to appear progressive, and being "progressive," "left" meant if not wishing for revolutionary changes, then at least being in harmony with those who adopted revolutionary methods, including terror. The result was that the terrorists passed for heroes and martyrs, while their victims fell prey to popular vengeance.

On the whole, we observed a bipolarization similar to that which we observe today in certain European countries in which there is no center, but only a bipolarization of government forces and the left opposition. While neither the first nor the second (even given that, unlike in Russia, they operate in a liberal society) are able to strengthen its liberal characteristics, to defend and expand civil liberties. Political freedoms remain, but civil liberties today are oppressed by the extension of state power and control in areas that should be exclusively reserved for citizens. In the future, should discontent and impatience bring the opposition to power, not even crumbs of these civil liberties would remain.

But these are digressions. The real problem is that of the meaning of the defense of civil liberties in the USSR today, of the historical experience from which the concept of the defense of human rights arose, and not, let's say, the idea of a new revolution or the terrorist conspiracy. Why, risking the label of "progressive liberals" to be stuck on them, our most fiery companions have embarked on the path of "regime liberalization," but in reality have embarked on a path of liberalization of their own sphere of activity, the creation of an ever increasing number of islands of freedom in an environment deprived of all freedom?

What was the strategy of the radical revolutionaries that we knew well from the historical point of view, of which the Bolsheviks — who were certainly not the most numerous and the most influential of the radical parties — were to reap the fruits? Exactly the opposite: not in achieving freedom by reducing the lack of freedom (as the Dutch do by tearing land from the sea), but in destroying already weak dams, and by opening breaches for new floods. All this while declaring that the abyss dug by the inundation would sweep the old society (To the center of the earth? Into nothingness?) and that in the deserted spaces, created by the magic wand of the revolution, the promised "reign of freedom" would appear. When all this turned out far from being true, all that remained was to strike the sea with the whip, as the infamous Persian king did. But with more success, because the blows did not fall on metaphorical waves, but on the backs of the living "wrecks of the past." Terror and propaganda, these two pillars of totalitarianism, have reduced society to a slimy swamp.

It was for us indisputable that the reigning totalitarianism is inseparable from what preceded it: from revolutionary radicalism, the utopian desire to start from nothing to achieve the "reign of freedom" (first to destroy, and then to build), from the doctrine — also utopian, although claiming to be scientific — according to which everything is determined by external conditions, and that it would be enough to change these conditions for a "new," free man to appear. All the responsibility for the historical dynamics, responsibility for the historical misfortunes and conquests (but above all for the misfortunes) was attributed to anonymous "external circumstances." The sense of personal responsibility, which was often at the basis of  the revolutionary movement, disappeared as soon as one entered its ranks: the concept of blaming the "external factor" gave the revolution a kind of plenary indulgence, made it infallible. We too began with a sense of personal responsibility, but we certainly do not let go of it immediately after having performed the first free act.

On learning, in 1956, what had happened under Stalin, we were first assailed with a deep doubt as to the good conscience — not of the executioners themselves (concerning them, we have not had doubts: what conscience could we speak of?), but of those who were silent during the whole period of Stalinist terror. "Where were you, you?" And this question did not exempt us from the questions we asked ourselves. They were in fact men like us, but from a different generation, and if we had been older we would therefore have found ourselves in the same situation later. In the situation where the next generation asks: "And you, where were you?" And if it was not the next generation, it would be our own conscience that would have asked us...

These were only impressions, and not yet a course of action. Our impressions alone could lead us to a path similar to that taken by pre-revolutionary Russian radicalism, but here historical experience brought us back to a sense of responsibility. How many remarkable men there were among the populists, revolutionary socialists, social democrats, without excluding the Bolsheviks either! And yet, the anguished desire of clearing up the field to sow their own word, transformed their initial impetus aimed at taking responsibility for the country's destiny, into the most total irresponsibility, into arbitrariness, into bloodshed, in principle of "the end justifies the means." This terrible experience warns us that one must have a sense of responsibility for the present and that it cannot be effaced because of considerations such as, "We work for the future, that is why we do it." In search of a sure path between the irresponsibility of inaction and the irresponsibility of irremediably extremist action, we have found a solution in the position of the citizen.

In my book To Build a Castle I described this laborious search for a path, and then the adoption of the position of the citizen which then became (in 1965) the basis of the movement for the defense of civil rights which was taking shape. I would like to quote here a passage from the book: "We reject the regime not because it calls itself socialist — there is no law defining socialism and therefore citizens are not obliged to know what it is — but because it is based on coercion and lawlessness, tries to impose its ideology on people by force, and obliges everyone to lie and by hypocrites. We wish to live in a state ruled by law, where the law is unshakable and the rights of all citizens protected, where it would be possible not to lie without risking the loss of our freedom. So let us live in such a state. We, the people, are the state. Whatever we are will mold the character of the state. … We are obliged to submit to nothing but the law. So let us defend our laws from being encroached upon by the authorities. Of course, there is a great deal in Soviet law that is absolutely unacceptable. But not even the citizens of free countries are completely satisfied with their laws. When citizens don’t like a law, they seek by legal means to have it reformed."

Of course, the approach to the position of a citizen was not only provoked by emotional factors and by theoretical debates, but also to a large extent by the experience of the previous years. It was probably only in the second half of the Sixties that we recognized the fact of the existence of Samizdat as the realization of the right to freedom of expression, but for many years already, by participating in self-publishing, we had translated this freedom into action: we read and we gave others to read, not what was graciously allowed by power, but what seemed necessary to us. We did not yet appeal to the constitutional right to organize meetings and demonstrations when we organized recitals of young poets in Mayakovsky Square, but we did so spontaneously, without asking anything of anyone; we made this right effective. We were certainly no less aware of our positive experience than of the negative historical experience of others: it was now obvious that we could obtain all the freedoms ourselves, without waiting for the regime to liberalize and grant us what in fact only exists on paper. And the sense of personal responsibility suggested this to us: not only can we, but we must. At that moment, when one is no longer a passive defender of freedom, but when one concretizes it daily, one becomes aware of his full right to denounce the power for lack of application, or for violation of internal laws that it imposed itself and international agreements that it itself had signed, and to demand respect for human rights from the government. This is how our movement for civil rights is born, which can be traced back to December 5, 1965, when one of our slogans challenged the government to "respect one’s own Constitution."

In the West, adherents of the Soviet human rights movement have been called "dissidents," which in this case means nothing; on the other hand, it was necessary because, even in our country, there was not for a long time definition, nor self-definition, until the term pravozachitniki ("defenders of rights") was implanted, a term that unfortunately cannot be translated with such conciseness into foreign languages. When we were still looking for a definition — more outside than inside of the movement — we used either the term "democrats" or the term "liberals." But neither the first, nor the second, took root. The second was in my opinion more relevant, but it was less suitable than the first for the reasons I have given: tradition (historically dangerous) has made it so that vulgar opportunists are called liberals (and it is in this sense that A. Zinoviev uses this term in his books).

In essence, the concept of human rights as a program of action is closer than any other to the liberal conception of the State and of society. But with the essential difference that it is not a political concept. Not that it is apolitical, but it is simply NOT political. In a certain sense, it is broader than the "political," it does not have for its object the homo politicus, but the man in the fullness of his own rights, and above all of the rights which protect his private life from the public and political interference. In another sense, it is more restricted than the "political" insofar as it ignores certain spheres of the issue, either because they result from it, or because they are not always as constraining as they seem.  Whether the advocacy movement creates the preliminaries for consideration and — in the future — for translating these "unscheduled" issues into action is another question.

Let us take a classic example: the problems of multi-party systems and of parliamentary democracy. In the liberal conception, these political freedoms serve precisely as a mechanism for updating civil liberties. The movement for the defense of rights has claimed neither the first nor the second, and this is certainly not because we are supporters of the one-party system, or opponents of free elections. On the contrary, some oftentimes have founded their own parties (tiny and clandestine) — an attempt to fit into the system of "elections without a choice" by trying to present independent candidates, but these attempts to realize purely political forms of the freedom mechanism remain marginal. Nevertheless, the struggle for civil rights continues and their partial application takes place outside these classic mechanisms.

In a civil society of which the liberal state is the political embodiment, all citizens are not necessarily liberals, but all have a sense of equal rights and equal responsibility. In our opinion, the greater part of society at best, harbors a confused desire for fuzzy "freedom," but no civil liberties. People have really lost the taste for it, accustomed as they are to being maintained, to being the slaves of the State, to whom everything — bread and freedom — "is given", or "is not given" , and if everything "is given," as we are used to saying, "one should not look into the mouth of a horse which one received as a gift horseback gives." And therefore one can accept in the place of bread a hard and wet mass, resembling clay, and in the place of freedom, the lies of the newspapers about "the freest and most democratic country in the world."

When we have a rebuilt civil society at least in broad outline, it is not difficult then to create political institutions for the defense of civil liberties. Rebuilding this society is painful, long work, for which a single generation may not be enough, and therefore thankless. But this reconstruction is starting to appear as the future result of the efforts of the movement for the defense of human rights. Freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of worship; social rights and rights of nationalities: these are the essential features of the movement for the defense of human rights. All this constitutes the domain of freedoms which are, in the first place, of principle, and which, in the second place, have been made effective thanks to our own efforts (to our physical presence so to speak), even at the risk of losing our personal freedom, at the risk of ending up behind bars in prison. Once you get the hang of it, get used to translating civil liberties into action, then you start to appreciate them more than the relative tranquility of the previous day. The slave of yesterday not only feels himself a free man, but he is actually becoming one. In the vastness of the desert, tiny oases appear, and trails begin to form from one oasis to another. These are the first free trade unions, the initiatives for the defense of national cultures, the religious associations independent of the State and, of course, all the organizations for the defense of human rights and, in the first place, the Helsinki groups. It is of course also samizdat, which is not primarily an achievement of freedom of expression, but which serves to defend all other freedoms, and gives the defenders of rights an opportunity of expressing themselves, within whatever concrete framework of freedom in which they operate.

"But you are a very small group!" we are told. Indeed, we are, compared to a population of 260 million. But in the old days, there wasn't even a tiny group. And no one summoned us, no one constituted us: on the contrary, they have made and are making disproportionate efforts to destroy it. And then, when this first small group began to form and to "scold," to claim freedom and to denounce the deficiencies, neither the men of Magadan, nor those of Tchernovitsy, of the mines of Donetsk were in this little group. And they are there today, they come from all corners of the country, although the repressions do not take long in the provinces: it is easy there, far from the eyes of foreign correspondents, to make a man disappear in a camp for common criminals or in a psychiatric hospital. So there is this irresistible thirst for freedom, not only stronger than the persecutions, but also stronger than the feeling of isolation in the midst of an amorphous crowd composed not of citizens but, in a Stalinist fashion, of the cogs of the the state.

Freedoms are the basis of the foundations of liberalism. Western liberals must be close, very close. But is it always so in reality? I have the boldness to assert that the "small group" of defenders of rights reminds Western liberalism of its own values, which it sometimes happens to forget: the spiritual bases of freedoms; individual moral responsibility for how to translate these freedoms into action; personal participation in the defense of freedoms, without reference to party decisions, ideologies, or "external conditions." This reminder of responsibilities is often tedious and heavy: daily political activity is too absorbing, the inertia of formal liberalism, empty of its content, is too strong.

I am not talking about "liberal-leftist" circles, as defined by Sakharov who, like our pre-revolutionary liberals, are only afraid of not appearing radical enough. I am talking about genuine liberals, those in government, in France and in Germany. In coalitions, they are found within parties "more to the right" or "more to the left," but the result is always the same: once they hold the reins of power, they turn out to be friends — which would be logical — not of those who think like them, that is to say of the Soviet defenders of freedoms (but is it worth it to draw attention to this "small group," this "noisy minority," to those dirty and hungry convicts?), but of the all-powerful regime, which stifles any desire for freedom. Their friendship with the Soviet regime went far beyond the framework of selling strategically important materials and technology to the Soviet Union, granting the most advantageous credits, allowing Soviet propaganda to triumph in textbooks, schools and state museums.

I will say things bluntly: I have met the liberals from European countries and I know that it is possible to find support from them. I just wanted to recall how easy it is to turn into a "governing party" and forget the ideals of liberalism.