Idols and Dangers of Our Complex World

MR. STALDER:

Distinguished members and guests, ladies and gentlemen: When I was thirteen, my mother presented me with an unusual birthday present: a collection of books by Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, and Maxim Gorki, whose work particularly fascinated me. Gorki was born on the twenty-eighth of March, 1868, in Nizhni Novgorod as Aleksei Maxsimovich Peshkov, and I would like to quote a few lines from his book, The Mother:

"What are you doing, Pavel?"

"I'm reading prohibited books," he said to his mother. "They are prohibited because they tell the truth about our life and the life of the oppressed, the workers. If my reading of these books gets to be known, I might end up in jail."

"Then why are you doing it, Pascha?" asked his mother. Quietly, he answered, "Because I want to know the truth."

This story first appeared in 1906 in English in the United States, and only in 1907 was it published in Russian and edited in Berlin. The writer died on June 18, 1936.

The hero of the story, Pavel, ends up in court and is exiled. The end of the book reads: "'Is that Pavel's mother?' somebody asked. 'Permit me to shake your hand, your son forever will be our idol and hero."' This book has to be appreciated in the context of the time when it appeared and in the political framework of the turn of the century.

I would like to challenge all those who think they know so precisely what is right and what is definitely wrong to read this book by Maxim Gorki.

Our guest of honour is an eminent historian. Alexander N. Yakovlev, professor, Doctor of History, the seventh Soviet Ambassador to Ottawa since 1942, when the USSR and Canada established diplomatic relations, presented his credentials on July 26, 1973. He is now the dean of the diplomatic corps.

Dr. Yakovlev was born December 2, 1923, to a peasant family in a village not far from the ancient Volga city of Yaroslavl (265 kilometres northeast of Moscow). In 1941, he finished secondary school and was called up for military service. During the war, he fought Nazi invaders with the 6th Brigade of Marines outside Leningrad. In 1943, he was seriously wounded and demobbed after hospitalization as a war invalid.

After returning home, Dr. Yakovlev enrolled at the History Faculty of the Yaroslavl Teacher's Training Institute. Upon his graduation, he taught at the same Institute. Later on, he took up journalism in the regional newspaper, Severny Rabochy, (Northern Worker) in Yaroslavl, writing and editing articles on education, culture, and science. In the 1950s, Dr. Yakovlev completed postgraduate courses and in 1957-58, he was a trainee at the Faculty of International Relations of Columbia University.

For a number of years, Alexander Yakovlev carried out research and instruction at higher educational establishments in Moscow. He has written many scientific works (books and papers) on the theory of international relations and their attendant social problems. Among others are Pax Americana and Ideology of the American Empire. Yakovlev has also taken part in a number of international scientific conferences and symposia. As well, he has been awarded several orders and medals, including some for his participation in the Second World War. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our guest of honour, His Excellency, Dr. Alexander Yakovlev, Ambassador of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to Canada.

AMBASSADOR YAKOVLEV:

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: I am aware of the custom on this continent of starting speeches with a joke, particularly after such a delightful luncheon. Public relations experts argue that this provides contact with an audience, and creates a favourable climate for the speaker. After some hesitation, I decided not to take this tried and true way, but to risk opening my address on a somewhat sad, sorrowful note, knowing that business-minded people respect risky endeavours.

I am sure that this audience is very familiar with the famous American actor, John Wayne. Posthumously, he was awarded the Gold Medal as tribute to the fact that he personified through his screen characters the true, model American. The French magazine, Le Cinema, commenting on the award, noted that for Wayne characters, the greatest human virtue is violence. The author of the article called hero worship "the sponger of the intellect."

Who, in reality, are these Wayne characters? What is the message they deliver from the screen to humanity, provided that we view in earnest the awarding of the Gold Medal to Wayne as to a true American?

The life lines of Wayne characters are quite simple, even primitive, I would say. They are familiar with two colours only--black and white, and they are two types of people--good and bad, with two symbols dividing the world--Good and Evil. This might be viewed lightly if the subject were confined just to cinema, and not extended to a simplification of life. There are indeed both the forces of Good and the forces of Evil in the world, as we all know from fairy tales and from the Bible. But regarded in terms of real life, the Wayne concept is a dismal and frightening one.

Wayne characters viewed Good as something that was favourable to America, while the forces of Evil to them were embodied in all systems and persons who dissented with America. Dissenters in Wayne films were depicted as barbarians, not quite human, as second-rate people who deserved extermination, and a Wayne character convinced that he was defending Good could be incited to destroy the forces of Evil. As simple as that--like the argument that "I am right because you are wrong."

It might be argued that these are not the true virtues of Americans, that Wayne characters do not mirror the true mentality of the continent, that they grossly oversimplify American ways of thinking. My opponents would be correct if the subject of my address were the ideals, the human virtues. But the problem that I want to note is in another category--that of idols, myths, and stereotypes.

Wayne characters are, in effect, idols who are to be imitated without thinking, without pondering over historical retrospectives or over the simplistic division of the world into Good and Evil. Those who do identify with Wayne characters revel with them in the swamp of death and destruction, in the sufferings of the Brethren of the Lord. They are possessed by an artificially inspired craving to destroy those whom they scarcely know. They are blinded by the dazzle of hatred and revenge, and that is quite ominous and frightening.

In great fashion today are not only character idols, supermen who have all the impact of Niagara Falls on trusting Tv and cinema viewers but also in wide circulation are idols of words, stereotypes who do not have any real validity. I myself do not belong to the semantic school of philosophy. Economic interests and considerations underlie all human actions, of course. But the communicative part of our life does rely on words, greatly affecting human behaviour.

As far back as 1922, if I recall correctly, American publicist Walter Lippmann wrote in his book, Public Opinion, of the procedure of introducing stereotypes as a method of disrupting human links with life and of making a human being subservient to the will of others. According to his theory, a person perceives the world through imagination, not through cognition. Stereotypes contribute to the way a person forms an opinion of reality prior to seeing and contacting it. Such predetermined bias builds up opinions, so that something scarcely familiar seems suspicious and something totally unknown seems alien. The human subject puts his or her trust in the stereotyped message and, even worse, subordinates his or her thoughts and actions to it.

We witness today the human conscience being manipulated by stereotyped notions which are conveying one or another public message or directive. There are, naturally, quite a few among these which contain humanitarian features or are neutral in nature. People are aware of what such words as peace, love, sympathy, family, altruism, and help stand for. These concepts convey good will to the people.

The trouble lies elsewhere. There are many clichés in international politics today, which though not themselves leading to a holocaust on our planet, are actively contributing to such a horrible possibility. Many cornerstones of Western politics are based, for example, on the stereotype of "the Soviet threat." To deliver people from this threat, billions are spent, evernew types of weapons are invented. Huge intellectual potential is devoted to producing the most efficient methods of killing people and blowing up our planet. But nobody, please note, nobody has ever explained clearly and scientifically what these clichés about "the Soviet threat" are based on in real terms. Such a threat simply just does not exist. When we speak in the Soviet Union of considering as real the threat to us, we are proceeding not from a contrived view of what might be, but from our memories, our experience of the very real past.

The birth of our country was not welcomed in this world, to put it mildly. The aggression of fourteen states, including two countries of this continent, after 1917 cost us seven million lives. We were attacked by China in 1929, and twice by Japan in 1938 and 1939. Hitler's invasion in 1941 took twenty million lives (not far short of the entire population of Canada today). By the way, Hitler also covered up his atrocities with the myth about "the Bolshevik threat."

I took part myself in combats near Leningrad and witnessed the ruins of cities and homes. The slaughter of innocent civilians, including women and children, immeasurable human suffering and grief experienced by the Soviet people, the destructiveness of war witnessed by the gallant Canadians who took convoys of ships to Murmansk, raided Dieppe, and assaulted the beaches of Sicily and Normandy, raise one common question. Maybe all those who know from first-hand experience that real war cannot be viewed as a shoot-out in a Wild West saloon should display greater responsibility when confronted with rehearsals of scenarios for nuclear war.

We recall other things as well. The NATO alliance was created four years earlier than the Warsaw Treaty Organization. We cannot ignore the fact that, as archives now being unclassified in the West show, nuclear attack against us was contemplated. As early as 1948, a plan code-named "The Charioteer" was completed. In the first month of hostilities, it was proposed to drop 133 atom bombs on seventy Soviet cities, 8 of them on Moscow and 7 on Leningrad. In the same year, a plan code-named "Fleetwood" was sent to field headquarters as a guide for operations. In 1957, a similar plan for nuclear attack, "Operation Dropshot," was elaborated. Today, the Soviet Union is surrounded by five hundred military bases.

It may also be recalled that we have never been the first to invent or deploy a single weapon system and have rather been left with no choice but to follow the principal workshop of armaments.

Last but not least, it was not the Soviet Union that refused to ratify SALT-II, it is not in the Soviet Union where the nuclear first strike is being discussed, where winning a nuclear war is being contemplated, where a protracted nuclear war is being planned. It was not in my country that the notion of ten well-placed nuclear bombs to reshape Soviet society appeared. It was not in the Soviet Union where the statement has been made that we, the Soviet people, must choose between our system and war.

It is unfortunate that the brainwashing machine is working at full speed not only across the border. Two weeks ago (on January 19, 1983), The Citizen published the following statement, that surely must have originated in a primitive cave: "We must at all cost destroy the enemies of all that is good, true, and moral"--that "enemy," needless to say, was supposed to be my people. In the Soviet Union, the authors of such a statement would be prosecuted under the law on the prohibition of propaganda of war. Incidentally, such publications are contrary to the Helsinki Final Act. They are also certainly contrary to common sense. The same newspaper, in another article, admitted that "a nuclear exchange will not be war, but holocaust" (The Citizen, January 25, 1982).

I could continue the list of threats, but my objective is not to put the blame at someone's door and enjoy every minute of it, like Wayne characters. Instead, I would like to invite the audience to think over what you would decide if you had similar facts and statements in your possession, but applied them to your country. I am urging you to try to understand our feelings when we are threatened with destruction.

Certainly, the stereotype of "the communist threat" wins over many with its sheer simplicity, with the ease with which it accounts for all troubles and difficulties in the world, with its ability to submerge the truly worrisome concerns about peace, employment, and daily bread. But mankind has already experienced the result of being seduced by this idol, which served as the basis for the entire infrastructure of the first Cold War in the 1940s and 1950s, when any event became an item of confrontation rather than co-operation.

Wayne characters divide everything in life into Good and Evil. Modern political analysts present a somewhat more complicated pattern: basically, they divide societies into dictatorships and democracies. Every child on this continent will know from the nursery the standard answers to which is which. He knows well that dictatorships are in socialist countries, while the joy of freedom is here in the West. There are, though, also the so-called "good dictatorships," which are adverse to the USSR. They are tenderly referred to as "rudimentary democracies." I would like to recall an incident that happened to the famous playwright, Sheridan. His colleague, Cumberland, author of tragedies, declared that he had not smiled once during Sheridan's comedy, The School for Scandal. To which the latter responded that he had roared with laughter throughout Cumberland's tragedy. The same is true today. We may cry in my country over things that you laugh about, and vice versa. It is a matter of outlook, tradition, social and political realities. We have differing views on social development, conflicting opinions on freedom and democracy. We may argue over the issues until the next Flood or until a nuclear war. We are promised, however, that even in the "next world," we will be sent to one of two very different places--to Heaven or to Hell. There may be some doubt, though, which one is for capitalists and which one is for communists.

May I quote the appeal of Mr. Norman Smith to the members of The Empire Club of Canada on March 5, 1956, after he had travelled to the USSR with Lester B. Pearson. He urged you to be zealous in your efforts to know and to understand my country, to clear away the barriers of darkness and of mutual mistrust, and to base your hopeful policies upon facts rather than upon fancies and fears. Over twenty-five years have passed since that speech, but the idols continue to live. The authors of a recent article in Foreign Affairs, for example, who expressed some quite realistic views on East-West relations, noted that the present ideological crusade against communism is guided less by a comprehensive and long-range policy than by a general ideological orientation (S. Bialer and J. Afferica, "Reagan and Russia," Foreign Affairs, Winter 1982/1983, p. 249).

Yet mankind is maturing even within the lifespan of one generation, however short it is. We recall in our country, for example, that during the Civil War in Russia, Western newspapers wrote that the Reds were printing their decrees on the skins of arrested businessmen, that they were cutting bourgeoisie into steaks which were then fed to political opponents, that wealthy people soaked in kerosene were burnt to light up the streets. These things are not published today, yet until now there appeared some concoctions, which were essentially similar to the "steaks from businessmen."

We may like or dislike each other, but it is much more reasonable--and far, far safer--to resolve our differences at the table of negotiations. We are not yet in a position to split our beautiful Earth into two living planets. And this means that we have to live on one planet, to live together--there is no alternative.

There is yet another idol that is popular today--"military superiority." Here again, people do not seek to find out what it means, but blindly accept it. In effect, there is nothing but deception behind this idol. The gist of the matter is that the notion of "military superiority" in the nuclear age is simply vulgar and primitive, for who will care about which side was more militarily superior, if our planet is split into two or four parts, or if a person is killed fourteen or forty times? By the way, isn't it significant that many generals and admirals, retired from NATO headquarters, are unanimous in their statements that allegations of "Soviet military superiority" fall into the category of contemporary mythology?

There is one more deceptive myth hanging over our generation. Its name is "national security." It radiates cold danger. But the notion itself is amorphous, even anonymous, I'd say. It appeals to transcendental conscience, not to intellect, to faith rather than cognition. Certainly, as long as there are states, there will be the need for protecting sovereignty. The unfortunate thing is that certain vested interests make use of the notion of "national security" to cover up the primitive arms race, which is at the core of the threat to the security of the whole world, to say nothing of individual countries. Besides, the arms race means senseless squandering of Earth's natural resources and complications of the problems of poverty, which will inevitably result in new social upheavals.

The present climate of confrontation is extremely dangerous. It is fraught with the probabilities of a general explosion. Its danger also is that it facilitates the rise of local conflicts which bear the seeds of potential world wars. Today's regional conflict is no longer a local outburst of passions and conflicting interests, as was the case in the last century. The CanadaUnited States War of 1812, for example, had no way of escalating into a worldwide one.

Local conflicts today give rise to such special concepts as "escalation theory," and "crisis management." Fortunately, the Korean War, the Taiwan crisis, the Caribbean crisis of 1962, the war in Indochina, Middle East wars, and the aggression in Lebanon did not escalate to general conflicts. But it was more a matter of chance than of pattern. Just imagine for a minute what could be the outcome if the level of involvement of the USSR in Korea, in Indochina, or in Lebanon equalled that of another nuclear power. So far, the mechanism for unleasing a general war has not been triggered, but can we vouch that the next local conflict will not push the world to the "unthinkable." We are all aware that even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are plans for nuclear warfare. Armed forces are being trained, operational manuals readied, and nuclear weapons tested under geographical conditions similar to those in my country.

All of this is reality. And only one thing works in opposition--common sense, which is in itself very fragile, unreliable, and tenuous at best. In no way can it be viewed as a universal panacea. Common sense may yield to sentiments of greatness, superiority, hatred, bias, fear, and temptation to make use of illusory technological advantages.

A term appeared here in the West which, I believe, was by no means accidental--the so-called "insane states." It must be remembered that history has witnessed, on many occasions, access to power of rulers or groupings primarily concerned with their own personalities, with personal survival, glory, or popularity, who subordinated all their policies, both external and internal, to their egocentric principles. And this poses a new question--what will be the consequence of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of rulers deprived of common sense?

Moreover, there is the real possibility of an accidental nuclear conflict. The strategy of "launch-on-warning" has been adopted, the strategy based on the computer identification of a flying object similar to a missile. It is reported that in one six-months' period, there were more than one hundred false alarms resulting from computer malfunctions. Ballistic missiles were put on alert, aircraft were airborne. Today, while strategic armaments of both sides are separated by oceans, the military have about thirty minutes for verification and decisionmaking. When Pershing Its are deployed in Europe, there will be no time for that. The fate of mankind may well be in the hands of a non-commissioned officer.

We are living in a world of paradoxes. We, the people of the twentieth century, possess the versatile and accumulated experience of human history, advanced scientific intellect. We are able to conquer space, to resolve in real terms the problems of famine and disease, to prolong human life. We are gifted with a challenging path of development.

At the same time, however advanced we are, we cannot renounce the obsolete and inhuman methods of dealing with problems. Some leaders still think in terms of war, destruction, punishment, the juggernaut of the nuclear arms race. We are bound by stereotyped idols in our assessments of others. Traditions of the past generations are often heavy weights on our feet, shackling the living generation.

It is not an easy task to overcome the desire to submit to a stereotyped conclusion, to cast doubts on obsolete customs in the relationships of peoples and states. It is not an easy task, but it is a feasible one. In the opinion of Nobel prize winner Nikolai Semenov, all of us are, following guidelines of nature, in a stage equivalent to early childhood. When humanity matures, it will find solutions to the most difficult problems. But it is important, it is crucial, not to commit in early childhood such an irreparable mistake as a nuclear war.

I am sure I do not have to elaborate to this respected audience that the lives of all peoples are closely linked and interdependent. Our world is getting smaller. It takes only hours today to travel from one end of the world to another, it takes only seconds to telex messages across the globe. It also takes only minutes for nuclear missiles to obliterate continents.

Nobody can find himself today in the position of Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday. The world is interconnected by millions of links--trade, economic, political, and social. Political crises generate economic consequences, economic dislocations breed political instability. There is an increase in the number of problems that can be resolved only through joint efforts. Yet we, the children of the twentieth century, continue to think in categories like "punishment," "embargo," and "boycott." It is quite clear today that any attempts to "punish" another country through trade and sanctions would not only disrupt the normal business flow in the entire world, but would also generate more hostility and suspicion. Can you provide, for example, any plausible economic explanation for intents to punish the Soviet Union in economic terms, when even the recent official report to Congress called it "the most self-reliant industrialized nation in the world?"

You know that this is not the first attempt to humiliate us, to force us on our knees economically and politically. We have survived interventions, boycotts, diplomatic non-recognitions, embargoes, punishments, threats, even sanitary cordons. All of this took place in the past. Isn't it time to put an end to this stubbornness, isn't human energy worthy of better use?

The foes of the famous French playwright, Beaumarchais, warned him before the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro that it would be a failure. "Yes, it will," replied actress Sophie Arnould, "but two hundred times in a row."

We are "failing" for our sixty-sixth year in a row. The time is right to realize that the hopes of our failure are but illusions. It's high time to switch to normal co-operation.We all live on one planet. It is our Earth, where our ancestors lived and died, grieved and rejoiced, where our wives give birth to our children, and our children will give birth to our grandchildren. We have everything here for people to live happy and spiritually contented lives, however short. But the necessary conditions for this are peace, mutual understanding, good-neighbourliness, and good will. Weapons produce profits, but do not generate wealth for mankind; wars give rise to some heroes, but result in tragedies for millions; war propaganda provides good fodder for politicians and journalists, but is poisoning people with hatred.

The Soviet Union has unilaterally volunteered not to be the first to use nuclear arms. We have expressed our readiness for a mutual freeze of strategic arsenals. We have offered to free the European continent from medium-range and tactical nuclear arms, or to limit at least medium-range missiles in Europe to the number presently maintained by NATO countries and an equal quantity on our side. The Soviet Union has formally called for working out a treaty on the complete and universal prohibition of nuclear weapons' tests as soon as possible, for speeding up the elaboration of an international convention on banning and eliminating chemical weapons, and for starting to work out a convention on banning neutron weapons, on banning the deployment of any kind of weapons in outer space, and on banning radiological weapons.

What do we hear in response? "No," "no way," "nothing new," "not interested." Frankly speaking, the persistent "no" is becoming rather frustrating. Not so long ago the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, suggested cutting the number of strategic armaments of both the USA and the USSR by 25 per cent. "Not enough," replied the authors of the famous "peacekeeper" missiles joke. Well, let us destroy nuclear weapons altogether--that would be a real "zero option." "Not realistic," we are told. The Warsaw Treaty states urged to conclude a treaty on the mutual non-use of force. "That will depend on your behaviour," came the arrogant reprimand from those who assumed the unbearable burden of being the supervisors of international behaviour. The socialist countries came up with a proposal to disband both military alliances. "A propaganda ploy," immediately retaliated NATO headquarters. We do not claim, of course, to be the one and only source of constructive proposals in the disasmament field. We are ready to consider and negotiate on any proposals aimed at preventing nuclear war. But frankly, the negative clichés and the artificial suspicions with which all that we offer is met are particularly distressing.

Doesn't it remind you of a significant incident from the political history of the last century? Over many years, there had been rivalry between the head of the French diplomatic service, Talleyrand, and the political leader of the Austrian Empire, Prince von Metternich. Late one night, a servant woke up von Metternich to tell him of Talleyrand's death. Historians tell us that the news caught von Metternich completely by surprise. He was panic-stricken and kept pacing the floor of his bedroom, half-dressed, muttering to himself, "What is the old fox up to this time?"

I think some people in the West suffer from a von Metternich syndrome, which precludes them from taking the only political course which is sound in our times--the policy of détente, which embodies today the humanism of the twentieth century for it corresponds to the vital interests of all mankind.

Despite the fact that we in the Soviet Union deeply distrust those who advocate consigning our country to the ash heaps of history, and we cannot, naturally, put up with the international behaviour of our main opponent, we are still convinced that disarmament accords are necessary. Just yesterday our leader, Yuri Andropov, reiterated our proposal that both sides cut to equal levels the number of aircraft capable of medium-range nuclear weapon delivery and missiles. The Soviet Union is prepared to sign such an agreement on the basis of complete parity, but is the other side? Unfortunately, and I have to state this with complete authority, there is no progress whatsoever at the year-old Geneva disarmament talks. Soothing statements on the subject are merely a ploy of those who do not seek disarmament, but who doom these talks to failure.

The world today is not a theatre of one or several actors and billions of spectators. Nuclear war is not an episode from a political show. We are all responsible for our future. May I be allowed to remark that, in my opinion, the danger of the world's destruction, which is creeping up on us like a poisonous snake, is not regarded as a real one here in the West. And it certainly is real. It will be unforgivable, therefore, if the opportunities to reach agreement related to our proposals are missed.

Ladies and gentlemen, the world is presently at a crossroads. Tomorrow may never come. In the words of John Galbraith, "all ashes are very similar," whether they are from different systems, from the forces of Good or Evil, from believers or atheists, soldiers or children, geniuses or plain workers and farmers. We are representatives of different political systems, different civilizations, but we are linked by life itself--we must live together or die together.

Let us put a question to ourselves--are we, the people of the Earth, tired of living? Have we exhausted our life span? No! We are not misanthropes in the Soviet Union, we believe in the viability of the human race. But we are in favour of establishing such a world condition that the state of peace would be the result of a comprehensive agreement of the peoples of our planet rather than a lucky break. In conclusion, I would like to thank you sincerely for your invitation to speak from this widely respected platform which has the international prestige of "the best talk in town," and to share with you some of my concerns.

The appreciation of the audience was expressed by the Honourable Barnett J. Danson, a Director of The Empire Club of Canada.