The Enduring Lesson in the Gulags’ Defiant Wisdom: Michael Galak
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/03/the-enduring-lesson-in-the-gulags-defiant-wisdom/
The guiding wisdom of the wretches who endured a living death in the Soviet Union’s labour camps was simple: Ne ver’ Ne boisya Ne prosy — Don’t trust. Don’t fear. Don’t beg.
These short sentences crystallize the collective experience of the millions who went through the gulags and perished amid the permafrost of far-north Russia, paying with their lives for the demented dreams of world conquest by Marxists fanatics. These six crisp words summarize the resolve of the human spirit when it refuses to be broken while retaining individual dignity by resisting oppression and injustice, even when the odds are overwhelmingly against it.
Pronounced together those words are an unexpectedly powerful poem. This poetry of defiance, silent by necessity in the face of brutal force, coercion and humiliation, was the only form of resistance available to the enslaved by the totalitarian State. They are also the way for the West to respond to international bullies. But political will is required to succeed, and this is where the problem lies.
Ne ver’: Don’t trust
Since the time of Niccolò Machiavelli, “the end justifies the means” has been a mantra invoked countless times. The Bolsheviks developed it into an art form. George Orwell, a left-leaning progressive with maverick tendencies, laid out the principles of Newspeak with which reality is distorted, history doctored and populations brainwashed. We now appreciate that he who controls the past controls the present, and that the control of the present delivers control of the future.
As a native Russian speaker, I appreciate the vast discrepancy of information delivery between Western media, however ‘progressively’ biased, and Russian state propaganda outlets. Russian propaganda factories are formatting consumers’ minds to believe the West is an eternal enemy of the Russian people. Moscow’s outlets maintain and promote the traditional paranoia that “Russia is encircled by enemies”. This propaganda serves one, and only one, objective: distorting the West in their audience’s mind. The creation and the maintenance of enmity towards the West is the most important function of Russia’s monopolistic State media.
Otto von Bismarck memorably and accurately quipped that any agreement signed with Russia is not worth the paper it is written on. One can trace the history of breaches of various treaties by Russian governments, starting as far back as the Napoleonic wars, betrayal of the Allied effort in WWI, attacks on Poland, Finland, Japan, Georgia and Ukraine (after signing the Budapest memorandum) – to mention just a few – to see the validity of his joke. The same applies to Russian diplomacy’s Herculean effort in delivering a recent ultimatum to NATO and the US. Putin and his cronies demand, among other things, that NATO never admit Ukraine or Georgia into its ranks.
One might ask – is Putin stupid to demand things which, a priori, are not negotiable? My answer, no, he isn’t. His ultimatum is programmed for rejection. The aim is to construct the historical narrative of the reason(s) for starting a war. It is important for the Russia’s government to appear the innocent victims of Western aggression in order to avoid consequences even remotely similar to the Nuremberg Tribunal and, emphatically so, to avoid personal responsibility.
Regimes hostile to the West cannot receive objective information about the real world. Their very nature prevents this. The most glaring example of a distorted worldview is the failure of Soviet intelligence to anticipate the Nazi attack in 1941. The only information these regimes receive and accept is information they wish to receive and accept. The results are reality distortion and wrong decisions. Instead of pragmatic, reality-based assessments, these decisions are mediated by resentment, anger and fear of losing face. This is the very reason why these regimes’ pronouncements should be treated as lies until proven otherwise. What they actually say is not important, for authoritarian regimes’ capacity to backflip, to lie, to go back on their words and to stonewall is second to none. We must watch what they do, not what they say. Their leaders must be constantly, continuously and convincingly impressed about the personal consequences of any action against Western interests. Only the realisation that the personal price of their actions might be too painful will be effective.
Ne boisya: Don’t fear
Many will say that it is more than 30 years since the demise of the USSR and that the contemporary Russian Federation is totally, utterly and irreversibly a different country. I beg to differ. Quoting Ronald Reagan – “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck….”
Since the demise of the USSR, the Russian Federation has attacked
♦ Georgia, detaching Abkhazia and Ossetia
♦ Ukraine, detaching Luhansk and Donetsk; and
♦ annexing the Crimean Peninsula, under the flimsy pretext of the plebiscite conducted in the presence of an invasion army. Fourteen thousand Ukrainian citizens have been killed since 2014.
The Russian Federation continues to occupy part of Moldova and refuses to relinquish the small chain of Kuril Islands, to which Japan lays claim, occupied after WWII. As a result, the post-WWII peace treaty with Japan is still not signed. East Prussia, German territory since time immemorial, the land of Emmanuel Kant, has been occupied by the Russian Federation since WWII with no intention of returning it. The southern part of Finland, occupied since the shameful and disastrous Soviet ‘Winter War’ attack in late 1939, remains under Russian jurisdiction. There is also a territorial dispute with tiny Estonia. This is inflamed by the large Russian-speaking majority’s declared intention to be a part of Russia.
There were also two notoriously bloody wars against equally tiny but brave Chechnya, defeated by overwhelming force. The Ukrainian and Georgian conflicts were designed to prevent them from joining NATO, because its statute forbids accepting countries at war.
These destabilising convulsions erupt within a country which, for no good reason, thinks of itself as a great power. This self-perception is unfounded and misleading. A country with no decent roads, crumbling schools, near disastrous health care, a shrinking population, lack of basic amenities such as gas, sewerage and electricity, widespread poverty and the near total absence of an independent judiciary, cannot be regarded as a great power, however strong her armaments. Despite the misery inflicted on its own population, Moscow has embarked on a foreign policy which inevitably pits it against the rest of the civilised world. This policy isolates Russia even further, punishing the ordinary Russians for mischief not of their own making.
This policy brings Russia closer to rogue and failed countries such as Syria, entangling it in a homicidal civil war there. Semi-official Russian mercenary companies are operating in Mali, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso and God knows where else, and who overlook the following list of Russian outrages.
♦ shooting down civilian airliners (Korean Airlines and Malaysian Airlines tragedies);
♦ using chemical weapons at home and abroad (Navalny and Scripal poisonings);
♦ blowing up armouries of other states, as in Vrbětice in the Czech Republic;
♦ corrupting Western politicians (eg Gerhardt Shroeder, former German President, infamously a member of the Gazprom board of directors):
♦ engaging in cyberattacks on their opposition’s infrastructure as well as their political systems;
♦ using trade as a political weapon…
…the list goes on and on. Each time they are caught, the Kremlin’s leadership screams ‘Russophobia’ and act as if insulted, outraged and, of course, virginally innocent.
The most important reason, however, why the Russian elites are so successful in behaving the way they do is fear – fear in the West. It started with the hope of Mother Russia becoming just like the rest of the civilised world. The thinking was that, after opening her borders, introducing democratic institutions and gradually raising the standard of living, the giant land of unfreedom and poverty would become a good neighbour. This hope of power being ordained and confirmed by popular elections gradually dissipated amid Western subservience, fawning and an oft-declared willingness ‘to take into account legitimate Russian concerns’. Need we guess that the prostrate attitude came hand-in-hand with corruption.
This curious mixture of hope for a better Russia and fear of a resurgent, armed-to-the-teeth predator has resulted in Western political paralysis which, along with the carefully planted seeds of internal disunity sown by Moscow, prevents European politicians from taking decisive action. We observe the results of this paralysis today. The fear of war, so prevalent in European capitals, is skilfully exploited by Putin’s regime.
Ne prosy: Don’t beg
For students of Russian and Soviet history, The Russians by Hedrick Smith, former New York Times Moscow Bureau chief, will be instructive. First published in 1975, this book presents an impressive account of the Russian people’s way of thinking and acting. It was one of my first discoveries on learning English. I distinctly remember the sense of astonishment at the acute insights and perceptions of a man born and raised in another, very different culture. I remember in particular the passage where Smith interviews one of the builders of the pipeline pumping natural gas to Europe from the frozen wasteland of Yamal peninsula. Answering the puzzled Hedrick’s question – “Why would you supply your enemies with energy?” the man, without missing a beat, answered: “The taps are on our side!”. This response reveals a vast amount of insight. First and foremost, the energy crisis Putin is inflicting on Europe is not a new idea; it was hatched by the Soviet Union. Secondly, the ‘commercial’ side of the energy supply does not worry the government in the slightest. Despite the loss of a much money this is an effective weapon to hold against the West’s throat. Thirdly, this ‘commercial’ project is yet a further continuation of the Russian ruling elite’s long-standing enmity towards the West. The great aim of today’s successor to the Politburo is to turn Europe into a prostrate beggar, a supplicant, a petitioner to a Great and Terrible Putin. All Europe need do is turn to Moscow and ask for help.
The hesitant, the weary, the indecisive amongst the European leadership are coming to the party; witness Germany’s decision to boost military spending. It looks like the realisation is slowly growing that the Russian government is an enemy. As Europe finally demonstrates a willingness to bush back, that wisdom from the work camps remains the best guide:
Don’t trust. Don’t fear. Don’t beg.
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