title

Warning to the West

'Warning to the West' includes the texts of the Nobel Prize-winning author's three speeches in the United States in the summer of 1975, his first major public addresses since his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974: on June 30 and July 9 to trade-union leaders of the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C and in New York City, and on July 15 to the United States Congress; and also the texts of his recent BBC interview and radio speech, which rocked London when aired in March 1976.

In all these addresses, Solzhenitsyn presents a challenge to the West, both politically and morally. As Bernard Levin wrote in The Times Literary Supplement: "Solzhenitsyn mounts a public indictment of the supine inattention of the West that rings like the blows of the hammer with which Luther nailed his manifesto to the doors at Wittenberg."

Using examples from recent history, Solzhenitsyn condemns the Soviet government for its intolerable policy of repression, yet also sharply criticizes those complacent Westerners who support their government's misguided policy of detente and timidly fear to take up the obligations that freedom-hungry expect from the leading democracies of the world. "Interfere more and more," he pleads. " Interfere as much as you can. We beg you to come and interfere."

The strong principles and admonitions of Solzhenitsyn, who is a keen observer of world events, are rooted in a superb command of history and, of course, in the lessons of his own experience.

In his New York speech, Solzhzenitsyn began with the questions: " Is it possible or impossible to transmit the experience of those who have suffered to those who have yet to suffer? Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience of another?" Warning to the West provides the impetus and the knowledge to begin to answer yes to those questions --for ourselves and for the sake of our future.

SPEECHES TO THE AMERICANS
June 30, 1975

Introduction by George Meany

When we think of the historic struggles and conflicts of this century, we naturally think of famous leaders: men who governed nations, commanded armies, and inspired movements in the defense of liberty, or in the service of ideologies which have obliterated liberty.

Yet today, in the grave hour in human history, when the forces arrayed against the free spirit of man are more powerful, more brutal and more lethal than ever before, the single figure who has raised highest the flame of liberty heads no state, commands no army, and leads no movement that our eyes can see.

But there is a movement -- a hidden movement of human beings who have no offices and no headquartters, who are not represented in the great halls where nations meet, who every day risk or suffer more for the right to speak, to think, and to be themselves than any of us here are likely to risk in our entire lifetime.

Where are the members of this invisible movement? As we prepare tonight to honor the presence of one of them among us, let us give some thought to the rest: to the millions who are trapped in Soviet slave-labor camps; to the countless thousands drugged and straight-jacketed in so-called insane asylums; to the multitudes of voiceless workers who slave in the factories of the commissars; to all those who strain for its and pieces of truth through the jammed frequencies of forbidden broadcasts, and who record and pass outlawed thoughts from hand to hand in the shadows of tyranny.

But if they remain invisible to us, we can hear them now, for there has come forth from under the rubble of oppression a voice that demands to be heard, a voice that will not be denied.

We heed this voice, not because it speaks for the left or the right or for any faction, but because it hurls truth and courage into the teeth of total power when it would be so much easier and more comfortable to submit and to embrace the lies by which that power lives.

What is the strength of this voice? How has it broken through to us when others have been stilled? Its strength is art.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is not a crusader. He is not a politician. He is not a general. He is an artist. Solzhenitsyn's art illuminates the truth. It is in a sense subversive: subversive of hypocrisy, subversive of delusion, subversive of the Big Lie.

No man in modern times and very few in all history have demonstrated as drastically as Alexander Solzhenitsyn the power of the pen coupled with the courage to free men's minds. We need that power desperately today. We need it to teach the new and the forgetful generations in our midst what it means not to be free. freedom is not an abstraction, neither is the absence of freedom. Solzhenitsyn has helped us to see that, thanks to his art and courage.

His art is a unique gift. It cannot be transmitted to another. But let us pray that his courage is contagious.

We need echoes of his voice. We need to hear the echoes in the White House. We need to hear the echoes in the White House. We need to hear the echoes in the Congress and in the State Department and in the universities and in the media, and if you please, Mr Ambassador Patrick Moynihan, in the United Nations.

The American trade-union movement, from its beginnings to the present, has been dedicated to the firm, unyielding belief in freedom. Freedom for all mankind, as well as for ourselves. It is in that spirit that we are honored to present Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

*****
Most of those present here today are workers. Creative workers. And I myself, having spent many years of my life as a bricklayer, as a foundry-man, as a manual worker, in the name of all who have shared this forced labor with me, like the two Gulag prisoners whom you just saw, * and on behalf of those who are doing forced labor in our country, I can start my speech today with the greeting:"Brothers! Brothers in Labor!"

And not to forget the amny honoured guests present here tonight, let me add: " Ladies and Gentlemen."

"Workers of the world, unite!" Who of us has not heard this slogan, which has been sounding through the world for 125 years? Today you can find it in any Soviet pamphlet as well as in every issue of Pravda. But never have the leaders of the Communist Revolution in the Soviet Union used these words sincerely and in their full meaning. When so many lies have accumulated over the decades, we forget the radical and basic lie which is not on the leaves of the tree but at its very roots.

It is now almost impossible to remember or to believe...For instance, I recently reprinted a pamphlet from the year 1918. This was a detailed record of a meeting of all representatives of the factories in Petrograd, the city known in our country as the "cradle of the revolution" .

I repeat, this was March 1918, only four months after the October Revolution, and all the representatives of the Petrograd factories were denouncing the Communists who had deceived them in all their promises. What is more, not only had the Communists abandoned Petrograd to cold and hunger, themselves having fled from Petrograd to Moscow, but they had given orders to open machine-gun fire in the crowds of workers in the factory courtyards who were demanding the election of independent factory committees.

Let me remind you, this was March 1918. Scarcely anyone now can recall the other, similar acts; the crushing of the Petrograd strikes in 1921, the shooting of workers in Kolpino in the same year...

At the beginning of the Revolution, all those in the leadership, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, were emigre' intellectuals who had returned after disturbances had already broken out in Russia to carry out the Communist Revolution. But one of them was a genuine worker, a highly skilled lathe operator until he last day of his life, Alexander Shliapnikov. Who is familiar with that name today? And yet it was he who expressed the true interests of the workers within the Communist leadership. In the years before the revolution it was Shliapnikov who ran the whole Communist party in Russia -- not Lenin, who was an emigre'. In 1921, he headed the Workers' Opposition, which charged that the Communist leadership had betrayed the interests of the workers, that it was crushing and oppressing the proletariat and had degenerated into a bureaucracy.

Shliapnikov disappeared from sight. He was arrested later, and since he firmly stood his ground he was shot in prison; his name is perhaps unknown to most people here today. But I remind you: before the Revolution, the head of the Communist Party of Russia was Shliapnikov-- not Lenin.

Since that time, the working class has never been able to stand up for its rights and, in contrast to all Western countries, our working class receives only handouts. It cannot defend its simplest everyday interests, and the least strike for pay or for better living conditions is viewed as counter-revolutionary. Thanks to the closed nature of the Soviet system, you have probably never heard of the textiles strikes in 1930 in Ivanovo, or of the 1961 worker unrest in Murom and Alexandrovo, or of the major workers' uprising in Novocherkassk in 1962 --this was in Khrushchev's time, well after the so called thaw.

The story of this uprising will shortly be told in detail in my book, The Gulag Archipelago III. It is the story of how workers went in peaceful demonstration to the Novovherkassk party headquarters, carrying portraits of Lenin, to request a change in economic conditions. They were fired on with machine guns and dispersed with tanks. No family could even collect its wounded and dead: all were taken away in secret by the authorities.

I don't have to explain to those present here that in our country, ever since the Revolution, there has never been such a thing as a free trade union.

The leaders of the British trade union are free to play the unworthy game of paying visits to imaginary Soviet trade unions and receiving odious visits in return. But the AFL-CIO has never given in to these illusions.

The American workers' movement has never allowed itself to be blinded and to mistake slavery for freedom. And today, on behalf of all of our oppressed people, I thank you for this!

In 1947, when liberal thinkers and wise new men of the West who had forgotten the meaning of the word "liberty", were swearing that there were no concentrations camps in the Soviet Union at all, the American Federation of labor published a map of our concentration camps and on behalf of all of the prisoners of those times, I want to thank the American workers' movement for this.

But just as we feel ourselves your allies here, there also exists another alliance-- at first glance a strange and surprising one, but if you think about it, one which is well-founded and easy to understand: this is the alliance between our Communist leaders and capitalists.

This alliance is not new. The very famous Armand Hammer who flourishes here today, laid the basis for this when he made the first explanatory trip to Soviet Russia in Lenin's time, in the very first year of the Revolution. He was extremely successful in this reconnaissance mission and ever since then, for all these fifty years, we see continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West for the Soviet communist leaders. The clumsy and awkward soviet economy, which could never cope with its own difficulties on its own, is continually getting material and technological assistance. The major construction projects in the initial five-year plan were build exclusively with American technology and materials. Even Stalin recognised that 2/3 of what needed was obtained from the West. And if today the Soviet union has powerful military and police forces-- in a country which is poor by contemporary standards-- forces which are used to crush our movement for freedom in the Soviet Union-- we have Western capital to thank for this as well.

Let me remind you of a recent incident which some of you may have read about in the newspapers, although others might have missed it: certain of your businesmen, on their own initiative, set up an exhibit of criminological technology in Moscow. This was the most recent and elaborate technology that here, in our country, is used to catch criminals, to bug them, to spy on them, to photograph them, to tail them, to identify them. It was all put on exhibit in Moscow in order fhat the Soviet KGB agents could study it, as if the businessmen did not understand what sort of criminals would be hunted down by the KGB.

The Soviet government was extremely interested in this technology and decided to purchase it. And your businessmen were quite willing to sell it. Only when a few sober voices here raised an uproar against it wad this deal blocked. But you must realise how clever the KGB is. This technology didn't have to stay 2 or 3 weeks in a Soviet building under Soviet guard. 2 or 3 nights were enough for the KGB to examine and copy it. And if today persons are hunted down by the best and most advanced technology, for this I can also thank your Western capitalists.

This is something which is almost incomprehensible to the human mind: a burning greed for profit that goes beyond all reason, all self-control, all conscience, only to get money.

I must say that Lenin predicted this whole process. Lenin, who spent most of his life in the West and not in Russia, who knew the West much better than Russia, always wrote and said that the Western capitalists would do anything to strengthen the economy of the USSR. They will compete with each other to sell us cheaper goods and sell them quicker, so that the Soviets will buy from one rather from the other. He said: they will bring us everything themselves without thinking about their future. And in a difficult moment, at a party meeting in Moscow, he said: "Comrades, don't panic, when things get very tough for us, we will give the bourgeoisie a rope, and the bourgeoisie will hang itself."

Then Karl Radek, who was a very resourceful wit, said :"Vlamidir Ilyich but where are we going to get enough rope to hang the whole bourgeoisie?" Lenin effortlessly replied,"They will sell it to us themselves."

For decades on end, throughout the 1920's, the 1930's, the 1940's, and 1950's the Soviet press kept writing: Western capitalism, your end is near. We will destroy you. But it was as if the capitalists had not heard, could not understand, could not believe this.

Nikita Krushchev came here and said, "We will bury you!" They didn't believe that either. They took it as a joke.

Now, of course, they have become more clever in our country. Today they don't say "We are going to bury you," now they say "Detente".

Nothing has changed in Communist technology. The goals are the same as they were, but instead of the artless Krushchev, who couldn't hold his tongue, now they say "Detente".

In order to make this clear, I will take the liberty of presenting a short historic survey-- the history of these relations which in different periods have been called "trade", "stabilisation of the situation", "recognition of realities" and now "detente". These relations have at least a forty-year history.

Let me remind you with what kind of system relations began.

The system was installed by an armed uprising.
It dispersed the Constituent Assembly.
It capitulated to Germany-- the common enemy.
It introduced punishment and execution without trial through the Cheka.
It crushes workers' strikes.
It plundered the countryside to such an unbeliable extent that the peasants revolted, and when this happened it crushed the peasants in the bloodiest manner.
It smashed the Church.
It reduced 20 provinces of our country to utter famine.

This was in 1921, the infamous Volga famine. It was a typical Communist technique: to struggle for power without thinking of the fact that the productivity is collapsing, that the fields are not being sown, that the factories stand idle, that the country is sinking into poverty and famine-- but when poverty and hunger do come, then to turn to the humaniterian world for help. We see this in North Vietnam today, Portugal is on the same path. And the same thing happened in Russia in 1921. When the 3-year civil war, started by the Communists-- and "civil war" was a slogan of the Communists, civil war was Lenin's purpose; read Lenin, this was his aim and slogan-- when they had ruined Russia by civil war, then they asked America,"America, feed our hungry." And indeed, generous and magnanimous America did feed our hungry.

The so-called American Relief Administration was set up, headed by your future President Hoover, and indeed many millions of Russia lives were saved by this organisation of yours.

But what sort of gratitude did you receive for this? In the USSR not only did they try to erase this whole event from the popular memory-- it's almost impossible in the Soviet press today to find any reference to the American Relief Administration-- they even denounced it as a clever spy organisation, a cunning scheme of American imperialism to set up a spy network in Russia.

I continue: this was a system that introduced the first concentration camps in the history of the world.

This was a system that, in the 20th century, as the first to introduce the use of hostages-- that is to say, to seize not the person whom they were seeking, but rather a member of his family or simply someone at random, and to shoot him.

Such a system of hostages and the persecution of families exists to this day. It is still the most powerful weapon of persecution, because the bravest person, who is not afraid for himself, can flinch at a threat to his family.

This was a system which was the first-- long before Hitler-- to employ false announcements of registration, that is to say: "Such and such persons must appear to register." People wold comply and then they were take away to be killed. For technical reasons we didn't have gas chambers in those days. We used barges. A hundred or a thousand persons were put into a barge and then it was sunk.

This was a system which deceived the workers in all of its decrees-- the decree on land, the decree on peace, the decree on factories, the decree on freedom of the press.

This was a system which exterminated all other parties. And let me make it clear to you that it not only disbanded each party, but destroyed its members. All members of every non-communist party were exterminated.

This was a system which carried out genocide of the peasantry. 15 Million peasants were shipped off to their deaths.

This was a system which introduced serfdom, the so-called passport system.

This was a system which in time of peace, artificially create famine, causing 6 million persons to die in the Ukraine between 1932 and 1933. They died on the very threshold of Europe. And Europe didn't even notice it. The world didn't even notice. 6 million persons!

I could continue this enumeration, but I must stop because I have come to the year 1933 when, after all the facts I have named, your president Roosevelt and your Congress decided that this system was worthy of diplomatic recognition, of friendship and assistance.

Let me remind you that the great Washington did not agree to recognize the French convention because of it savagery. Let me remind you that in 1933 voices were raised in your country objecting to recognition of the Soviet Union. Howerver, this recognition took place and it was the beginning of friendship and ultimately of a military alliance.

Let us recall that in 1904 the Ameriacan press was delighted at the japanese victories and everyone wanted Russia's defeat because it was a conservative country. And in 1914 reproaches were directed at France and England for having entered into an alliance with such a conservative country as Russia.

THe scope and the direction of my speech today do not permit me to say more about pre-revolutionary Russia. I will only note that information about pre-revolutionary Russia was obtained by the West from persons who were either not sufficiently competent or not sufficiently scrupulous. I will cite for the sake of comparison some figures which you can read for yourself in the Gulag Archipelago, which has already been published in the United States, and perhaps many of you may have read it. Here are the figures:

According to the calculations of specialists, based on the most precise and objective statistics, in the 80 years that preceded the Revolution in Russia --years of revolutionary activity with attempts on the Tsar's life, the assassination of a Tsar, revolutionary uprisings-- during those years an average of 17 persons a year were executed. The notorious Spaanish Inquisition, during the decade when it was at the height of its murderous activity, executed perhaps 10 persons a month. In the Gulag Archipelago i cite a book which was published by the Cheka in 1920, proudly reporting on its revolutionary achievements in 1918 and 1919 and apologizing that its data were not quite complete: in 1918 and 1919 the Cheka executed, without trial, more than 1000 persons a month! This was written by the Cheka itself, before it understood how this would appear in historical perspective.

In 1937-1938, at the height of Stalin's terror, if we divide the number of persons executed by the number of months, we get more than 40,000 persons shot per month! Here are the figures: 17 a year, 10 a month, more than1000 a month, more than 40,000 a month! Thus, that which had made it difficult for the democratic West to form an alliance with pre-revolutionary Russia had. by 1941, grown to such an extent, yet still did not prevent the entire united democraties of the world--England, France, The United States, Canada, Australia and other small countries -- from entering into a military alliance with the Soviet Union. How is this to be explained? How can we understand it?

Here we can offer a few explanations: The first, I think, is that the entire united democraties of the world were too weak to fight against Hitler's Germany. If this is the case, then it is a terrible sign. It is a terrifying portent for the present day. If all these countries together could not defeat Hitler's little Germany, what are they going to do today, when more than half the globe is inundated by totalitarism? I don't want to accept this explanation.

The second explanation is that perhaps there was simply panic among the statemen of the day. They simply didn't have sufficient confidence in themselves, they had no strength of spirit, and in this confused state they decided to enter into an alliance with Soviet Totalitarianism. But this is also not flattering to the West.

Finally, the third explanation is that it was a deliberate choice. Democracy did not wish to defend itself. For defence it wanted to make use of another totalitarian system, the Soviet totalitarian system, I'm not talking now about the moral worth of such a choice, I'm going to talk about that later. But in terms of simple calculation, how shortsighted it is, what profound self-deception it demonstrates.

We have a russian proverb: " Don't call a wolf to help you against the dog." If dogs are attacking and tearing at you, fight against the dogs, do not call a wolf for help. Because when the wolves come, they will destroy the dogs or drive them away, but they will tear you apart as well."

World democracy could have defeated one totalitarian regime after another, the German, then the Soviet. Instead, it strenghtened Soviet totalitarianism, consented to the birth of a 3rd totalitarianism, that of China and all this finally precipitated the present world situation.

Roosevelt, in Tehran, during one of his last toasts, said the following: " I do not doubt that the 3 of us" -- meaning Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin --" are leading our peoples in accordance with their desires and their aims.". How can this be understood ? Let the historians worry about that. At the time, we listened and were astonished. We thought, " When we reach Europe, we will meet the Americans and we will tell them." I was among the troops that were marching towards the Elbe. A little bit farther and I would have reached it and would have shaken the hands of your Americans soldiers. But just before that happened, I was taken off to prison and my meeting did not take place.

But now, after a great delay, the same hand has thrown me out of the country and here I am. After a delay of 30 years, my Elbe is here, today. I have come to tell you, as a friend of the United States, what, as friends, we wanted to tell you then, but what our soldiers were also prevented from telling you on the Elbe.

There is another Russian proverb: " The yes-man is your enemy, but your friend will argue with you." It is precisely because I am the friend of the United States, precisely because my speech is prompted by friendship, that I have come to tell you: " My friends, I am not going to give you sugary words. the situation in the world is not just dangerous, it isn't just threatening, it is catastrophic."

Something that is incomprehensible to the ordinary human mind has taken place. In any case, the powerless, average Soviet people could not understand, year after year and decade after decade, what was happening. How were we to explain it ? England, France, the United States were the victors in World War II. Victorious states always dictate peace: they create the sort of situation which cnforms to their philosophy, their concept of liberty, their concept of national interest. Instead of this, beginning in Yalta, your western statesmen for some inexplicable reason signed one capitulation after another. Never did the West or your president Roosevelt impose any condition on the Soviet Union for obtaining aid. He gave unlimited aid, and then unlimited concessions. Without an necessity whaterver, the occupation of Mongolia, Moldavia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania was silently recognised in Yalta. After that, almost nothing was done to protect Eastern Europe, and seven or eight more countries were surrendered.

Stalin demanded that the Soviet citizens who did not want to return home be handed over to him, and the Western coutries handed over 1.5 million human beings. How was this done? They were taken by force. English soldiers killed Russians who did not want to be prisoners of Stalin, and drove them by force to Stalin to be exterminated. This has recently come to light, just a few years ago. A million and a half human beings. How could the western democracies have done this?

After that,for another 30 years, the constant retreat, the surrender of one country after another, to such a point that there are Soviet satellites even in Africa, almost all of Asia is taken over by them, Portugal is rolling down the precipice.

During those 30 years, more was surrendered to totalitarianism than anny defeated country has ever surrended after any war in history. Ther was no war, but ther might as well have been.

For a long time we in the East couldn't understand this. We couldn't understand the flabbiness of the truce concluded in Vietnam. Any average Soviet citizen understood that this was a sly device which made it possible for North Vietnam to take over South Vietnam when it so chose. And then this arrangement was rewarded by the Nobel prize for Peace-- a tragic and ironic prize.

A very dangerous state of mind can arise as a result of these 30 years of retreat: give in as quickly as possible, give up as quickly as possible, peace and quiet at ay cost.

This is what many Western papers wrote:" Let's hurry up and end the bloodshed in Vietnam and have national unity." (But at the Berlin Wall no one talks of national unity.) One of your leading newspapers, after the fall of Vietnam, had a full headline: THE BLESSED SILENCE. I would not wish that kind of "blessed silence" on my worst enemy. I would not wish that kind of national unity on my worst enemy.

I spent 11 years in the Gulag Archipelago, and for half of my lifetime I have studied this question. Looking at this terrible tragedy in Vietnam from a distance, I can tell you that a million persons will simply be exterminated, while 4 to 5 million( in accordance with the scale of Vietnam) will find themselves in concentration camps and will be used to rebuild Vietnam. And you already know what is happening in Cambodia. It is a case of genocide. Full and complete destruction, only in a new form. Once again their technology is not up to building gaz chambers. So, in a few hours, the entire capital city-- the guilty capital city-- is emptied out; old people, wome, children are driven out without belongings, without food. " Go and die!"

It is very dangerous for one's view of the world when this feeling comes on: " Go ahead, give it up." we already hear voices in your country and in the West: "Give up Korea and let's live quietly." give up Portugal, of course; give up Japan, give up Israle, give up Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thaland, give up 10 more african countries. Just let us leave in peace and quiet. Let us drive our big cars on our splendid highways; let us play tennis and golf unperturbed; let us mix our cocktails a we are accustomed to doing; let us see the beautiful smile and a glass of wine on every page of our magazines.

But look how things have turned out: In the West this has all turned into an accusation against the United States. We hear many voices saying, "It's your fault, America." I must today decisively defend the United states against these accusations.

I must say that the United States, of all the countries in the West, is the least guilty and has done the most in order to prevent it. The United States has helped Europe to win the First and the Second World Wars. It twice raised Europe from postwar destruction-- twice-- for 10,20, 30 years it has stood as a shield protecting Europe while European countries counted their nickels to avoid paying for their armies (better yet, to have none at all), to avoid paying for armements, thinking about how to leave NATO, knowing that in any case America will protect them. These countries started it all despite their thousand-year-old civilization and culture, even though thay are closer to the danger and should have seen it more clearly.

I came to your continent; for 2 months I have been travelling in its wideopeen spaces and I agree: here you must make an effort to understand the acuteness of the world situation. The United States has long shown itself to be the most magnanimous, the most generous country in the world. Wherever there is a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a natural disaster, an epidemic, who is the first to help? The United States. Who helps the most and unselfishly? The United States.

And what do we hear in reply? Reproaches, curses, "Yankee Go home" . American cultural centres are burned, and representatives from the third world jump on tables to vote against the United States at the U.N.

But none of this takes the load off America's shoulders. Whether you like it or not, the course of history has made you the leaders of the world. Your country can no longer think provincially. Your political leaders can no longer think only of their own states, of their own parties, of petty situations which may or may not contribute to success at election time. You must think about the whole world. When a new political crisis arises (I believe we have just come to the end of a very acute crisis and the next one might come at any moment), the main decisions will fall inevitably on the shoulders of the United States.

In my stay here, I have heard some explanations of the situation. let me quote some of them: " It is impossible to protect those who do not have the will to defend themselves." I agree with that, but this was said about South Vietnam. Yet in one half of oday's Europe and in 3/4's of today's world the will for self-defence is even less thanit was in South Vietnam.

We are told: 'We cannot defend those who are unable to defend themselves with their own human resources." But against the overwhelming forces of totalitarianism, when all of this power is thrown against a country-- no country can defend itself with its own resources. For instance, Japan doesn't have a standing army.

We are told :" We should not protect those who do not have a full democracy." This the most remarkable argument of all. This is the leitmotif I hear in your newspapers and in the speeches of some of your political leaders. Who in the world, when on the front line of defence against totalitarianism, has ever been able to sustain a full democracy? You, the united democraties of the world, were not able to sustain it. America, England, France, Canada, Australia together did not sustain it. At the first threat of Hitlerism, you stretched out your hand to Stalin. You call that sustaining democracy? Hardly.

And there are other arguments(there have been a great many such speeches): "If the Soviet Union has used detente, is using it now and will continue to use it in its own interests! For example, China and the Soviet union, both actively participating in detente, have quietly grabbed 3 countries of indochina. True, perhaps as a consolation, China will send you a ping-pong team. Just as the Soviet union once sent you the pilots who crossed the North Pole. And in a few days there will be the flight into space together.

A typically well-staged diversion. I remember very well the time, june 1937, when Chkalov, Baidukov, and Belyakov heroically flew over the North Pole and landed in the state of Washington. This was the very year when Stalin was executing more than 40,000 persons a month. And Stalin knew what he was doing. He sent those pilots and aroused in you a naive delight-- the friendship of 2 countries across the North Pole. The pilots were heroes, nobody will deny them that. But this was a show to divert you from the real events of 1937. And what is the occasion now? Could it be an anniversary of that flight 38 years ago ? Is 38 years some kind of an anniversary? No, it is necessary to cover up Vietnam. Once again, those pilots were sent here. The Chkalov Memorial was unveiled in the state of Washington. Chkalov was a hero and is worthy of a memorial. But to present the true picture, there should have been a wall behind the memorial and on it there should have been a bas-relief showing the executions, showing the skulls and skeletons.

We are also told(I apologize for so many quotes, but there are many more in your press and radio): " We cannot ignore the fact that North Vietnam and the Kmer Rouge have violated the agreement, but we're ready to look to the future." What does this mean? It means: let them exterminate the people. If these murderers, who live by violence, these executioners offer us detente, we will be happy to go along with them. As Willy Brandt once said: " I would even be willing to have detente with Stalin." At a time when Stalin was executing 40,000 a month he would have been willing to have detente with Stalin?

Look into the future! this is how they looked into the future in 1933 and 1941, but it was a short-sighted look. This is how they looked into the future 2 years ago when a senseless, incomprehensible, non-guaranteed truce in Vietnam was negotiated. Once again it was a short-sighted view. There was such a hurry to make this truce that they forgot to liberate your own Americans from captivity. They were in such a hurry to sign this document that some 3000 Americans were left there: "Well, they have vanished; we can get by without them." How was this done? How can this be? Part of them, indeed, may be missing in action, but the leaders of North Vietnam themselves have admitted that some of them are still being kept in prison. And do they return your countrymen ? No, instead of returning them, they keep laying down new conditions. At first, they said, "Remove Thieu from power." Now they say, "Let the United States restore a unified Vietnam, otherwise it's very difficult to find these people."

If the government of North Vietnam has difficulty explaining to you what happened to your brothers, your Ameerican POW's who have not yet returned, I can explain this quite clearly on the basis of my experience in the Gulag Archipelago. There is a law in the Archipelago that those who have been treated the most harshly and who have withstood the most bravely, who are the most honest, the most couragous, the most undending, never again come out into the world. They are never again shown to the world because they will tell tales that the human mind can barely accept. Some of your returned POW's told you they were tortured. This means that those who have remained were tortured even more, but did not yield an inch. These are your best people. These are your foremost heroes, who in a solitary combat, have stood the test. And today, unfortunately, they cannot take courage from our applause. They can't hear it from their solitary cells where they may either die or remain for 30 years like Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who was seized in 1945 in the Soviet Union. He has been imprisoned for 30 years and they will not give him up.

And yet you had some hysterical public figures who said:" I will go to North Vietnam. I will get on my knees and beg them to release our prisoners of war." This is no longer a political act -- this is masochism.

To make you undestand properly what detente has meant in these 40 years-- friendships, stabilization of the situation, trade ect, -- I must tell you something which you have not seen or heard: how it looked from the other side. Let me give you some examples. mere acquaintance with an American, and God forbid that you should sit with him in a cafe or restaurant, meant a 1 year term for suspicion of espionage.

In the first volume of the glag Archipelago, I tell of an an event which was recounted not by some insignificant arrested person but by all of the members of the Supreme Court of the USSR during that brief period when I was in goog graces of the regime under Khrushchev. A Soviet citizen had been in the United States and on his return said that they hav wonderful roads there. The KGB arrested him and demanded a term of 10 years, but the judge said: " I don't object , but there is not enough evidence. Couldn't you find something else against him?" So the judge was exiled to Sakhalin because he dared to argue, and they gave the other man 10 years. Just imagine what "lie" he had told ! .And what "praise" this was of American imperialism: In America there are good roads! 10 years.

In 1945-6 many persons passed through our prison cells. They had not cooperated with Hitler, although there were some of those too. As a rule they were not guilty of anything, but simply had been in the West and had been liberated from the German camps by the Americans. This was considered a criminal act.: liberated by the Americans. It meant he has seen the good life. If he comes back he will talk about it. The most terrile thing is not what he did but what he would talk about.And all such persond got 10-year terms.

During Nixon 's last visit to Moscow your American correspondents gave their reports from the streets of Moscow: Here I am, going down a russian street with a microphone and asking ordinary Soviet citizens:" Tell me , please, what do you think of the meeting between Nixon and Brezhnev?" And amazingly, every last person answered : "Wonderful,. I'm delighted , I' m absolutely overjoyed!"

What does this mean? If 'm going down a street in Moascow and some American come up to me with a microphone and ask me something, then I know for certain that a member of the state securityis close by, also with a microphone and is recording everything I say. Do you think that I'm going to say something that is going to put me in prison immediately? Of course I say "It's wonderful, I'm overjoyed."

But what is the worth of such correspondents if they simply transfer Western methods over there without thinking things through?

For many years, you helped us with Lend Lease, but we 've now done everything to forget this, to erase it from our minds, not to recall it if at all possible. Before I came here, I delayed my visit to Washington a little in order to take a look at some ordinary parts of America, to visit several states and simply to talk with people. I was told and I learned this for the first time, that in every state during the war years there were Soviet-American friendship societies which collected assistance for the Soviet people -- warm clothes, canned food, gifts-- and sent them to the Soviet Union. Not only did not see these things or receive them( they were distributed somewhere among the privileged circles), but no one even told us that this was being done. I only learned about it for the first time here, this month, in the United States.

Everything poisonous which could be said of the United States was said in Stalin's day. And all of this is a heavy sediment which can be stirred up at any time. Any day the newspaper can come out with the headline BLOODTHIRSTY AMARICAN IMPERIALISM WANTS TO SEIZE CONTROL OF THE WORLD, and this poison will rise up again and many people in our country will believe and will consider you aggressors. This is how detente has been managed on our side.

The Soviet system is so closed that it is almost impossible for you to understand it from here. Your theoreticians and scholars write monographs, they try to understand and explain what is taking place there. Here are some of these naive explanations, which can not fail to amuse us Soviet people. It is said, for example, that the Soviet leaders have now given up their inhumane ideology. Not at all. They haven't given up one bit. Others say that in the Kremlin there are some on the left, some on the right; they are fighting with each other and we have to behave in such a way so that we don't interfere with those on the left. This is all fantasy: left, right. There is some sort of a struggle for power, of course, but they all agree on the essentials;

There also exists the following theory: that now, thanks to the growth of technology, there is a technocracy in the Soviet Union, a growing number of engineers, and the engineers are now running the economy and they, not the party, will soon determine the fate of the country. But I will tell you that the engineers will determine the fate of the country just as much as our generals will determine the fate of the army. That means zero. Everything is done the way the party demands. That is our system. Judge it for yourself.

It is a system where for 40 years there have not been genuine elections, but simply a comedy, a farce. Thus, a system which has no legislative machinery. It is a system without an independent press; a system without an independent judiciary; where the people have no influence either on external or internal policy; where any thought which is different from the state is crushed.

And let me tell you that electronic bugging in our country is such a simple thing that it is a matter of everyday life. You had an incident in the United States where a bugging caused an uproar which lasted for a year and a half. For us it's an everyday matter. Almost every apartment, every institution has its bug, and it doesn't surprise us in he least -- we are used to it.

It is a system where unmasked butchers of millions, like Molotov and some lesser men, have never been tried in the courts but retire on enormous pensions in the graetest comfort. It is a system where the show still goes on today and where every foreigner who wants to see the country is surrounded by several planted agents working according to a fixed scenario. It is a system where the constitution has never been adhered to for one single day; where all the decisions are reached in secrecy, among a small, irresponsible clique and are then flung down on us and on you like a bolt of lightning.

And what are the signatures of these people worth? How could one rely on their signatures in the documents of detente? You might ask your specialists now and they'll tell you that in recent years the Soviet union has succeeded in achieving superiority in chemical weapons and in missiles over the United States.

So what are we to conclude from that? Is detente needed or not? Not only is it needed, it is as necessary as air. It is the only way of saving the earth- instead of a world war to create detente, a true detente, and if it has already been ruined by the bad word which we use for it - "detente" then we should find another word.

I would say that there are very few, only three, main characteristics of such a true detente.

In the first place, there would be disarmament- but a dismantling of the weapons of war as well as those of violence. We must stop using not only the kind of arms that are used to destroy one's neighbours but also the kind that are used to oppress one's fellow countrymen. It is hardly detente if we here can spend our time agreeably, while over there people are groaning and dying or confined in psychiatric hospitals. Doctors are making their evening rounds, injecting people with the third daily dose of drugs which destroy the brain.

The second sign of true detente, I would say, is the following: That is not be based on smiles, not on verbal concessions, but on a firm foundation. You know the words from the Bible: Build not on sand, but on rock. There has to be a guarantee that detente will not be violated overnight. For this the other party to the agreeement must have its acts subject to control by public opinion, by the press, and by a freely elected parliament. And until such control exists, there is absolutely no guarantee.

There is a third simple condition. What kind of detente is it when they employ the sort of malevolent propaganda which is proudly called "ideological warfare" in the Soviet Union? Let us not have that. If we're going to be friends, let's be friends; if we're going to have detente, then let's have detente, and an end to ideology warfare.

The Soviet Union and the communist countries know how to conduct negotiations. For a long time they make no concessions and then they give in just a little bit. Right awaythere is a rejoicing: "Look, they 've made a concession; it's time to sign." For 2 years , the european negotiators of 35 countries have painfully been negotiating and their nerves have been stretched to the breaking point; finally they gave in. A few women from the Communist countries may now marry foreigners. A few newspapermen will now be permitted to travel a little more than before. They give 1/1000th of what natural law should provide- things which people should be able to do even before such negotiations are undertaken-- and already there is joy. And here in the West we hear many voices that say:" look, they are making concessions; it's time to sign."

During these 2 years of negotiations, in all the countries of Eastern Europe, even in Yugoslavia and Romania, the pressure has increased, the oppression intensified. And it is precisely now that the Austrian chancellor says, "We must sign this agreement as rapidly as possible."

What sort of an agreement will this be? The proposed agreement is the funeral of Eastern Europe. it means that Weatern Europe will finally, once and for all, sign away eastern Europe, stating that it is perfectly willing to see Eastern Europe oppressed, only 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, will somehow survive and not fall into it as well.

And we, from the whole of our life experience there , have concluded that there is only one way to withstand violence: with firmness.

You have to understand the nature of Communism. The very ideology of Communism, all of Lenin's teachings, are that anyone who doesn't take what's lying in front of him is considered a fool. If you can take it, do so. If you can attack, strike. But if there is a wall, then retreat. The Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt for people 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, ill lead to a world conflict." But I would say that power with continual acquiescence is not power at all.

From our experience I can tell you that only firmness makes it possible to withstand the assaults of Communism totalitarianism. History offers many examples, and let me give 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 to the Communists, only by your firmness and there was no world conflict. In 1962 you forced the missiles to be removed from Cuba. Again it was only firmness, and there was no world conflict. The late Konrad Adenauer conducted firm negotiations with Khrushchev and initiated a genuine detente with Khrushchev, who started to make concessions. If he hadn't been removed, he would have gone to Germany that winter to continue the genuine detente.

Let me remind you of the weakness of a man whose name is rarely associated with weakness-- Lenin. When he came to power, Lenin, panic-stricken, gave up to Germany everything Germany demanded. Whatever they asked for, Germany took as much as it wanted and said, "Give Armenia to turkey." And Lenin said, "Fine". It's almost an unknown fact that Lenin petitioned the kaiser to act as intermediary to persuade the Ukraine to settle a boundary between the Communists and Ukraine. It wasn't a question of seizing the Ukraine but only creating the boundary.

We, the dissidents of the USSR have no tanks, no weapons, no organization. We have nothing. Our hands are empty. We have only our hearts and what we have lived through in the half century under this system. And whenever we have found the firmness within ourselves to stand up to our rights, we have done so. It is only by firmness of spirit that we have withstood. And if I am standing here before you, it is not because of the kindness or the goodwill of Communism, not thanks to detente, but due to my own firmness and your firm support. They knew that I would not yield an inch, not a hair's breadth. And when they could do nothing they themselves fell back.

This is not easy. We learned from the difficulties of our own life. And if you yourselves-- anyone of you -- were in the same difficult situation, you would have learned the same thing. Take Vlamidir Bukovsky, whose name is now almost forgotten. I don't want to enumerate a lot of names because however many I might mention there are still more, and when we resolve the question with 2 or 3 names it is as if we forget and betray the others.

Instead we should rember figures: there are tens of thousands of political prisoners in our country and -- by the calculation of British specialists-- 7000 persons are now under compulsory psychiatric treatment. For example, Vlamidir Bukovsky. it was proposed to him. " All right, we'll free you. Go to the West and shut up." And this young man, a youth now on the verge of death, said :" No, I won't go under those conditions. I have written about the persons you have put in insane asylums. You release them and then I'll go the 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, we need not remain on the level of practical calculations. Why did such and such a country act in such and such a way? What were they counting on? Instead, we should rise above this to the moral level and say: " In 1933 and 1941 your leaders and the whole Western world made an unprincipled deal with tolitarianism." We will have to pay for this; someday it will come back to haunt us. For 30 years we have been paying for this. And we're going to pay for it in an even worse way in the future.

One can not think only on the low level of political calculations. It is also necessary to think of what is noble, and what is honourable-- not just what is profitable. Resourceful Western legal scholars have now introduced the term "legal realism", which they can use to obscure any moral evaluation of affairs. They say, " Recognize realities; if certain laws have been established in countries ruled by violence, these laws still must be recognised and respected."

At the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality-- law is something which is shaped and developed , whereas morality is something inchoate and amorphous. This is not the case. The opposite is true: Morality is higher than law! 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 the form of law. Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes we have a mere caricature of morality, but morality is always higher than law. This view must never be abandoned. We must acknowledge it with our hearts and souls.

In the 20th century, it is almost a joke in the Western world to use words like "good" and "evil". They have become old-fashioned concepts,yet they are very real and genuine. These are concepts from a sphere which is above us. And instead of getting involved in base, petty, shortsighted political calculations and games we must recognize that a concentration of evil and a tremendous force of hatred is spreading throughout the world. We must stand up against it and not hasten to give , give, give everything that it wants to swallow.

Today there are 2 major trends in this world. The first is the one that I have just described to you, which has been going on for more than 30 years. It is a process of shortsighted concessions; a process of giving up and giving up and giving up in the hope that perhaps at some point the wolf will have eaten enough.

The second trend is one which I consider the key to everything and which, I predict, will bring all of us our future. Under the cast-iron shell of Communism -- for 20 yeras in the Soviet Union and for a shorter time in other Communist countries-- a liberation of the human spirit is occurring. New generations are growing up, steadfast in their struggle with evil, unwilling to to accept unprincipled compromises, preferring to lose everything-- salary, living conditions, life itself-- so as not to sacrifice conscience, unwilling to make deals with evil.

This trend has gone so far that, in the Soviet union today, marxism has fallen to such a low point that it has becoma a joke, an object of contempt. No serious person in our country today, not even university and high school students , can talk about marxism without a smile or a sneer. But this 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 cannot understand. Why so quickly? Why so precipitously? Why yield several countries in one year?