My neighbor has lived next door since I was in sixth
grade, a little over a decade, and just last week he told me he was actually
from Russia, not Ukraine. Judging from his history, I think he’s full of shit,
but that’s beside the point.
I was telling him about how I’d been reading the
letters of Richard Feynman and how Feynman, known for his contempt towards
“high societies” and frequent refusal to a) support these societies or b)
implicitly support them by providing recommendations to induct people into these
guarded groups, made an exception for a Russian by the name of Andrei Sakharov.
Alright, so it wasn’t a blatant violation of his
ethics, but Feynman did associate himself with a press statement that was
released on December 9, 1975, which congratulated Sakharov for receiving the
Nobel Prize for Peace.
Andrei Sakharov was an academician most closely
associated with mathematics and physics. In 1948, Sakharov worked on the Soviet
Atomic Bomb project which successfully tested the USSR’s first atomic bomb in
1949. Sakharov directly influenced the testing of the Tsar Bomba
in October of 1961. These contributions helped Sakharov remain safe from
Stalin’s unforgiving persecution of intellectuals and artists who, as
determined by Stalin, posed a threat to the sanctity of the USSR.
Unlike Sakharov, composer and musician Dmitri
Shostakovich came under intense scrutiny throughout his career during the reign
of Stalin. At one point in Shostakovich’s career, his music was blacklisted
throughout the USSR and he was deemed an enemy of the state, all because of an
article that declared a misunderstood composition to be “muddle instead of
music”. Though Shostakovich faced exile in his late life, he remained safe for
a long period of time. Much of Shostakovich’s safety came from his adherence to
Russian musical traditions when creating music for propaganda films meant to
glorify the USSR. These compositions tend to avoid Shostakovich’s musical
idiosyncrasies in favor of a more commercial, nationalistic style. This
artistic compromise suggests a sense of desperation on the part of Shostakovich
to continue to make a living through music.
You could argue that Shostakovich attempted to
appease Stalin by writing music for propaganda films but these contributions did
not prevent him from having conflicts with Josef Stalin. At one point, after
being invited to the US to present some of his compositions to an American
audience in NYC, Shostakovich called Stalin and asserted he would not represent
the USSR unless he was taken off the blacklist of composers. To confront Soviet
authority, as Shostakovich had, presented the potential for stiff consequences,
including death. This type of
confrontation was later mirrored by Andrei Sakharov in challenging a decision
made by Nikita Khrushchev to restrict the publication of Sakharov’s essay,
“Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.”
In spite of his earlier contributions to the Soviet
nuclear program, Khrushchev forbade Sakharov from releasing his essay outside
of the USSR. Before reading Sakharov’s, “Reflections…” I assumed there would be
some controversial information regarding the Soviet Union, but I was pretty far
off the mark. I think a paragraph from the Press Release, drafted by Nobel
Laureate Max Delbruck, summarizes a major component of the essay better than I
ever could (without plagiarizing):
[Sakharov]
argued that the capitalist and the socialist systems have great merits and
demerits. There should be a freer flow of information, of visits, and of open
critical discussion, to accelerate the natural process of convergence between
the two systems, and thus lead to a more humane way of life for all of us,
including the Third World.
It should be noted that when Sakharov received the
Nobel Prize, seven years after the original publication of the essay, Khrushchev
would not allow him to leave the country to accept the award. This is why
Delbruck drafted a press release in support of/congratulating Sakharov for his
recognition. Many other Nobel laureates, including Harold Urey,
Carl
Anderson, Julian Schwinger,
and Richard
Feynman, associated themselves with this press release.
At first, I was alarmed by the fact that Khrushchev
and the Soviet Leadership would take offense and try to prevent the spread of
such a balanced essay. With more consideration, I understood this is the exact
type of thing leadership hates when trying to maintain control. By taking a
balanced approach, a person reading Sakharov’s “Reflections…” will have to
admit that both systems have good and
bad aspects. If the “opponent’s” system is not 100% evil/wrong then the power
of the controlling party begins to erode from doubt.
Balanced arguments only upset those who are trying
their hardest to convince people of something, regardless of their stance. This
happens because a balanced argument has truths that become self evident to the
reader after a proper amount of consideration. A person with underlying
motivations can’t afford to allow an audience to find these truths because then
their charged argument becomes moot.
What’s interesting to me, in regards to large groups
of people, is how we often write them off as stupid, ignorant, lazy, or blind
followers of ideology. I sometimes do this, and it’s a very lazy habit that
helps avoid having to think for myself. If people were as dumb as we sometimes
like to think, then people like Khrushchev or Stalin would not work so hard to
maintain a certain ideology because people would never change their ideas or
rebel when something wasn’t working. In other words, the fact that fascists and
dictators attempt to control how people think is an admission that people can
think and determine truths for themselves.
There’s one main ingredient necessary for people to
reach these truths: the ability to think freely without fear of consequence.
While this is important, there’s an assumption that people will take advantage
of this freedom, but that is not always the case…
In the following post I will break down Andrei
Sakharov’s essay, “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and
Intellectual Freedom,” and provide analysis regarding why this is such a potent
essay. In addition to this analysis, I will pose some questions I have about
the essay and connect this back to the current times.
No comments:
Post a Comment