Sharansky, Democracy's Don Quixote?
Filed under: Philosphy
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, who spent nine years in a Soviet prison camp. In it, the interviewer (editorial page editor of WSJ Europe) states that "democracy is a dirty word these days" and notes that Sharansky is unbowed: "Mr. Sharansky says of his adversaries among the Western intellectual elite: 'Those people who are always wrong--they were wrong about the Soviet Union, they were wrong about Oslo [the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace deal], they were wrong about appeasing Yasser Arafat--they are the intellectual leaders of these battles. So what can I tell you?'" The article continues:
With benefit of hindsight, Mr. Sharansky says that, "Democracy is a rather problematic word, because democracy is about technique. I would prefer freedom. I would say people don't want to live under constant fear." It's as much as he'll concede. His bigger concern is the West's own weak stomach. This is a familiar theme for Mr. Sharansky and others who waged the Cold War battle on the other side of the Wall. Prosperous, stable societies can lack, by these lights, moral clarity and courage and are prone to cynical compromises or gullibility. Under totalitarianism the challenge is to fight evil (he paraphrases the British writer Melanie Phillips), and in free societies it is to see evil. In his view, the West's so-called Russia experts misjudged Mr. Putin's aspirations and political talents, particularly his ability "to use the right language in Russia." Once, when the Russian president went on an anti-Western tirade, Mr. Sharansky recalls that Secretary Rice, one of those experts, noted that Mr. Putin was ruining his image abroad. "I told her, 'He looks stupid to you but the most important thing is how he looks in Moscow, and in Moscow he looks like a hero!' "
Sharansky claims that the level of fear in Russia today isn't nearly as great as it was in Soviet times, and takes comfort in this (he's "cautiously optimistic"). But he still actively sides actively with Garry Kasparov, dedicating a book to him, and says the only reason the fear level is low is because the price of oil is high. Reduce it, and things could become radically different in a hurry.
Yet, Sharansky seems to miss the forest for the sight of the trees: If the fear level is low in Russia today, then there is no reason whatsoever that the people of Russia should so blithely allow Putin to establish a neo-Soviet, one-party regime. If they are not afraid, and relatively free to make economic progress (as Sharansky claims), then they should be dynamically building diverse political organizations and media outlets promoting the free flow of information -- and doing so no matter what the Kremlin wants. Yet, that's not happening. A recent article in The Economist understands something that Sharansky may not (and that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin may realize only too well): So many long years of terror may not merely have broken the spirit of the living, it may have created a genetic culture of fear that needs no grandiose mass killing to support. Sharansky is a man of great personal courage but he is long removed from Russia and may not realize how much more affected by the Soviet horror his countrymen were, and remain, than he himself. His remarks are woefully barren of challenges to the people of Russia to make better use of the relative freedom he claims they have. Under his analysis, it's pretty clear that they are complicit in the outrageous crimes being perpetrated in their name by the Kremlin.
Now, Sharansky lives in Israel, and much of the interview deals with democracy issues in the Middle East (click through to read his analysis). One must wonder how long he would last if the returned to Russia and resumed his refusenik ways,and whether he would get the same amount of respect he received in Soviet times. But it seems he's not willing to be the canary in the neo-Soviet mineshaft.
Maybe he understands more than it appears, after all.
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