In retrospect, it was somewhat ironic that Russian feathers were ruffled last month by the US observance of ‘Captive Nations Week’ (CNW) just days prior to Russia’s military intervention in one of its formerly captive nations. Created in 1953 and observed every third week of July since 1959, CNW is a minor feature of The Beltway’s annual rites of summer, originally understood as both an attempt to raise American public consciousness concerning the plight of captive peoples and as a provocation to the hated Soviet regime which dominated various and sundry peoples of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II. When the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disintegrated, CNW was recast as a celebration of democracy, although the text of the original Congressional resolution – which was distinctly anti-Russian – was never altered or amended. The Economist was moved just last month to declare, “The continued celebration of the week is something of a totem for old cold warriors who believe that the victories of 1989-91 are still sadly unconsummated.” How much things can change in a month.
When Russia’s current prime minister and erstwhile president Vladimir Putin sent his tanks and planes across the Ossetian border into Georgia proper, he demonstrated how “unconsummated” the American triumph actually is.
In the White House’s annual CNW press release, President Bush restated what has become the accepted narrative in the US of 20th century history, proclaiming that “the evils of Soviet communism and Nazi fascism were defeated and freedom spread around the world as new democracies emerged....” This is triumphalist rhetoric, to be sure, the kind that make our diplomats’ cheeks turn deep red, but there is nothing amiss in its formulation. Both “Soviet communism” and “Nazi fascism” were evils, they were defeated, and their absence has led to a more democratic order in many of the lands over which they ruled. Our diplomats would say, yes, but it is poor form to remind the Russians of this.
Mr. Putin might need reminding. Rather than using CNW as a platform with which to chart the changes in Russia since the Cold War, he instead vituperated, most pointedly taking exception with the White House press release and the moral equivalence it created between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. It doesn’t take much before such an exercise becomes a parlor game, and I’m not interested here in marching out the morbid columns of data – the millions sent to their deaths, the forced relocations, the forced labor camps – that would substantiate such an equivalence.
But Russian duplicity on this score is nothing new. In July 1960, during the second official CNW, The New York Times reported:
All through this week huge rallies have been organized to “voice the joy over the liberation of these people from the bourgeois Fascist boot” so that they are now “free to march forward in the building of communism,” it was declared.
The scathing sarcasm in which public utterances on the subject of the proclamation of Captive Nations Week were expressed was a clear sign of the indignation with which the Soviet leaders view such action.
They protested with extraordinary vigor that the people of the Baltic states were never before as well off as they are now under Soviet rule.
This was the official take on CNW in 1960, uttered even as thousands of Balts were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to camps far to the east, deep inside of Russia; this even as Russians moved into formerly Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian territories, usurping the place of those sent to the labor camps. Such was “liberation” in Soviet Russia. It should concern us that – absent the sovietspeak references to the bourgeoisie – Mr. Putin’s 2008 response to CNW was not appreciably different than that of his Communist predecessors. That Alexander Solzhenitsyn died in the days between CNW and the invasion of Georgia makes this even more poignant.
When you read to any depth in Russian history, you begin to notice a curious disconnection between the language people use and the reality they live. One might say as much about any place and any time; however, the sheer mass effect of this in Russia is astounding. Words cease to hold a common meaning; they come to signify their opposites, such that freedom becomes slavery, oppression beneficence, and poverty wealth. The Truth – about your government, your neighbors, your family, your wife, the world and your place in it – is not so much divined, but received, and comes cloaked in doublespeak and political slogans. If the duplicity at the heart of Russian self-conception were limited to its leaders, there would be cause for optimism, but alas, this is not the case.
On July 14, eight Russian intellectuals affiliated with something called Social Design Corporation (SDC), a Russian think tank of sorts dedicated to “social infrastructure and the practice of civil activity”, addressed the US Congress thusly,
“It is absolutely clear that when the Captive Nations Week was first initiated in 1959 the United States Congress followed the logic of the bi-polar confrontation, when both superpowers with all their might tried to weaken each other using all possible means (that often contradicted the international law). However, since then the fundamental changes took place in the world. The end of the global fight for dominance brought the U.S.– Russia relations to the new level of cooperation. The Captive Nations Resolution lost its meaning.”
Of course, we have gotten a taste this month of that “new level of cooperation.”
While the quoted text above is a studied example of bad-faith rhetoric, it is the paragraph preceding this one that exposes the Janus-faced position of many in the Russian intelligentsia. I quote it fully below:
“And even where democratic processes were encouraged from outside and, at first sight, seemed to work perfectly, they turned out to be quite unstable and ephemeral. So it is in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Its Rose Revolution turned into an aggressive nationalistic regime that fiercely oppresses opposition. In Ukraine the Orange Revolution resulted in an endless struggle for power between different political forces that heavily rely on populism, which led to high inflation rates and greatly undermined country's economic capabilities. The same can be seen in Kyrgyzstan as the Tulip Revolution brought the country, which provides assistance to the international coalition to combat terrorism, into a deep political crisis.”
With a typically Russian lack of self-awareness, the paragraph above lays out for the reader precisely the kind of thinking that legitimates the continued existence of CNW. Where the liberal democrat sees the necessarily messy workings of representative democracy, the Russian sees an “endless struggle for power” and “deep political crisis.” The above paragraph, meant as an indictment of the various “color” revolutions of the recent past, implies that a better solution for the countries on Russia’s periphery is vassalage.
Back in January, the author of the 1959 CNW Congressional resolution, Lev Dobriansky, passed away at the age of 89. In its obituary, The Washington Times characterized Dr. Dobriansky as an ardent anti-communist who considered the USSR a “prison of nations…inimical to the human spirit.” The obit writer blithely claimed that Dr. Dobriansky saw his project “to fruition before his death,” but what we’ve all had to learn – or relearn – this past month is that Dr. Dobriansky’s project is never really finished. Perhaps that’s why he fought so hard to browbeat US politicians into recognizing Captive Nations Week for five decades – and why we still need it today.
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