It's 25k, so I cut out a lot.
TV INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN, TV RUSSIA, JUNE 5, 2005 Source: www.fednews.ru
Anchor: This week school students in Russia were passing end-of-year exams. Eighty thousand school graduates in Moscow were writing compositions on one of five topics offered. The topics offered were Lermontov, Nekrasov, Mayakovsky and what teachers admitted was a particularly difficult topic, "The Individual and Power in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Prose".
Alexander Solzhenitsyn devoted his whole life brooding on the issues of where in Russia is the individual, where is power and what the relationship between them is. It was only in recent years that we haven't heard from him. But today the Nobel Prize Winner receives us in his home and this interview breaks the silence of the classic writer.
Alexander Isayevich, in this day and age when everybody is talking about democracy, people, I think, diverge on the main thing, what is democracy? Everyone has his own idea of it. Perhaps, it is a myth, rather like communism is. And who better to direct this question to than you are?
Solzhenitsyn: Indeed, of late the word "democracy" has been very popular and many speakers flog it. But I don't see, I am not aware of a full understanding of what democracy is.
They hastily pluck out individual features instead of the concept as a whole. For example, one feature is freedom of expression and the press. The assumption is that where there is freedom of expression and a free press there is democracy. But that is not so. This is only one feature of democracy. That feature alone does not produce democracy.
Or take parliament. If there is parliament, the argument goes, democracy is assured. But what is parliament and what is it for? It is people's representation, and it should be truly representing the people. People's representatives should represent their electorate and no one else. In this country, especially considering Russia's size, such contacts are still not established, they are weak. And yet there must be two-way communication. The voters should keep a close eye on what their representative is doing. As soon as they feel that they don't like what he is doing, they should recall him.
(snip)
What kind of democracy have we seen, starting from early Gorbachev period? And I am not speaking about the pre-Gorbachev period. One of the first moves of Yeltsin's democracy -- what was the prime task of democracy under Yeltsin? To knock down Gorbachev. How? By breaking up the Soviet Union. How to do it? Three persons got together in Belovezhskaya Pushcha for a booze party. Were they aware that they were tampering with a huge state process? Okay, you can divide up if it is necessary. But it should be done in a statesman like way. You should weigh everything: What orders? Who lives where? What economic ties? It is a process that takes many years. But instead they did everything at one stroke, by issuing just one order.
What kind of democracy did we have? We had a referendum. That was all the democracy we had. Bureaucrats in their offices decided that prices should be floated. At once. In this country, in general, we tend to do everything at once and as quickly as possible. Nothing is done gradually or slowly, nothing is thought over. Hurry up! Free up the prices quickly. But in the process millions of people will lose their lifetime's savings. To hell with them. And -- off they go.
But at the breakup of the Soviet Union 25 million of our fellow countrymen found themselves living abroad, in another country. Did our leaders, headed by Yeltsin, think about them? Did they think about how the 25 million people would live? Won't their rights be infringed upon, won't their culture be suppressed? What will be their economic situation, how will they be linked with their homeland? Not a thought was given to all this. People were thrown into the water like blind kittens to be drowned. Is that democracy?
For centuries governors in Russia were appointed. It makes sense. The governor implements the will of the central government locally. Yeltsin, with his broad sweep, introduced free elections of governors. Ninety governors? Okay, let it be 90. Were these elections prepared? Not at all, there was a total mess in the local elections.
The local moneybags interfered, money, bribes, cheating decided everything, and in some places the elections were downright criminal, run by the local mafias. But the worst of it was that the government thought it was not enough to rob people of their savings. A lot more was up for grabs. What riches! They are there for the taking. They robbed Russia, quickly, quickly. Chubais bragged at the time that no country in the world had seen such rapid privatization. And he was right, nobody in the world had ever witnessed such quick privatization.
Quite right, nobody in the world had there been such idiots. With immense speed our God-given resources, minerals, oil, non- ferrous metals, coal and production were distributed. Russia was stripped naked. Nothing is left. Is that democracy? Was there a referendum on this issue? Was anyone's opinion asked? Was it a case of the people exercising its power and deciding its future? And so they created out of filth some kind of billionaires who had done nothing for Russia. At best they grabbed what was given to them for free or almost for free. They grabbed chunks of property to become billionaires and in our impotent despair we now admire them. We have a cult of millionaires.
We don't mind living as we do as long as billionaires feel happy. If it is democracy, you have to go out into the street and complain of having been robbed, of having been deprived of some of your benefits. If you have to stage hunger strikes in order to get paid your wages, this is no democracy. Fifteen years ago I printed an article in the Soviet Union, "How Should We Develop Russia?" I addressed many questions, and I envisaged the disintegration of the Union, and Gorbachev laughed it off. Breakup of the Soviet Union? Nonsense, Gorbachev laughed. And I said that the breakup was inevitable and imminent. I said we should prepare commissions to discuss what would happen with people: prepare compensations, ways how they should behave, decide on what citizenship they should have. Nothing was done, they just laughed at it.
But even more importantly, I warned in that article, that democracy could not be imposed from the top by any clever laws, by any wise politicians. It cannot be put on like a cap. Democracy can only grow like all plants grow: from the bottom up. Above all, there had to be democracy in small place, there had to be local self- government as the start of democracy. Only then can democracy develop.
(snip)
(On "Orange Revolutions")
Solzhenitsyn: There are two concepts involved, two questions, I'll stick to two, okay. The first question is the state of the CIS. I am not suggesting that things are better in the CIS. When they announced the creation of oriental dictatorships in the CIS, the West promptly wrote: democracy is assured. Central Asia and Kazakhstan are awash in democracy. Turkmenistan -- that's a democracy. Yes, they were in a hurry to recognize. Yes, the situation in the CIS countries is still more complex.
But it is no longer any of our business to educate the CIS countries. We have drifted apart, we are separate, we would be lucky if we manage to preserve a common economic space. I am sure that Ukraine will ruin the common economic space of the four countries. But let us try to preserve it if we can. For the rest, our relationships with the CIS should boil down to this: to be the best so that they should envy us. To run this country in a way that everybody would look at us and say: Ah, how wonderful, we wish we could learn from Russia.
As it is, who can respect Russia if they see that Russians can be trampled underfoot in any national republics without Russia ever stepping in to defend them. It fails to interfere, it provides no consular protection. That alone rules out any respect for Russia. Thinking about the relations with the CIS, I think we should first of all try to cure ourselves. And let the CIS cure itself. The common economic space may be saved. You speak about "orange revolutions". Strangely, I myself marveled when the orange revolution occurred. The methods are reminiscent of our revolution in February 1917.
(snip)
.. We have deprived the people of everything, absolutely everything. Starting from the first day of the Gorbachev era, and onward and onward. We have never had democracy. I have repeated many times, we don't have even a semblance of democracy. I can repeat again: democracy is a state and social system in which the people in their mass direct their destinies. This is not the case but the authorities are under pressure to deliver democracy. There is a danger everywhere. People should have responsibility for their country in their heads, the opposition too. You can break up any country. But if citizens are responsible, they shouldn't break up the country, they should treat it. They should proceed carefully and apply reforms.
(snip)
Anchor: And democracy as an instrument for making the world over. You know the mentality of the American people very well, you have lived there for a long time. Do you think democracy, as understood by the Americans, as an instrument for changing the world is some kind of childish delusion or is it a deliberate bogey behind which is the simple desire to rule the world?
Solzhenitsyn: America now -- in fact, for more than ten years now -- has been carried away by a harebrained project or impulse: to impose democracy throughout the world. To impose it. And they set about doing it with a vengeance. First, they staged a bloodbath in Bosnia. Then they bombed Yugoslavia. In Afghanistan they claim to have installed democracy, and in Iraq too. Iraq is a great success in democracy. Who is next? Maybe Iran.
This is just amazing. There are thinkers, free thinkers there. They understand that democracy cannot be imposed from without. A democracy that is sustained by bayonets isn't worth a penny. Democracy should grow
slowly in response to human needs, to the human impulse of togetherness, of friendship. It should grow up slowly, stage by stage. But our democracy is a travesty.
(And lots more)
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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