January 13, 2005
by J. R. Nyquist
Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky has written a book titled The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. Sharansky argues that the key to peace in the Middle East is freedom. “I have no doubt that the Arabs want to be free,” Sharansky writes. “Many ask how I can be so sure when there is no Arab Sakharov and no Arab Gandhi. I am sure because I know that the extent of dissent in society, like so many things in life, is largely a function of price.” Those who risk their lives to oppose tyranny need to know that the West will support their struggle. “Most security hawks,” writes Sharansky, “fear that ‘weakening’ these [repressive Arab] regimes will endanger stability and the free flow of oil.” Consequently, Western liberals “have not embraced the cause of human rights within the Arab world,” Sharansky explains. “Yet despite the lack of support for Arab dissent, the Arab voice for freedom is getting louder.”
Sharansky spent nine years in a KGB prison. His insights are those of someone who has confronted the malevolent power of totalitarianism head-on. The spiritualizing effect of Sharansky’s imprisonment is reminiscent of Viktor Frankl’s story, set down in a book titled Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl spent the Second World War in Nazi concentration camps where he learned that there are “two races of men in this world … the ‘race’ of the decent man and the ‘race’ of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society.” Sharansky argues that the decent men of the Arab world should be supported in their desire to found a government on principles of dignity and freedom. “When we in the Soviet Union were fighting for human rights, we knew we could be arrested and imprisoned. But we also believed that the free world would stand by our side, a belief that strengthened our resolve enormously.” Unfortunately, the free world has too long tolerated the Arab dictators, refusing to support Arab dissidents. Sharansky says that the West underestimates the power of those who love freedom and oppose tyranny. “In the last few years,” Sharansky writes, “President Bush has … used every forum, every stage, and every address to assert his unequivocal belief that the region can be free. He has argued forcefully that there is an inextricable link between freedom and peace, between democracy and security.” According to Sharansky: “If the free world uses its enormous leverage, the Arab regimes will no longer be able to violate human rights with impunity. And the more freedom the people of the Arab world enjoy, the more secure all of us will be.”
Sharansky warns that the “danger today is that the commitments to spread human rights and democracy in the Middle East will remain an empty promise.” He says that all the Arab dictatorships must be pressured to liberalize. “Just as the institution of slavery has been all but wiped off the face of the earth, so too can government tyranny become a thing of the past.” Sharansky is a passionate idealist who advocates a coalition of free nations that will roll back tyranny. This “effort to expand freedom around the world,” he argues, “must be inspired and led by the United States.” Only America, says Sharansky, “possesses both the clarity and courage that is necessary to defeat evil.”
One is forced to wonder, however, whether this is a workable strategy. In his concluding chapter a curious shadow of doubt enters into Sharansky’s recollections. During his first trip back to the USSR in 1997, as Israel’s minister of trade and industry, Sharansky asked to visit the KGB prison at Lefortovo. The Russian authorities hesitated, but finally agreed to a guided tour. “When the official tour ended,” Sharansky wrote, “I asked to see the punishment cells.” The warden explained that punishment cells were no longer used. “I knew he was lying,” Sharansky wrote. Unfortunately, Sharansky does not dwell on the significance of the warden’s lie. He dares not admit, to himself or anyone else, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was an equivocal victory for freedom. Simply stated, democracy does not exist in Russia, nor is there genuine freedom in the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus or Central Asia.
Last week I spoke by telephone with a Polish journalist recently returned from the former Soviet republic of Ukraine. “I have to tell you that a closer look helped me to discern the process better,” he said, noting that the pro-Western candidate, Victor Yushchenko, “served in the KGB of the Soviet Union in a military camp on the Turkish-Soviet border (1975/76).” My Polish correspondent also noted that: “Yushchenko is surrounded by many people of Soviet thinking who block media access to him and do not want to be involved in any discussion.”
Sharansky realized that the warden of the KGB prison at Lefortovo was lying to him about the punishment cells. And this is not the only lie. It is not the only deception. Recent elections in Ukraine, like the 2004 elections in Georgia and Russia, were not as advertised: “I came back [from Ukraine] as a pessimist,” my Polish friend explained. “It seems to me that sweet grapes may become sour very soon.” Candidates are not always what they seem. Elections are not always free or fair. And yet, all too often the West is willing to accept sham democracy in place of the real thing. It is shameful, indeed, that the West believed Stalin’s lies in the 1930s. It is equally shameful when a former American president, like Jimmy Carter, declares that the aspiring communist tyrant of Venezuela was fairly elected. Now Carter heads the committee overseeing the January 9 Palestinian election, cynically placing the West’s stamp of approval on yet another candidate of dubious distinction, Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen) – the newly elected president of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas does not favor freedom in the Western sense. He got his Ph.D. from a Soviet university. His doctoral dissertation was published as a book, subtitled “The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism.” It is a book that casts doubt on the claim that Jews were exterminated in Nazi gas chambers, putting the number of Jews killed by Hitler at less than a million.
If there are two races of men, as Victor Frankl maintains, the decent do not automatically win elections. The success of freedom requires something more than a democratic form of government. Sharansky’s idealism does not come to terms with these complexities. If freedom has not prevailed in Russia or the West Bank, what are the odds that Iraq will become a free country? Russell Kirk, who wrote a book titled The Roots of American Order, once explained that there is no freedom where there is no order. “The higher kind of order,” he wrote, “sheltering freedom and justice, declares the dignity of man.” Men like Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Abbas are enemies of freedom because their program falsifies the dignity of man with ideological formulas that promote a lawless war of sect against sect. “The American order of our day was not founded upon ideology,” noted Kirk. “It was not manufactured: rather, it grew.” Europe’s aristocracy, nurtured on the teachings of classical antiquity and Christianity, advanced a noble tolerance and regard for human dignity that eventually led to universal suffrage and freedom for all. The KGB clique that presently dominates Russia is not animated by the noble teachings of Cicero or Christ. The leaders of the Arab world do not look back to Greece and Rome, but to Karl Marx and Mohammed.
Natan Sharansky is a noble man, whose struggle against tyranny and commitment to freedom is truly inspiring. But freedom is not a power unto itself. Freedom depends, to a large extent, on definite social and cultural preconditions. And these are not to be found in Russia, Iraq or the West Bank.
© 2005 Jeffrey R. Nyquist
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