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<http://216.26.163.62/2004/l.html> See the Lev Navrozov Archive
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*By Lev Navrozov*
*SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM*
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/Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New
York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his
eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To
this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite
society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in
1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which
they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His
columns are today read in both English and Russian. /
Well, for every nation there are plenty of haters. Emigres from the
United States to Soviet Russia explained to me that the United States is
a gangland--didn't I know that President Truman himself never concealed
the fact that he had been helped to come to power by the notorious
gangster Pendergast, and Truman even attended the gangster's funeral in
1945? The America-haters concluded that the United States would never be
a democracy, since who are the Americans? They pretend that their
ancestors have all come from England. But many of them have come from
Germany, a country of Nazism, from Italy, a country of Fascism, or from
Spanish-speaking and other tyrannies.
When the Soviet dictatorship collapsed along with Gorbachev, and Yeltsin
was elected president, the U.S. media treated Gorbachev (who had
expected before the collapse to obtain post-nuclear superweapons, able
to destroy the Western means of nuclear retaliation and thus establish
world domination) better than they did Yeltsin (who opened in 1992
Gorbachev's giant development of post-nuclear superweapons to
international inspection).
Nation-haters may err historically. In the 18th and 19th centuries all
educated classes of continental Europe from Portugal to Russia spoke
French--sometimes better than their mother tongues, and considered the
English-speaking to be savages on the outskirts of the world. Voltaire
regarded the absolutism of Louis XIV (who said "The State is me") as the
highest peak of political and cultural efflorescence, and he called
Shakespeare a "drunken barbarian."
Yet for all my love of French culture, I decided well before my college
age that England, not France, pioneered what Churchill called
"democracy" and defined as "the worst form of government except all
others," including the absolutism of Louis XIV. Voltaire was proved to
be prejudiced against the English-speaking.
Without any prejudice for or against "the Russians" I began in 1991 to
write for the Russian periodicals, including "Izvestia," and excluding
"Pravda," which remained Soviet. Since I published whatever I wrote, I
found empirically that freedom of the press in Yeltsin's Russia was
unabridged. But as soon as Putin succeeded Yeltsin, my life as a Russian
columnist was over.
Soon after he was elected, Putin gave an interview to "Kommersant
Daily," in which he explained how beneficial the KGB had been "as a link
between the government and the people."
Let us suppose that Putin is a villain who intended right from the start
to abolish Yeltsin's democracy in order to become the dictator, with the
KGB and all. But surely he was not obliged to eulogize the KGB
publicly--for all the world to witness! The fact that he did so
indicates that the former KGB lieutenant-colonel knew nothing about
democracy--could not tell democracy from Soviet dictatorship, complete
with the KGB.
Incidentally, I had proposed to Yeltsin a national TV series, explaining
the political ABC. He reacted favorably, but then the project was
bogged. One result: Putin as a political illiterate. All Russians were
political illiterates except for a narrow stratum of the intelligentsia.
As a weekly columnist of "Moscow Pravda" (not to be confused with
"Pravda") I could not pass in silence Putin's eulogy of the KGB. Out of
fear, the newspaper did not publish the column. Out of fear, it did not
inform me about it. Out of fear, it stopped publishing me. Out of fear,
it did not inform me, but put away my new columns to make believe that
they had been publishing them.
The society that was beset by fears to such an extent even before Putin
did anything repressive is bound to sink into dictatorship (or into the
absolutism of Louis XIV).
But why on earth had Yeltsin recommended Putin as the successor to
himself, owing to which Putin won his fist presidential election?
Meet Gennadiy Zyuganov!
As for 1989, Zyuganov was the Vice Chairman of The Ideology Department
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. As of 1995 he was the First
Secretary of the Central Committee of his own Communist Party of the
Russian Federation, which received 35 percent of the votes in the Duma
(Parliament). There was a difference between 1989 and 1995, though. The
Soviet dictatorship discarded Stalin in 1956. But Zyuganov's
demonstrators carried the portraits of Lenin AND of Stalin, and Zyuganov
was anti-Semitic, as Stalin was at the end of his life.
Meet Vladimir Zhirinovsky!
Zhirinovsky's program can be summed up in one sentence of his: "I will
follow in Hitler's footsteps." Zhirinovsky's party captured nearly a
quarter of the votes in the Duma in 1993, while Yeltsin's party,
"Russia's Choice," came in a distant second, with 15 percent of the vote.
I published an article in a Russian newspaper in which I called
Zhirinovsky a super-Hitler. Why? Hitler never spoke publicly of "making
short shrift" of Jews. Zhirinovsky spoke of it even before he came to
power.
Zhirinovsky's newspaper counterattacked my article. The newspaper said
that my article was so well written that it was clear I was working for
the CIA. There was evidence that the new Hitler or super-Hitler was
going or pretended to be going to assassinate me in New York. The FBI
helped me with my protection. If Zhirinovsky had come to power I would
have been no doubt his first target.
But he didn't come to power: it was found that his father (a lawyer) was
a Jew. The joke was: "Zhirinovsky is a pure Russian: his mother was
Russian and his father a lawyer." His dream to become the Russian Hitler
was over.
Yeltsin believed that Putin, a strong-willed disciplinarian, would be
able to cope with the seething cauldron of Stalinism and Hitlerism.
It is often assumed in the United States today that a certain villain
(such as Saddam Hussein1) is responsible for a dictatorship, while "the
people" yearn for democracy and hence must be liberated. It is
impossible to regard Putin as such a villain. He is a political
illiterate among political illiterates, and political illiteracy is
driving the country to a full-fledged dictatorship. The Russian
intelligentsia believes that the latest presidential election whereby
Putin was re-elected was a put-up job, and they had called to boycott
it. Last month Putin decided that local authorities should be appointed
by him, not elected.
He does not seem to plan the country's movement toward full-fledged
dictatorship. The latter is the lowest form of government, and Russia is
SINKING into it.
Why should the West worry?
Full-fledged dictatorship in a large 20th-century country has always
been fraught with dictators' secret preparations for world domination.
Their secrecy is possible since a dictator can allocate any resources
for any weapons research and production in total secrecy. This research
can be secret since any reprisals can be wreaked on anyone who violates
the secrecy. Recall that the Soviet launching of a space satellite ahead
of the United States was a total surprise to the world outside Soviet
Russia.
The full-fledged dictatorship in Russia will enable the dictator of
Russia to go from his present "strategic partnership" (whereby Putin
sells China whatever weapons the People's Liberation Army wants) to his
alliance with China for their joint world domination. Recall the
Soviet-Nazi treaty, with its secret clauses dividing the world.
Actually, Hitler's Germany invaded Stalin's Russia to use its enormous
resources for Nazi world domination. Well, the dictators of large
militarily powerful countries can gamble in secrecy and without any
supervision on the part of legislature and media. They win or lose, but
the outside world is always the loser.
The West has done nothing to prevent the movement of Russia toward
full-fledged dictatorship though the radio station "Liberty,"
broadcasting for Russia, seems still to exist at American taxpayers'
expense. It was founded during the Cold War and I participated in it in
the 1970s until I understood that it was just a waste of taxpayers'
money. Today the United States, including its two presidential
candidates, has been too preoccupied with the creation of democracy in
Iraq to pay sufficient attention to the growing full-fledged
dictatorship in Russia (or to notice such dictatorship, full grown in
China right from 1949, and developing post-nuclear superweapons since
1986).
* * * * *
For more information about Drexler's Foresight Institute and its
lobbying in Congress, see www.foresight.org
To learn more about the Chris Phoenix report, suggesting a "nano
Manhattan Project," go to crnano.org.
For information about the Center for the Survival of Western
Democracies, Inc., including how you can help, please e-mail me at
navlev AT cloud9.net.
The link to my book online is www.levnavrozov.com. You can also request
our webmaster AT levnavrozov.com to send you by e-mail my outline of my book.
It is my pleasant duty to express gratitude to the Rev. Alan Freed, a
Lutheran pastor by occupation before his retirement and a thinker by
vocation, for his help in the writing of this column.