[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
113th Congress Printed for the use of the
1st Session Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
______________________________________________________________________
FILM SCREENING OF ``AGE OF
DELIRIUM''
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
JULY 23, 2013
Briefing of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
______________________________________________________________________
Washington: 2015
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-1901
[email protected]
http://www.csce.gov
Legislative Branch Commissioners
SENATE HOUSE
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland, CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey,
Chairman Co-Chairman
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania
TOM UDALL, New Mexico ROBERT ADERHOLT, Alabama
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire MICHAEL BURGESS, Texas
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut ALCEE HASTINGS, Florida
ROGER WICKER, Mississippi LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER,
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia New York
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
(ii)
* * * * *
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
The Helsinki process, formally titled the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe, traces its origin to the signing of the Helsinki
Final Act in Finland on August 1, 1975, by the leaders of 33 European
countries, the United States and Canada. As of January 1, 1995, the
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on initiatives designed to prevent, manage and resolve conflict within
and among the participating States. The Organization deploys numerous
missions and field activities located in Southeastern and Eastern
Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The website of the OSCE is:
.
* * * * *
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the
Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Government agency created in 1976 to
monitor and encourage compliance by the participating States with their
OSCE commitments, with a particular emphasis on human rights.
The Commission consists of nine members from the United States Senate,
nine members from the House of Representatives, and one member each
from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce. The positions of
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when a new Congress convenes. A professional staff assists the
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providing details about the activities of the Helsinki process and
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Commission have regular contact with
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governmental organizations, and private individuals from
participating States. The website of the Commission
is: .
(iii)
FILM SCREENING OF ``AGE OF DELIRIUM''
________
July 23, 2013
WITNESSES
Page
David Satter, Filmmaker, ``Age of Delirium''.................... 1
Kevin Klose, President and CEO, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 2
PARTICIPANTS
Kyle Parker, Policy Advisor, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe....... 1
Paul Carter, Senior State Department Adviser, Commission on
Security and Cooperation in Europe............ 4
(iv)
FILM SCREENING OF ``AGE OF DELIRIUM''
------------
July 23, 2013
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Washington, DC
The briefing was held from 2:30 to 5:04 p.m. EDT in 210
Cannon House Office Building, Washington D.C., Kyle Parker,
Policy Adviser, CSCE, presiding.
Mr. Parker. I'd like to welcome you all on behalf of
Helsinki Commission Chairman Senator Cardin and Co-chairman
Representative Chris Smith and all of our leadership to today's
screening of ``Age of Delirium.''
We have a full length film ahead so I want to jump in and
get this going right quick. We are pleased to be joined not
only by my good friend and renowned Russian scholar David
Satter, the filmmaker, but as well by Kevin Klose, President
and CEO of RFE/RL, and my colleague Paul Carter from the
Department of State. So we'll hopefully have a rich discussion
following the film. I encourage you all to participate.
This is an on-the-record event and will produce a
government transcript. And hopefully, following the film, there
will be no shortage of topics to discuss.
There's handouts outside, bios and a few select articles.
Our filmmaker, David, who I'll turn it over to in a minute to
introduce his work, is really one of the deepest thinkers on
Russia, he gets beneath the surface; has worked Russia for
decades, was FT's correspondent--I think his seriousness comes
across in the film. He's also a scholar at the Hudson Institute
and a consultant to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. David
produces incredible scholarship on Russia. And there's a piece
out there from, I believe, 2008, called ``Obama and Russia.'' I
read it on the way over and it could have easily been written
yesterday as well as the piece from today on the Navalny trial,
which I assume an audience like this has read plenty about.
Without any further chatter, let me turn it over to David.
And David, if you could say a few words about the film, and
then we'll push play, and jump into the discussion following
the movie.
Mr. Satter. Well, thank you, Kyle.
The film is based on the first book I wrote about Russia,
which is ``Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet
Union.'' A copy of the book is outside on the table, if anyone
wants to take a look at it.
That book was the product of my six years as the Moscow
correspondent to the London Financial Times, during which, by
the way, I worked closely with another correspondent, my
friend, Kevin Klose, who at that time was the Moscow
correspondent of the Washington Post. After the book was
written, there were people who read it and said that it should
be a film. And through a very circuitous route, I managed to
complete it.
A friend of mine who works in opera said that in any
production, the world has to come to an end three times before
the production is complete. Well, with this, the world came to
an end considerably more than three times. But we actually got
it done.
We also have here the person who more than anyone else was
responsible for the fact that it didn't end in a total disaster
and was actually--became a finished film. That's my friend,
Nenad Pejic from Radio Liberty, who is sitting next to Kevin
there and whose good judgment and support in a critical time--
in fact, every would-be artist needs someone who has good
judgment. And Nenad has good judgment and saved the whole thing
by lending it his support.
Well, I think that we should at this point watch the movie
and not waste a lot of time on my talking to you, because after
it's over, I hope we can talk about the film and what it means
about history and for history and its implications for the
present day because Russia continues to be important. The
countries of the former Soviet Union could . . . their fates
continue to have an impact on us. So without further ado,
perhaps we can start the film.
Mr. Parker. Enjoy the movie.
(Movie plays.)
Mr. Parker. Thank you all. We're going to rearrange here in
just a minute, pull the podium out and begin our discussion.
When we move to Q&A, since we are transcribing the event, I'll
ask you to state your name and be clear so we can get it into
the record.
Mr. Satter. I think I'll add that Kevin, unfortunately, has
to leave for another engagement. So maybe he can say a few
words first.
Mr. Parker. Of course. And as I mentioned at the outset,
we're honored to be joined by Kevin Klose. I didn't go too much
in depth into his long and impressive bio at the beginning, but
he's the present and past president of RFE/RL, a 25-year
veteran of the Washington Post, former president of NPR,
director of the International Broadcasting Bureau at the U.S.
Information Agency. Kevin is also a professor of journalism at
the University of Maryland, a Russia scholar, author of
``Russia and the Russians: Inside the Closed Society.''
We are really pleased to have you here. It would be great
if you could kick off our reaction, share your impressions,
perhaps an anecdote from your days with David working the
Soviet beat.
Mr. Klose. Kyle, thank you very much. It's an honor to be
here, first of all with you all, here in this great hearing
room. And it's also a great honor for me to be here again with
David Satter.
We've known each other since we met completely by
serendipity in the newsroom of the Washington Post in 1967.
That's quite a bit of time ago. We've had a lot of time
together since then, and I'm very pleased to say he's now a
consultant to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as we work with
the Russian Service and the 27 other language services to bring
us firmly into the digital age, the age of multimedia.
This film of David's to me is tremendously powerful, not
just about the past but about what we face going forward in
dealing with the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union,
which is not, obviously, anywhere near its end. The radios that
I'm now part of once again deal with these kinds of issues in
the present day in the same way as we see it here today.
There are millions upon millions of people in the former
Soviet Union who know things about what had happened in the
immediate past, that unless these realities are brought forward
and others can hear them, unless they can be borne witness to
across the societies in all their variations and cultures, the
future is going to be very perilous for them. I believe for the
national security interests of all the democracies.
We are not immune to the issues that still need to be
addressed in that part of the world. And there is no reason for
us--no rational reason for any of us here today, drawn together
to look at this film, which is a witnessing of the past, but
the power of it is in the present. The moral of this tale is we
must understand what has happened. We must dig deep, as deep as
we can.
As a friend of David's and a great admirer of his work, I
honor him for the work he's done to bring this forward in such
a powerful and irresistibly persuasive way.
Those are the remarks I have. David, thank you.
Mr. Satter. Well, thank you, Kevin. Perhaps just before
Kevin goes, does anyone want to ask maybe one question directed
to him, because he actually has a crowded schedule and has to
leave us--we'll then I hope entertain questions from all--on
all subjects, about the film, about the fall of the Soviet
Union, about Russia today, anything you want to ask or anything
you're interested in.
Mr. Parker. We have a mic here if anyone has a question for
Kevin Klose before he has to leave us.
Mr. Klose. I'm sorry. I should footnote that I spend most
of my time now in Prague, which is where Radio Free Europe/
Radio Liberty is headquartered. My time in Washington is
relatively short, and so I'm really apologetic for having
agreed to be here with you and then finding that my schedule is
not going to let me do that. I want to thank you all for coming
and the questions you have.
Mr. Satter. There is a question in the back. Yes.
Mr. Parker. Please.
Questioner. Can I use the mic?
Mr. Parker. Sure. That would be great.
Questioner. Hi. I'm Shelly Han with the Helsinki
Commission.
Mr. Satter. Hi.
Questioner. I was interested in hearing--please excuse my
ignorance if this is something that's obvious--but what is your
agency doing to help document what happened and perhaps
creating that record and sharing that record with the citizens?
Mr. Klose. That's a very good question. As you may know,
we're a private, non-profit private corporation formed in the
early 1950s. We're a grantee of the U.S. government and we're
an independent source of uncensored news and information into
the region of the former Soviet Union and parts of Eurasia.
First of all, prior to my return to the radio's management
in the immediate past, support the production of this
documentary and we assisted David with a great deal of
technical support and production support, which is also a
matter of creativity and intellectual continuity to bring
hundreds of hours of tape that he has of his interviews.
For us, directly, I can tell you, for example, just in the
past week, we were able to do live video from the courtroom
where Navalny was first convicted and handcuffed and marched
off to detention and the next day released in the same
courtroom in Kirov, 1,000 kilometers from Moscow where there
were demonstrations--they weren't huge but they were tense--on
the streets of Moscow. We were there also with live video
coverage, fully uncensored and fully made available to anyone
who wished to use the content, which I will say to you was used
in part by some independent minded Moscow television channels,
which cut away to take live coverage and fully credit Liberty,
Radio Liberty's Russian service for bringing this to them. They
were not covering it themselves.
In addition more than a dozen services at Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty also used live excerpts and produced
excerpts afterwards to put out to their listeners, their
viewers, their readers and their Internet interlocutors.
I think that's the wave of the future. This is attesting
and bearing witness to history being made today. We do that
very powerfully. Thank you.
Mr. Parker. Thank you, Kevin, again for joining us today.
And our hats are off to you and all your colleagues at Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty for covering this important part of
the world so well. The coverage is superb. The coverage has
been indispensable. And it's something I look forward every
morning, to the e-mails and the updates and the news stories
that are posted on the site, really top-notch journalism.
Mr. Klose. Thank you so much. It's a delight to be here.
And forgive me. I beg your pardon.
Mr. Parker. Thanks again.
Mr. Klose. Thank you. David, congratulations.
Mr. Parker. Before moving on, jumping into questions, I'd
like to introduce our lead discussant, Paul Carter, who is
currently serving as senior State Department adviser at the
U.S. Helsinki Commission.
We'll be losing Paul in just a few short days. He'll be
headed off to be the Director for Eurasia at the Assistance
Office of the European Bureau at the Department of State. It's
been a great year with Paul, he's really been an incredible
asset to the commission. Paul has served in a number of
interesting postings.
Most relevant for our discussion today is his service at
Embassy Moscow as well as at the Department's Ukraine desk. And
reaching back further into the past, in the mid-'80s, Paul was
an exchange student, one of two American political scientists
studying at Moscow's State University in 1985 and '86, where
Paul began work that ended up as a book published on the
ideology of Mikhail Suslov. So Paul is uniquely credentialed to
help kick off our discussion today. Paul, will you take it from
here?
Mr. Carter. Thank you very much, Kyle. It is really an
honor to be here with David for the showing of his film. What
year was the film made, David?
Mr. Satter. From 2006 until 2011, on and off.
Mr. Carter. OK. I think it's a fascinating film. It really
captures the sadness, the sometime horror and the always
surreal quality of life in the Soviet Union.
As Kyle mentioned, I was an IREX exchange scholar in 1985-
86; lived at Moscow State University, you know, the Stalin-
scraper there in Moscow, and lived with the Soviet students and
our other exchange scholars.
I always thought that, in so many ways, if one never lived
in the Soviet Union or in a communist country, it's not
something one can fully understand. It's something one must
live through to see what it's about.
Now, David's film today, of course, offers a glimpse into
that world--and the many people who testify and speak from the
heart and from their own experience about what life was like,
he captures it in so many different ways.
What's great for me is his approach to the ideology and to
show it from so many different angles. My own academic work
also was an approach at this but more from the top-down, as it
were.
We saw many times in the film people talking about the
ideology. Marxism-Leninism was in many ways a form of an ersatz
religion, and I think we see that captured here. The Soviet
Union was what we might call an ``ideocracy,'' a system based
on an ideology. We never really used to hear that much about
the model of ideocracy back during the Soviet period when
people were studying it in the West. A few scholars touched on
this, but it wasn't widely accepted. Partly that was due to the
fact that leftist scholars, Marxists, didn't want to accept the
USSR as a legitimate version of Marxism.
And for others, it was a question of their focus on the
question, did they believe the ideology or not? Many people
would answer, no, they didn't believe it.
The real question though isn't really did they believe it
or not because we don't know what the leadership at the time
believed. We don't know what people like Brezhnev and Suslov,
when they looked at the mirror at 3 o'clock in the morning,
what did they really say to themselves?
More important was the question what role did the ideology
play? And people, whether they've had an emotional attachment
to it or psychological, the fact is that they had to act as if
they believed.
In the end, the leadership lost the will to enforce that,
to force people to act as if they believed. My own work, as
Kyle said, was on Suslov, the chief ideologist of the party.
Suslov died in January of 1982. Brezhnev died in November,
eleven months later. I have argued that when Suslov died the
ideology went with him. Suslov was the last enforcer who
ensured people acted as if they believed in the ideology. After
that, Gorbachev came in.
Gorbachev began to change the perspective and came up with
the idea of reformed communism. I think Gorbachev himself was
very deeply affected by Chernobyl and the fact that he wasn't
getting information at the time. I was in Moscow when Chernobyl
went up and we watched happy pictures on television of
Ukrainian farmers plowing the fields and putting in the crop,
you know, for a week, even though we were hearing on the short
wave that the cloud of radiation was going all over the place.
I think that Gorbachev himself was a victim of that big lie and
didn't get that information. That influenced him to introduce
the idea of glasnost, after which began a freer flow of
information.
Then the system began to crumble. Molotov, one of Stalin's
men, once said that there's a reformed communism and then
there's real communism. Indeed, there's really no such thing as
a reformed communist. It can't survive and it fell apart. And
in the end, it did. It collapsed, as David showed so well in
his film.
Two takeaways from this that I see. One, as Kevin Klose
talked about, was the overcoming of the Soviet legacy. Of all
the things that the communists did to Russia, the terror, all
the people that died, what they did to the economy, all these
things, but the one lasting thing was the moral decay of the
society.
The communists taught that there was no God, there was no
religion, there was no morality other than what the party said.
And eventually, that deteriorated into every person must kill,
lie, cheat, steal, whatever to get along. And that legacy is
very hard to overcome. It survives for many, many years. And
Russia has not had an accounting, of a laying bare of the
Soviet past. We still see people today who praise Stalin or
look back with nostalgia on the Soviet era without having a
real accounting of what happened.
But also, there is another lesson, not only for Russia
itself, you know, to come to terms with these things, but also
a lesson for the world. And that for me is the danger of
ideology and ideological thinking. I really thought that when
the Soviet Union collapsed that we would see the end of that
kind of ideology and people being subject to that.
I think we have in the sense of these grand systems, of
Marxism, etc., but yet, even today, in our own society,
oftentimes people fall into ideological thinking and are quick
to rush to judgment on things. And so it's always a lesson, the
danger of that. The Russians were no different than anybody
else in the end. And it could happen anywhere. So it's
something that we have to always be on guard against.
And with that, I'm going to turn it back over and open it
up to questions.
Mr. Parker. Thank you, Paul. Let's open it up wide.
Everybody's sat patiently, so please step right up with
questions. Just identify yourself so we have it for the record.
And also feel free to make a statement. We can be fairly loose
on this and have some time to have a discussion. Katya, could
you----
Questioner. I'll be loud. Is this loud enough?
Mr. Parker. You know, it might be loud enough. It's just
that our transcriber is listening through a mic so it's better
if you come up here.
Questioner. It's a very different side of the room. Thank
you. Very interesting briefing or screening.
I'm sorry, My name is Katya Migacheva. I'm the lead fellow
on the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. In the interest of
full disclosure, I'm also originally from Russia. Watching the
film, I realized I'm very lucky to have been born in 1980 so I
was of conscious age when the changes happened. And I had a
good time in one system and good time in another system,
meaning that I had time to be educated in one and time to be
educated in another, and then, immigration to the United
States, so all kinds of worlds. So I felt fortunate. I also
felt very emotional watching the film. I greatly appreciate
your efforts to dig deeper.
I have a question for you. You've lived in Russia, it
sounds like, for a while. You studied Russia for a while--and
both of you and also the previous speaker as well. In terms of
your remarks about overcoming this heritage and moving forward
despite it or with it.
What challenges do you think Russia has because of these
challenges . . . in addition or besides the mentality that you
have to cheat and lie that you just mentioned, which is a whole
other piece of propaganda, social propaganda when not only the
survival piece where you have to cheat and lie and tell on your
neighbor but also the piece when we are all contributing to the
society. And that was--that was the one that was clearly
taught. That was the one--that was the clear, clean message,
not the hidden one. So that part we're losing as well with the
disintegration of the Soviet Union.
How do we move forward with the grief of the lost system,
because for many people, as you know, it's a huge loss? Even
those who lost their parents and grandparents to the Stalinist
regime, they still remember the system with nostalgia. I guess
this is one of your points, we need to reveal these things, but
also the idea that we need a strong grip. We need a strong fist
to be able to survive in our society.
So I'm rambling a little bit, but putting all these things
together, how do you see Russia moving forward? And how should
we from the United States, what patience should we have? When
should we expect results and what type of pressure should we
apply reasonably?
Mr. Parker. Thank you, Katya. David.
Mr. Satter. Thank you, Katya. Actually, the answer is not
so complicated. The problem with Russia, in my view, after many
years of being there, is that the individual has no value, and
particularly compared to the goals of the state.
Under those circumstances, the idealization of state power
creates a situation in which individuals are treated as raw
material for the achievement of political ends. That's the
reason why everyone cheats and lies because they've been taught
that their individual identity counts for nothing.
Into those circumstances, they don't feel a sense of
individual obligation, of individual conscience, of individual
identity. They don't believe that their personality is
important, that they're in some way different, that they're in
some respects inviolable.
So, after all, there's no logical reason not to just grab.
That mentality can only be changed under conditions in which
Russians and other people who lived in the Soviet Union
realistically assess their history and abandon myths about the
past and understand what they've come out of.
As for the U.S. or for the other countries in the West, we
can be helpful to the degree that we help to clarify this
problem, but the difficulty is that very few people in the West
understand it either. I mean, they don't understand Russia
because it's hard to extend themselves--it's hard for us,
members of a pragmatic and a problem-solving society, to
understand a society like Russia, in which millions of people
are subordinated to some type of political ideal they don't
understand.
So in effect, there's a certain amount of intellectual work
that has to be done in both places. Most of all, of course,
it's the responsibility of the Russians themselves to
understand who they are and what it is. Russians don't
understand the root of their problem. This is the difficulty.
They understand that things are bad, but they don't understand
why they're bad. And the best way to help them is to try to
show them why things are bad. And the best way they can help
themselves is to restore the position of the individual. And
you can only do that if you really honor those who were victims
of the regime and you face realistically the story of the past.
Mr. Parker. Thank you, David. We have another question over
here.
Questioner. Thank you. My name is Tanel Sepp, I'm from the
Embassy of Estonia. And I'm going to say you have organized
this event on a really historic day because 73 years ago then
acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles made the declaration of
not recognizing the occupation of the Baltic States. So
congratulations on this.
I have a fairly simple question. In your view, what could
be then the goal of the present Russian leadership? I mean,
there are so many different variables there. And one thing that
I absolutely agree with you is this--how we see it is a need to
overcome the Soviet legacy, but at the same time, sometimes
this is especially used in ideological terms.
Mr. Satter. So what is the goal of the Russian leadership?
What are they after?
Questioner. Yes.
Mr. Satter. That's actually a very easy question to answer.
They're after----
Mr. Parker. Or what should it be.
Mr. Satter. Or what should it be is a different story; what
it is and what it should be. They're after preserving their
monopoly on power and wealth, and the entire foreign policy of
Russia is organized on that basis. And they don't have any
other goals.
All of their efforts to, you know, resurrect the myth of
the great Russian state or resurrect the idea of the great
Russian state is only because they fear that their selfishness
and their greed will be exposed and they need something to
convince people that something else is at stake and to distract
them from the way in which they're misruled.
Mr. Parker. Please.
Questioner. Gerald Chandler. I'd like you to follow on
that. How long will it last? Will it last one election, two
elections, 25 years?
Mr. Parker. Thank you, Gerald.
Questioner. I will repeat the question. I'll state my
opinion. People get tired of a government. We have Navalny
there now representing some small fraction of the population
who are tired of the government. Is it a fraction that is
bigger than it appears, because there's many, many people who
don't want to speak up, or how big is it? And how many years
will it take until another Gorbachev comes along and the whole
thing collapses?
Mr. Parker. Thank you.
Mr. Satter. I don't know--it won't last forever, but it,
you know--because all of the tendencies toward disintegration.
The regime is becoming more corrupt, not less. The ruling
circle has become narrower--is becoming narrower. Positions of
privilege and power are being passed on to the children of
those who have them now rather than being opened up for general
competition.
The atmosphere in the country is becoming more stifling.
The level of political repression is becoming greater. At the
same time, the country is becoming more educated, has more
experience of the outside world. And a generation has grown up
that is more capable of functioning in a democratic society
than possibly any previous Russian generation.
So under those circumstances, an eventual collision is
inevitable. When it will happen and under what circumstances is
hard to predict. It will depend on many factors. But this
regime, by virtue of its sheer greed and the many, many crimes
and secrets that it conceals, cannot last indefinitely, and
those people in power would like to rule forever, but they
won't be able to.
Mr. Parker. Please jump in, Paul.
Mr. Carter. Yeah. If we can borrow a term from the
Marxists--a question of contradictions here. We saw how the
Soviet regime took a nation of essentially illiterate peasants
and created an educated cadre of people, scientists and
engineers and so on. And eventually, those people came to see
that the ideology was just simply illogical and that created
the rot at the core of the system.
Today, what we see is the growth of the Russian economy, a
lot of it built on energy and so on, but other industries as
well, and a new middle class is being created. But that middle
class, at some point, as David says, they'll become fed up with
the corruption at the top. And that's what Navalny and others
are all about.
This is a very interesting phenomenon to see in the last
two, three years or so. Before that, if you talked about
opinion in Russia, you were talking about what's the Kremlin
thinking about? But in the last two or three years, you've seen
suddenly this--the streets of Moscow with all these people
turning out and saying no. They aren't the ones that talk.
That's not the only opinion. This is our opinion. And they're
becoming disgusted with it.
Nobody knows how long change will take. That's the lesson
of the Arab Spring, of course, that, you know, there's just
these flash points and then things just spread.
Now we don't know whether that will happen in Russia.
People before the Orange Revolution in Ukraine always said that
the Ukrainians were a lot of sheep. They'll never do anything.
And then, of course, that just took off. So you never know how
these things will go. But at some point, the contradictions
will catch up with them.
Mr. Parker. Please.
Questioner. First off, thank you very much for organizing
this event. My name is Ali Down. I'm just a simple intern with
the Office of Congressman Robert Brady. My question today is
what if any aspects of Soviet society or Soviet era mentality
continue to exist in modern day Russia?
Mr. Parker. Thank you.
Mr. Satter. Well, you know, I have a friend in Moscow by
the name of Vladimir Voinovich. Maybe you've heard of him some
of you. He's a writer, a satirical writer. He said there's
nothing left of the Soviet Union except the Soviet man. And the
problem--there's been tremendous change. I mean, Russia today
is incomparably freer than the Soviet Union was.
But the same disregard for the individual, the same notion
that the fate of a person is really unimportant compared to
greater goals, the goals of the state, the goals of society, or
even the goals of those in power who are anxious to accumulate
wealth, and that's the same as it's always been. Until that
changes, Russia will never really be free.
Mr. Parker. Please.
Questioner. Again, thank you all very much for this. It's
absolutely fascinating. I'm Peter Hickman. I'm a former USIA
Foreign Service officer, although I was never in the Soviet
Union and that part of the world. But my question is hard to
ask because I think it has a lot of answers but you've all
touched on it in your answers. Putin made this famous statement
when Soviet Union collapsed, something to the effect that it is
the greatest socio-political disaster----
Mr. Satter. Geopolitical. Geopolitical.
Questioner. Geopolitical. And people in response to that
said, no, the greatest geopolitical disaster was the creation
of the Soviet Union. (Laughter.) But my question is and I think
you've all answered it in parts, and Mr. Klose as well, what
was the reaction to that statement at the time in the Soviet
Union, and how is it today?
Mr. Satter. In Russia--in Russia, no more Soviet Union----
Questioner. Well, that's right. I mean, but----
Mr. Satter. Soviet Union is gone.
Questioner. Well, are you sure?
Mr. Parker. Thank you.
Mr. Satter. Well, nobody reacted much, but the Russian
leaders love the word ``geopolitical.'' They remind me of
certain people in our country who also love the word
``geopolitical.'' They use it constantly about everything, even
though it has no relationship to anything. They love the word
because as soon as they start talking about geopolitical, then
the word ``moral,'' ``ethical,'' ``legal,'' all those other
words drop out because we're talking about geopolitical--
something real, not all this namby-pamby stuff about obeying
the law, respecting people, you know, not assassinating them,
not torturing them, all of which is certainly, has nothing to
do with the geopolitical interests of this or that.
And for that reason, when Putin said that the fall of the
Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of this
country, he was being completely consistent and all of the
listeners and the foreign policy apparatus of Russia, at least
those who don't think much or at least who were, you know,
anxious to make their careers, and all of their counterparts
over here thought that, well, that maybe is a reasonable
statement or maybe there's something to it. Of course, it's
absolute nonsense.
But you know, in a sense Putin reflects what happened in
the Soviet Union. When in a nation in which no one counts for
anything, the only way in which people are distinguished from
each other is their level of power. And once a person acquires
power--first of all, he'll do anything to get it.
Second of all, once he acquires power, he won't recognize
any limits on his acquisitiveness. Either his material greed,
the tactics he's willing to use in order to stay in power, and
all of this comes from the fact that, you know, a degraded
individual really can't develop an ethical framework for
himself, a sense of personal identity and conscience. And
that's because that was the process to which millions of people
were subjected in the Soviet Union.
You know, it's not surprising that if someone like Putin
becomes president and he acts in a manner that is typical of
someone who has no moral orientation at all, is just pursuing
wealth, power, and self-preservation. And if we criticize him,
we have to recognize the fact that there're millions of other
people in his place who would--who--in the Soviet Union, who
have gone through this, who would act in exactly the same way.
I think that there are nonetheless some encouraging things.
Mostly the fact that despite all of these pressures, there are
some people who didn't succumb to them, and there's a growing
number of people in the Soviet Union, in Russia, other
countries of the former Soviet Union who, nonetheless, despite
all this pressure, have developed a moral sense and are willing
to support and fight for decent values. And I've argued in what
I've written that it ought to be a principle of American
foreign policy in dealing with that part of the world to
support them.
Mr. Parker. Thank you, David. Your moral clarity is always
refreshing and sometimes even entertaining.
Mr. Satter. I try.
Mr. Parker. Especially your exegesis on the empty word
geopolitical. I couldn't agree more.
If I may just share a few reactions. This is my second or
third time watching the film and a few different things stand
out. For me, it starts somewhat nostalgic as I see these
pictures of the '70s because, you know, I married into the
Soviet family, and so some of those photos of camping and the
beach during the Brezhnev era, they almost evoke a pleasant
feeling for a past I only know through pictures and stories.
Then there's this stark, just gruesome, fearful image of
this 11-year-old boy on the roof eating weeds in famine-
stricken Ukraine, millions dead. Or as Paul mentioned the
legacy of Stalin and sort of the glorification of him now in
certain quarters, and even, perhaps most disturbingly among the
youth. I guess this runs a little counterintuitive to those who
naively thought that the Internet or the iPhone or whatever
modern gadget would somehow bring morality.
But what to me is even more disturbing, that moment in the
film when Shatravka--when he confronts the nurse. It's two
Russias staring each other in the face and looking completely
past each other. And to me this is all the more disturbing for
its insidiousness. It's hidden. This nurse doesn't even
understand what he's talking about. She can't grasp the depth
of pain in Shatravka who's essentially confronting the killer
of his brother, a woman who might be a neighbor who is free,
just walking around. Again, David, your commentary in the end
about how are these people to be held to account, about what is
appropriate, just.
I remember my own confusion up in Arctic Russia where I
spent some time in Vorkuta, in Ukhta, which was essentially a
big prison camp. And I asked questions, again, to people like
that nurse, and they couldn't even understand. Others, of
course, were happy to tell about the rehabilitation of their
relatives and share their files. But those people who didn't
understand, who remembered, but weren't moved--I guess for me
it's confusing.
So David, this is my question to you, the truth is
available in Russia and it is not the 1930s. And yet, it
isn't--in some areas, it really isn't very good and in some
areas you can even attempt to draw certain moral comparisons. I
think back to the 1999 apartment bombings, which many and
serious people believe were orchestrated by the regime as the
pretext to start the second Chechen war, the rise of Putin, the
underpinnings of the modern Russian state, which was most
recently our reset partner, though I guess we don't use the
term. We do seem to have stuck largely to the policy though.
We're talking here about deliberate murder of hundreds of
Russians in their sleep. And I'm not prepared to say it
happened that way, but I know there are very serious people
who've examined the evidence and the fact is it remains a big
open question. Does this not approach something of the morality
of the 1930s and the willingness to commit such crimes.
My question is why wasn't this truth that is out there if
you looked for it more powerful? You can find books and you can
read these things, and it almost seems to have lost its power.
Why wasn't it the cleansing wave that washed everything away
and made everything anew?
Mr. Satter. Yeah. Well, first of all because it was partial
and it was basically used--the truth in Russia was used for
political purposes. In the late '80s, people were fascinated by
history and anxious to learn the truth about history when it
could be used as a weapon against the old regime, which was the
communist regime.
Once that regime fell, independent interest in
commemorating the victims or investigating the past almost
disappeared. In the late 1980s, there were pedestals and
plinths established all over Russia, in Russian cities, saying
on this site there will be a memorial to the victims of
Stalinism, the victims of communism. Now there's nothing left,
just the pedestals, just the plinths. The memorials were never
built.
As far as the apartment bombings are concerned, I'm one of
those who, as you may or may not know, who has argued that, in
fact--and I believe the evidence in reality is overwhelming,
that it was through an act of terror that Putin came to power.
And that's not the only act of terror. What about the decision
to open fire with heavy weapons on the children who were the
hostages in Beslan in 2004, or the decision to pump a theater
with 1,000 hostages full of lethal gas without making any
effort really to prepare to rescue the victims?
It all stems from the same thing, that the individual just
doesn't count for anything. And in particular--and he is
particularly insignificant compared to the goals of the regime.
So therefore, if it's necessary--of course, we are not dealing
with a situation such as that, which existed in 1937, nearly a
million people were shot straight out, and another--well, it
was 700,000 and then another equal--were shot--and roughly the
same number were arrested and sent to labor camps, where they
quickly died.
It's not that scale, but the situation could, given that
mentality, become very bad in the future. Right now, the regime
is not seriously threatened, but as the situation deteriorates,
given that mentality, anything is possible.
Mr. Parker. Thank you. I certainly don't mean to draw a
direct comparison to the sheer numbers of murder victims of the
1930s. I guess to me, though, to avoid the danger of
proportionalism, the notion that a person who kills 1,000 is
much worse than the person who's prepared to kill 100--
certainly, in terms of the sheer volume of human suffering
visited on the people. But the willingness to cross those
lines, the notion that the person is not important enough, a
means not an end that can be sacrificed for other goals.
I've mentioned just how profound--and it's on great display
here today--David gets on Russia. You know, when I'm not
reading David's work or maybe Leon Aron's work, I often find
myself reading our very own Librarian of Congress, Jim
Billington, himself a renowned Russia historian and scholar. I
brought along his book from--I don't know, maybe it's already
about a decade ago, ``Russia in Search of Itself.''
This passage comes to mind as relevant to our discussion.
I'll read it into the transcript as perhaps an appropriate way
to end, maybe on a dark note, an acknowledgement that there's
no easy answer. Dr. Billington's talking here about denial and
this painful history. ``The only part''--he says, and I quote--
``the only part that has been fully acknowledged and honored by
public monuments is the suffering caused by foreign foes. Yet
just as much suffering was inflicted on them by themselves, and
over a longer period of time.
``This condition of denial impacts on a society in ways
that can never be understood, let alone remedied, by roundtable
discussions--even those that may someday be convened after all
the mass graves and buried documents have been unearthed. Words
alone will never provide a roadmap into a happy future for
those who once thought they stood on a mountain. They now know
there is no easy way out of their valley and that the shadow of
massive, innocent death still hangs over it.'' End quote.
These are haunting words and capture the difficulty of this
moment where the people of Russia find themselves and how to
deal with this shameful, ugly, confusing and not even fully
known past. And so we add yet another roundtable discussion, as
it were, to this attempt.
It's 5 o'clock comrades, and everybody looks a little
tired. So I think I'll wrap it up.
Again, I want to thank you all for coming and
participating. I want to especially thank Jackie Cahan, who
helped David and I to put this event together. I also suggest
to all of you to keep an eye on our website. We have other
interesting events coming up. We'll take a little bit of break
in August, as it's customary up here on the Hill, but should
have a robust program in the fall, particularly on Russia.
I hope we'll finally have a serious Russia hearing and as
well other briefings. One we have planned is a survey of U.S.-
Russian relations over the centuries. This should provide an
interesting perspective here in Congress on the hills and
valleys and understand what we've seen before and where we've
been before in this important relationship with Russia.
With that, I close the record and thank you all for coming.
[all]
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