SHIELD AND SWORD

I am posting this entry in commemoration of the twenty-ninth anniversary of my keynote address to the Stanford International Symposium, organized by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and American Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The entry starts with an important preamble, discussing the significance of shield and sword as the emblem of Soviet/Russian State Security. The main part focuses on my Stanford Symposium appearance, playing on the shield and sword imagery. (Do I need to say that both parts, the preamble and the principal, are equally important?!)

The official title of my presentation at the historic 1983 Stanford International Symposium Prescription for Prevention, discussed in this entry, was US-Soviet Relations: The Positive Option. But I might just as well have titled it Shield and Sword, as that image was one of the principal theses of my speech. It is ironic, under the circumstances, that a shield and a sword is the emblem of the Cheka/NKVD/KGB, and currently of the FSB. It is definitely worthwhile to draw the reader’s attention to the symbolic significance of changing the position of the sword vis-à-vis the shield in the current emblem. Previously, the sword was positioned in front of the shield, although both were located behind the Soviet star adorned with a hammer and a sickle. Now the sword is placed behind the shield adorned with the double-headed eagle, the Russian national emblem. Thus the symbolism of the shield over the sword is specifically emphasized, just as I pointed out in my Stanford speech twenty-nine years ago.

It is important to emphasize, however, that, despite such visual rearrangements, the verbal formula of shield and sword has not changed a bit throughout the historical transitions from the old Soviet names of the State Security Organizations to the newest incarnation of the Committee for State Security: the FSB. Also worth mentioning is the even curiouser fact that the English-language reference sources seem to be demonstrably insensitive to the exact wording of the Russian formula, substituting it quite often by the admittedly sharper-sounding English pseudo-equivalent sword and shield. Thus, the propagandistically understandable, but linguistically twisted and inaccurate title of the moderately notorious bestseller published by Basic Books in 1999: The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, By Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin.

Whether my ostensible nitpicking into the linguistics of the Russian State Security emblem will be invested with some importance by the good reader, or dismissed as such (namely, nitpicking) by the more impatient reader, by now quite annoyed by my linguistic thoroughness, I propose that the treatment of such important symbolic entities, as the emblem of Russian/Soviet state security agency, ought not to be carried out with an intent to rush through it as quickly as possible, but with an unfailing precision to show sufficient respect for the subject matter, which the latter richly deserves.

In early October 1983 I was, most unexpectedly (one of my life’s many strange twists and turns), invited as a keynote speaker to the highly prestigious, and as it was later to become known, historic, 1983 International Symposium Prescription for Prevention: Nuclear War, Our Greatest Health Hazard, held at the Memorial Auditorium of Stanford University, California, and organized by the renowned anti-war group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, known in the United States as the PSR, Physicians for Social Responsibility, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just two years after this blessed event, in 1985.

The Symposium was scheduled to start on October 6^th, and astonishingly, as I said before, I was co-opted as its speaker less than a week before it started: an extremely irregular procedure, to say the least, for an event of such magnitude! I am however confident that my participation and actual contribution to the Symposium was a historic event in itself, well worth the organizers’ trouble of going through some serious irregularities and inconveniences, on my account. I have never learned of course who put them up to co-opting me in the first place, although I do have some well-educated suspicions…

The title of my presentation was US-Soviet Relations: The Positive Option. There were several “leitmotifs” in it, some original, some less so. The most memorable image in it, according to my newly acquired friend there, the late Professor Richard Smoke, was the symbolic image of a shield and a sword, which I confess to have deliberately borrowed from the classic CheKa/NKVD/KGB emblem shchit i mech, but so naturally and seamlessly that this “shady” connection could never raise any eyebrows, but on the contrary was highly acclaimed as a veritable eye-opener by no lesser authority on “psycho-symbolism” than the PsychOps guru himself, the late Dr. Richard Smoke.

In my speech, I represented Russia as a perennial reluctant warrior, holding a sword in his right hand, and a shield on his left arm. “Do not expect this warrior to ever let go of the shield,” I told the audience, counting over five thousand, “but the sword is a different thing. Stretch out your right hand to him, and he shall put away his sword in the sheath, as it will be a matter of honor for him not to refuse to shake your hand.”

This image, based on the Nietzschean idea of the “noble enemy” as one’s best friend, was actually the first step toward the development of my two boxers metaphor, which is going to be the subject of my next entry, but it would be too unfair to diminish its own independent value. It is better to put these two metaphors in conjunction, as they complement each other wonderfully, and besides, both of them should be easy enough and comprehensible enough to start the ball rolling on an elementary re-education of America about Russia right there with them. (Looking back upon my mission of re-educating America about Russia, I see very few things that I would have wished to be done differently, in so far as my tutorial skills were concerned. It was rather my inborn political idealism, unfairly mistaken for naiveté by Washington’s “realpolitikers” that I must blame for my failure to realize, from the onset of my quest, that the student never wanted to learn, in the first place).

…Before I leave this entry completely, one final question needs to be asked and answered. Considering that my shield and sword imagery can’t really use the “KGB” (I am using the most familiar acronym collectively for all consecutive titles of the Soviet/Russian intelligence services) for references, is my metaphor accurate in itself, as a representation of the Soviet/Russian mindset and projected behavior?

The answer is an emphatic yes. The best corroboration for it is offered by Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky, in the eponymous 1938 Eisenstein-Stalin movie, where he paraphrases the Bible in the following powerful and convincing fashion:

“…Go tell all in foreign lands that Russia lives! Those who come to us in peace will be welcome as guests. But those who come to us with sword in hand shall die by the sword! On this Russia stands, and shall stand forever!”

There is a solemnity here and a heartfelt religious pledge. History has convincingly vouchsafed for Russia’s sincerity, and so do I.