WHY AM I HERE?

Twenty-nine years ago, during the Stanford International Symposium in October 1983, I was approached by Harper’s Magazine with the suggestion to write a 5,000-word article titled Why Am I Here? I wasn’t at all surprised, because following my renunciation of Soviet citizenship in March 1981, every person I knew in America, had been asking me the very same question. To everyone who knew me, including the FBI and all other agencies of the American Government I was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” In plainer words, I did not fit any stereotype of a person in my position. So, what was my position?

I wrote the promised article for Harper’s, and wasn’t a bit surprised that it wasn’t published. The advantage of stereotypes in politics is that they are safe. Nobody, notably including the press, likes unsolved riddles. If one found a riddle and for some reason couldn’t solve it in a hurry, there were two solutions: one to pretend that it never existed, and the other the Procrustes way, to stretch it or to chop it, until it would comfortably fit a pre-manufactured bed.

There was indeed an attempt to do a Procrustes job on me, characteristically by those who did not know me. I was called “a defector” by persons whom I never met; others called me in print “a KGB agent,” and some other "comprehensible" names as well.

Quite obviously, I was not a defector. I stole nothing, I sold nothing. I never intended to turn my coat inside out: I just wanted to toss it away, and remain the coatless me. For this reason, I resolutely said no to all jobs offered to me in Washington, which would infringe on my personal and intellectual independence. I wished to establish myself as an independent entity, and in case a regular income did not materialize right away, as a translator, to keep my pot boiing. (The quality of my translations had long been recognized as “out of this world.”)

But most importantly I wished to become an independent voice on international politics, particularly on the superpower relationship. I was uniquely qualified in this capacity, having been a fellow of the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow since 1972, as well as a United Nations official, “on the side.” I also had had a private access to the highest levels of Soviet decision-making, developing an uncanny feel for the smallest print in the US-Soviet interaction.

Everybody who’s been lucky enough to have a life’s dream will know what I am talking about, when I tell them that I had such a dream, and that it was to make my personal contribution to a better world, using my knowledge and understanding. But I also realized that unfortunately it would be an impossible dream for as long as I was constrained by my political limitations. There is no truth in politics. As Comrade Stalin used to say, telling the truth to your enemies makes you vulnerable to their machinations, therefore you must not tell the truth, lest it be used against you. (Saying “you,” he also meant the State, thus it was not a matter of personal vulnerability, but of national security first and foremost.)

It goes without saying that Stalin and the USSR have not been unique in this opinion. All great powers dissimulate and deceive as a matter of daily routine, and woe to any government employee or a politician, for that matter, in any country whatsoever, who either accidentally or intentionally spills the truth…

And yet, there is some truth, critically important truth, that must be told directly to the other side. Yet, the great irony in this is that as long as you are identified with your country, the other side is going to assume an angle of deception and trickery on your part, and the vital message will be misinterpreted, and lost. In other words, an established figure on either side can never serve as a messenger in such a vital communication. I am sure that an uninitiated reader will read this in disbelief, but those who have been there will silently nod their heads in agreement.

Thus, the only way to deliver a vital message is indeed to become coatless, sideless, or as I jokingly put it, to position yourself “neither here nor there.” Although you cannot do this physically, it is difficult but not impossible to achieve it intellectually. In my case, it involved an implicit trust in American freedom, a sincere confidence that I could pull it off.

The fact that today, after thirty-plus years of neither here nor there, I am still functioning, and these days being able to publish my stuff on my blog, is probably the best testimony to the fact that freedom in the United States is likewise alive, for which great blessing I am grateful to the American nation.

So, why am I here? To be myself!

Risky, but a risk worth taking.