TOCQUEVILLE’S TRAMPLED PEARLS

It is customarily assumed that the prophetic Frenchman’s observation is limited to the prediction of the two nations’ looming superpower greatness. But the momentous sentence that I have underlined in the previous entry America And Russia, says differently, and rather than discuss it above inter alia, I am giving it special treatment in a special entry which is this one.

“The American struggles against the obstacles that nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained by the plowshare; those of the Russian, by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm.” (From Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Vol. I. Conclusion.)

In a single passage, Tocqueville brilliantly explains the difference between the historical courses of the two superpower giants and how this difference has affected their respective national psyches. Russia’s historical course was largely influenced by foreign invasions and a constant national struggle for self-affirmation as an international great power. In the course of this great struggle, the Russian national character has necessarily acquired strong totalitarian, collectivist features, hence “the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm.”

America, on the other hand, has been historically sheltered from European firestorms. The Indian threat did not amount to much, and the elements of nature were the only real danger that they had to fight. This kind of fighting could of course be best accomplished by individual or group effort rather than a collective effort on a national basis. As a result, America had become a bastion of laissez-faire in the general sense of this word, and of economic laissez-faire in the more specific sense, leading the nation to capitalism and defeating the socialist undercurrents present in all societies on account of the rich-and-poor divisions.

And all of this, I repeat, in a single short passage… Tocqueville was a great discerning genius!

AMERICA AND RUSSIA

Nota bene: the following two Tocqueville entries must stay separate: the first being of a more general nature, with the original comment, whereas the second one is focusing specifically on the two underlined “trampled gems.” The first of them is sympathetic toward Russia’s historical experience, having to fight men, whereas America focuses most on fighting the elements; the other clearly predicts the path of capitalist development for America, whereas Russia is identified as a nation of natural totalitarian mentality.

Here is my comment on the two global superpowers America and Russia and their joint destiny of world leadership, centering around the celebrated prophesy of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), as formulated in his magnum opus Democracy in America [Volume I, 1835, Volume II, 1840]. This entry clearly falls under the definition of History Unknown, Ignored, and Misunderstood, above all, in its second and third components. It is therefore a bona fide Lady fare. The following are two especially significant quotes from Tocqueville’s work. The first passage concludes Volume I; the second one comes at the end of Volume II.

There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points but seem to tend toward the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both have grown up unnoticed, and while the attention of mankind was turned elsewhere, they have suddenly put themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned of their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path, to which no limit can be perceived. The American struggles against the obstacles that nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained by the plowshare; those of the Russian, by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm. (The underlining is mine, in order to make two important comments later on.) The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter servitude. Their starting point is different, and their courses are not the same, yet each seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe. (From Democracy in America. Vol. I. Conclusion.)

And here is the final paragraph of Volume II, and of the whole book:

I am aware that many of my contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters here below and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and unintelligent power arising from anterior events, from their race or from the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are false and cowardly, such principles can never produce anything but feeble men and pusillanimous nations. Providence has created mankind neither entirely independent nor entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free; as it is with men, so it is with communities. The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to either servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness.

The two passages above have been quoted as a reminder of the immense importance of the understanding of the true nature of the American-Russian global contraposition, of its scope and extreme relevance in our day and age. There is a concerted effort, a mind-boggling conspiracy of sorts, to downplay its significance in the post-Soviet world. Tocqueville was writing his prophesy during the time of the Russian Empire, but it would have been a bad joke to suggest that its relevance had not transferred to Russia’s next incarnation, as the USSR. By the same token, it should be a bad joke, a crime against common sense, to suggest that Russia of today has somehow lost her importance on the world stage and within the two-superpower equation.

There are efforts to diminish the significance of Russia by raising the specter of China as the new, emerging to challenge the American supremacy, superpower of the future. This emphasis on China ought to be seen in the context of the simultaneous diminishment of the Russian factor, and within it, it is highly objectionable. China and Russia today have teamed up against the United States, and the perceived Chinese challenge can only be seen through the prism of the Sino-Russian relationship, within which Russia is demonstrably playing the role of the senior partner.

But leaving all such details aside, and reducing our geopolitical riddle to “missiles and sense,” there is only one nation on the face of the earth today capable of wiping the United States completely off the map, and it is not China, but… Russia. Quod erat demonstrandum.

(My next Tocquevillian America-Russia entry will “follow suit” tomorrow.)

DEEP THROAT

(Please, bear in mind that this entry is not about the actual identity of Watergate’s Deep Throat, of which I have no certain knowledge even today, after the alleged exposure of Mr. Felt as the one, which frankly I am still rather skeptical about. This entry is about perceptions only, and as the strictly unofficial perceptions of the Watergate scandal in official Moscow of that time do represent a certain historical value, for the record, it is only with this purpose in mind that I am presently performing this minor public service.)

Dr. Henry Kissinger as the Nixon-slayer, that is, the Deep Throat of Watergate?!

This may be another one of the too many items which may never be published, due to their explosive nature, but as a statement of record in a book whose pressing objective doesn’t include immediate publication, this is something that ought not to be withheld.

There was never any doubt among my high-placed Soviet colleagues in Moscow as to the proper identity of the person denoted by the code word Deep Throat of Watergate fame. “It is not accidental,” they chuckled, “that the phrase Deep Throat has a double (and if we wish to be uncharitable, triple) meaning. Why call a person Deep Throat if his deep-throated voice has not struck you as his most distinctive physical feature?”

With this argument in mind, adding some perfectly pertinent professional observations to the whole picture, all fingers inevitably pointed in the direction of Henry Kissinger, and I am convinced that despite the recent most disingenuous attribution of the Deep Throat fame to Mark Felt of the FBI, the latter’s lame confession could not change a single mind in Moscow as to the identity of the real Deep Throat.

… Maybe a few years down the road, after Dr. Kissinger’s inevitable demise (we all have to go some day!), Mr. Bob Woodward will write another mystery thriller on the true identity of his celebrated source?

KISSINGER: A SUPERMAN AND A SCHOLAR

(The jocular title here is an obvious parody of the “gentleman and scholar” cliché. For the record, my personal attitude toward Dr. Kissinger has always been markedly benign, and whatever presumably unflattering I am going to say about  him in this and the next entry, has nothing to do with any kind of subjectivity on my part... And, mind you, this entry was written several years ago, and presently I see no particular need to update its dated elements.)

So far, I have devoted a few pleasant words, here and there, to Dr. Henry Kissinger, the professor emeritus of superpower pageantry and feel-good cold war atmospherics. It is time, perhaps, to dedicate a whole entry to this important man, whose personal impact has not lost weight even after more than three decades out of public office, and whose symbolic value will not lose currency for as long as other public servants, like him, successfully aspire to places of top consequence in American foreign policy.

His outstanding role in Russian-American affairs has recently been highly praised by Vladimir Putin ipse, during a short press conference in the Kremlin on the occasion of their one-on-one meeting, that may not have been their last. These days, Henry Kissinger is regularly sitting vis-à-vis another elder, his friend and counterpart Yevgeni Primakov, on the recently-hatched American-Russian Council on Bilateral Relations. All is well, in so far as the Kissinger legacy is concerned.

Very few people, if any, on the American side of the Atlantic, realize, however, the true reasons for such an unprecedented distinction for a has-been Secretary of State, who has long been singled out (unfairly, I dare say) as a “war criminal” in certain ultra-liberal circles of Western Europe for his role in Washington’s decision-making in the closing phase of the American military involvement in South-East Asia, broadly known as the Vietnam War.

In one of my more provocative, but immensely important, entries, I have discussed the prevailing attitude in the Kremlin, which emerged circa 1967, toward the American Jews in foreign policy as the fifth column, or the weakest, most vulnerable link in this country’s political establishment, that is, most open and vulnerable to direct Soviet influence and manipulation. This attitude was best articulated by my former boss Dr. Georgi Arbatov (himself an ethnic Jew), in this immortal dictum: “When they (Americans of Jewish descent) look at you (meaning all non-Jewish Soviet officials), they see their Soviet adversary; but when they look at me, they see a fellow Jew!”

It is therefore in this capacity, as an American high-placed Jew, that Dr. Kissinger was cultivated the most by the old Soviet government, and is presently symbolically cultivated by the Russian government of Putin and Medvedev. This is not to detract anything from Kissinger’s personal competence and from all his other admirable qualities, which may well be prodigious. But to fail to understand the main reason for Moscow’s attraction to this man then and now, is to fail to understand the dynamic substance of the key political game going on in the world today, and to lose it, for sure, in the end. (Which is probably going to happen anyway, as there are no brave souls in America today, willing to learn, or to admit to having learned from this.)

EXPECTO PATRONUM: KISUNKO AND BASISTOV

The Khrushchev subsection has now come to an end, but the present entry preserves its continuity, as it talks about the successful Soviet ABM program, concluded under Brezhnev in the 1970’s, but, like all other ambitious military, nuclear, and space programs, having its roots in the hard-toiled and blood-irrigated soil of Stalinism.

The entry’s title invokes a playful reference to Harry Potter’s magic spell, but its content is hardly a joking matter. I am talking about the ABM defense ring around Moscow originally conceived in general terms and also commanded by my father General Artem Fedorovich Sergeev-Artem.

There were actually two fiercely competing Chief Designers of alternative defense systems, namely Grigori Vasilievich Kisunko and Anatoly Georgievich Basistov. Artem was obviously on excellent terms with them both, but betwixt the two of them they could not stand each other. I met them both too, naturally separately. (Social conversation only!) Whether their mutual enmity was some kind of act on their part, or the real thing, I could never figure out…

In case my reader has not figured out so far the meaning of Expecto Patronum, in this entry, both men were chief producers of the ‘magic spell’ called out for Moscow’s defense against a nuclear attack. Their designs (patronuses) were different in principle, reflecting their two approaches to the problem of strategic defense. Kisunko designed the fairly inoffensive method of some kind of metallic mist to be introduced into the path of the incoming offensive missiles. Basistov was far more aggressive, basing his design on intercepting the incoming missiles by a preventive nuclear explosion along their earlier trajectory.

Initially, Kisunko’s design was favored by the Kremlin, as sufficiently effective for Moscow’s defense, yet innocuous enough to avoid a nuclear explosion. Ironically, it is Basistov’s aggressive design now being adopted by the Russian defense forces. The reason for this is plain and simple. During Cold War, a nuclear response to an attack on Moscow could have produced a nuclear explosion over the territory of, say, Poland who was then a Soviet ally. These days, Russia lacks the protective padding of the Warsaw Pact countries, but on the bright side of it, she would no longer mind such an explosion to take place in the skies over some unfriendly NATO country…

“COMRADE CHÉ”

The joke contained in the title will probably escape those who are unaware of the tautology here. The word Ché means friend, pal, and such, as it was frequently used by Guevara in his personal Argentinean idiolect, from which comes his well-known appellation as El Ché.

The “Cuban series” (already mostly posted on October 19^th, 20^th, and 22^nd, 2011) of the Khrushchev subsection starts with this prelude devoted to the extraordinary man who had become an international legend after his death, whereas in life he was a major nuisance to his future worshipers.

My reason for placing this entry in the Lady section is not to reveal some secret history, but mainly to draw attention to certain commonly ignored facts about him, such as the fact that while posthumously hailed as a legend, he used to be a real thorn in Moscow’s side, and had the American CIA been more imaginative and nuanced, they should have taken deliberate measures to keep him alive, rather than directly contribute to his capture and execution in 1967, in Bolivia, assuring his historical immortality as a symbol of anti-American anti-Imperialist struggle of the third-world nations, most conspicuously throughout America’s backyard in Latin America. Not at all surprisingly, today’s unabashedly socialist and unmistakably nationalist nation of Bolivia makes a convincing case as to who, these days, has been winning the Ché Guevara war on the formerly uncontestable American-owned continent.

At this point, it makes sense to introduce an external information source, for the reader’s quick reference, This is what is commonly known about the poster child of world revolution Ché Guevara. (The paragraphs in teal font below are mostly digested from the Wikipedia.)---

Ernesto “Ché” Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Ché Guevara, El Ché, or simply Ché, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerilla leader, military theorist, an international statesman, and a major figure of the Cuban Revolution. Since his death, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol and global insignia within popular culture.

As a young medical student, he traveled throughout Latin America, and was transformed by the endemic poverty that he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region’s ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of monopoly capitalism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being the world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala’s social reforms under President Jacobo Guzman whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow would solidify Guevara’s radical ideology. Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raul and Fidel Castro, and, joined their 26^th of July Movement, invading Cuba aboard the Granma, with the intention of overthrowing the U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents. He was promoted to second in command and played a pivotal role in the successful two year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.

Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviews of appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian reforms, as minister of industries, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba’s armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuba’s socialism. Such positions allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces which repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis..

(Those familiar with my narrative of the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missile Crisis, will be instantly aware that the last paragraph was too wide of the mark, to treat it with as much as the minimum of credulity.)

...Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to incite revolutions, first-- unsuccessfully-- in Congo-Kinshasa, and later, in Bolivia, where he was captured by the CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and executed.

Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination as the subject in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. The Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico, has been declared the most famous photograph in the world.

What is demonstrably missing from this biographical summary is the fact that much of Guevara’s activity in the early years was oriented (not quite too obviously, of course, as he was a bona fide firebrand and an independently-minded revolutionary) toward his recognition and appreciation by Moscow. The latter, he, naturally, but still naively, hoped, could provide him with the necessary support, without which his actual struggle would be doomed to fail. (He was right, as his last year in the Bolivian jungle was plagued by inadequate logistics and paucity of elementary resources and supplies.) But Moscow wasn’t too eager to embrace any Latin American revolutionary, firmly and logically believing in the concept of spheres of influence. Furthermore, it saw Guevara as a trouble-making loose cannon, who wanted to fight world imperialism by his own rules, and not by the rules coordinated and agreed upon with Moscow. Eventually, Guevara understood that the Soviets would not be an ally of his, but rather a hindrance to his revolutionary ambition, and he tried to court the Chinese, who, however, refused to take his bait, although also at odds with Moscow at the time. Eventually, he was made feel unwelcome even in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, where all the talk about him being number two in the revolutionary hierarchy was nonsense, as, in effect, he was removed from any position of power and influence. Thus, at the end he was practically forced to flee Cuba in 1965, and basically left on his own, which ultimately resulted in his demise.

After his death, everything, naturally, changed. A dead revolutionary is the ideal revolutionary, transcending from a flawed personality of a mortal to the perfection of a fallen martyr (death bestowing a sainthood of sorts upon the dead).

As a result of his martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a new man driven by moral, rather than material incentives, Ché Guevara evolved into a quintessential icon of the leftist movements. An array of notable individuals have viewed him as a hero; for example, Mandela referred to him as “an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom” while Sartre described him as “not only an intellectual, but also the most complete human being of our age.” Guevara remains a beloved national hero to many in Cuba, where his image adorns the $3 Cuban Peso, and school children begin each morning by pledging “We will be like Ché.” In his native homeland of Argentina, where high schools bear his name, numerous Ché museums dot the country, which in 2008 unveiled a twelve-foot bronze statue of him in his birth city of Rosario. Additionally, Guevara has been sanctified by some Bolivian campesinos as “Saint Ernesto,” to whom they pray for assistance.

…Sic venit gloria mundi!

AN AWKWARD DANCE: MY FATHER AND KHRUSHCHEV. PART II.

…Khrushchev was hoping to establish connection with Artem on several grounds. First and foremost, he was trying to promote his connection to Comrade Artem, my grandfather. Khrushchev was born in the village of Kalinovka, in the Province of Kursk, not too far from the village of Glebovo, in the same Province where Comrade Artem had been born eleven years earlier. Furthermore, Khrushchev claimed that his professional roots had been in Donbass, the heart of Comrade Artem’s territory. Khrushchev alleged that his own father had worked in Donbass as a coal miner, and that he himself had started his professional career there, first as a tinker, then as a mechanic.

Everybody knew of course that Khrushchev had “cheated on his résumé,” like most other people had done, as a matter of standard practice. Prior to the Civil War, which he had joined in 1919 as a soldier in Stalin’s private army, his background had been entirely peasant. This fact left undoctored, would have stigmatized his budding political career. (Curiously, in Kalinin’s case, the fact that everybody knew that the man was a bona fide blue collar worker allowed his legend to stress his peasant roots, but Khrushchev would not have been able to get away with promoting his peasant origin.) In a proletarian dictatorship, as Lenin had called the Soviet political system, Khrushchev simply had to be a proletarian. So, of course, he just had to invent all that proletarian stuff about Donbass, etc.

It was not a big deal, and, as I said before, it was common practice among Khrushchev’s peers. Khrushchev did not expect my father to believe his lies, but only to appreciate his profound respect for Comrade Artem, in choosing Donbass for his résumé. But General Artem stubbornly refused to acknowledge Khrushchev as a “paisano.” He told me a very popular joke circulated in Donbass during the so-called “glorious decade” of Khrushchev’s stay at the helm:

“Why do the coal miners of Donbass carry flashlights brighter than their brethren elsewhere?” -- “Because they are searching for traces of Comrade Khrushchev’s Donbass heritage.”

This rather square joke represents the general level of disrespect Khrushchev used to be treated with, from the start of his political career to its very end, in 1964. I personally find this contemptuous attitude grossly unfair. At least Uncle Nikita had a character; he was a colorful individual, a perennial newsmaker. I would take him any time against the lifeless, humorless nobodies of the Brezhnev-Kosygin-Chernenko ilk.

The Donbass connection was not the only one where Khrushchev was expecting to find common ground with Artem. In 1955, he called him for the proverbial walk in the countryside. He started their conversation on a personal note, telling Artem about his meeting in Peking the previous year, with my mother and me. Having completed this conditioning stage of the conversation, Khrushchev then fired his big gun, blaming Stalin for the Aerowagon wreck, which in 1921 had taken the life of Comrade Artem.

From this point on, the purpose of their conversation ought to be clear to the reader. In the next few months Khrushchev would be making his bold political move denouncing Stalin in the so-called “Secret Speech” at the upcoming Communist Party Congress. In doing so, he wanted Artem explicitly on his side. In return, he would personally guarantee Artem’s fast promotion to Marshal, and also help Artem dissolve his grotesque Spanish marriage, and rejoin his Russian family.

Accusing Stalin of Comrade Artem’s death, Khrushchev had naturally assumed that Comrade Artem’s son must bear a deep personal grudge against his father’s murderer, whoever that may be. After all, isn’t blood thicker than water? He obviously intended to strike a welcome chord in General Artem’s heart, but instead, achieved the opposite effect of alienating him even further.

Both Khrushchev and Artem badly underestimated each other. Khrushchev failed to realize the strength of Artem’s admiration for his late adoptive father Stalin. On his part, my father uncompromisingly despised this extraordinary peasant, whose clever mask, worn by him all his life, Artem had mistaken for the real face.