Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 13 – The premature
death of Valeriya Novodvorskaya at 64 has brought an outpouring of regret about
the passing of rights activist and commentator. But Aleksandr Skobov, who has a
biography in many respects paralleling hers but who often disagreed with her,
has called attention to one aspect of our collective loss that must not be
forgotten.
In a commentary on Grani.ru today,
Skobov acknowledges that the two of them often found themselves as ideological
opponents over the last two decades because it seemed to him that Novodvorskaya
was still fighting with a dragon that had died, “the dragon of Soviet
totalitarianism” (grani.ru/opinion/skobov/m.231050.html).
Given how many new evils had emerged
in Russia since 1991, Skobov says, it seemed that Novodvorskaya had become “a
Cassandra” who was always harping on one theme: “the dragon is alive and will
necessarily awake! And she left this life just when no one could fail to notice
that the dragon in fact has awoken.”
That reawakened dragon, as she pointed
out, has sought to drown Russia in “a flood of fascist prohibitions.” Those
seeking to impose them pursue that dream with the same passion as “a vampire
wants blood.” Not surprisingly, that
dragon and its accomplices want to send people to the camps and to psychiatric
prisons just as they once did Novodvorskaya.
People said, Skobov writes, that “her
interpretation of liberalism only alienated people from liberal values, that
her views were the same bolshevism which she fought but only with a minus sign,
that the ‘unlimited capitalism’ she passionately advocated was no less inhumane
than the Stalinist dictatorship.
But Skobov insists, the only ones
who have the right to condemn Novodvorskaya for her views are those who also
“have not been afraid” as she was not “to say to the criminal authorities:
‘Gentlemen, you are beasts! You are liars, scoundrels, sadists and murderers!’”
and who like her were not afraid to suffer the consequences.
In many ways, Skobov says,
Novodvorskaya was a precise “reflection of the tragic fate of the Russian
intelligentsia which dreamed of giving the people freedom but which was forced
to defend its own freedom from this very people. Because it turned out that the
people did not want freedom for itself” and was prepared to back those who
would deprive everyone of it.
Whether this is because of
manipulation or reflects something “in the nature of ‘the people’ itself” is
one of those eternal and cursed Russian questions, Skobov says. But Novodvorskaya stood out because she was
always prepared to defend the individual against the tyranny of the majority.
According
to Skobov, “when the majority is wrong, resistance to it is the duty” of those
who see it as Novodvorskaya did. And that applies to “when the majority turns a
blind eye on or shameful behavior, when the majority approves and supports the
denial of rights and dignities of the human person, and when the majority
sympathizes with that.”
“An all-embracing system of force over the human
personality was established in the USSR, the ideal model of which was the
prison-camp zone,” he writes and Novodvorskaya insisted upon. Tragically, as she noted, the majority often
liked that, liked having an enemy, liked not having to make their own choices.
Skobov
says that “the majority even now does not want to remember and think” about
such things. Its members are inclined to accept those who say that “not
everything was bad about our little dragon,” that it launched satellites and
won wars. But those who say that aren’t
doing so for any reason but to trivialize “the lie, force, and cruelty” and
make them possible again.
Valeriya
Novodvorskaya “constantly recalled al this to all of us: the Soviet system was
a bad form of fascism, with the same cruelty to which was added hypocrisy. And
its crimes cannot be justified by any historical circumstances and tasks or any
achievements,” just as Hitler’s crimes can’t be justified by the autobahns.
Those
who “carried out collectivization, the Great Terror, the deportation of
peoples, who helped Hitler unleash the second world war and then under the
guise of liberation imposed a new tyranny on Eastern Europe, who violated all
human moral laws lost the right to be called people,” even if they were “capable
organizers.”
“One can
understand them, perhaps even regret the situation they found themselves in,
but one must not justify them,” that was Novodvorskaya’s constant message. When
others did not, she recalled to the current generation “the missions of victims
of the Soviet system.” Indeed, Skobov says, she was “their deputy among the living.”
And because she
was prepared to do so, those who would replicate what the Soviets had done “had
to know that none of their new victims would remained unnoticed. Someone would
always be found who would not allow the world to forget.” That was to her
credit and honor. It is something that despite Novodvorskaya’s passing must
never be forgotten.
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