matic initiative, every treaty they sign, their every statistic,ndecree, and communique are lies. There is only one truth:na successful Soviet citizen must remember not to remember,nand his memory must tell him not to have one. Whatnhappened yesterday happened tomorrow; what will happenntomorrow took place yesterday.nNow The Single Lie is not an everyday phenomenon ornform of hypocrisy or propaganda or “disinformation.” ThenUSSR is the first state since 1917 which, from its foundingnto this very day, 70 years later, totally depends on ThenSingle Lie for its legitimacy—in contrast with democraticncountries which seek theirs through a constitution, writtennor unwritten. Whereas The Single Lie provides unlimitednpower for the Politburo, democratic constitutions limit thenpower of elected officials. The Single Lie means thatnnothing in the USSR, except The Lie itself, is ever fixed, ornpermanent. No value has consistency, no fact remains fact,nan event can become a nonevent, and defeat a victory. Innhis broadcast on V-J Day in 1945, Stalin declared: “Thendefeat of the Russian troops [by the Japanese] in 1904 left angrave imprint on the minds of our people. It was a blacknstain in the history of our country. Our people werenconfident and awaited the day when Japan would be routednand this dark blot be wiped out. We men of the olderngeneration have awaited this day for forty years, and now itnhas come.” No Bolshevik would have said this in 1917. ThenBolsheviks had always referred to the Japanese victorynapprovingly because it had weakened Tsarism; but by 1945nthere seemed nothing unnatural about it.nA free memory, individually owned rather than collectivizednor nationalized, would question the infallibility of thenParty-State which, according to Marxism-Leninism, is annunchallengeable, supra-human institution, created by history.nMemory must belong to the Party-State, which rulesnby memory control, or mnemocracy, and which alone hasnthe right to create history as The Single Lie, and toncontinuously reorder the truth.nSometimes the switch is accomplished with alarmingnspeed. Overnight, in September 1932, Stalin first alterednthe image of Hitier from Fascist monster to heroic ally andnthen 21 months later, in June 1941, back to the Fascistnmonster. As World War II was ending, a further miraculousnchange was affected in the Soviet historiography: the UnitednStates, in official rhetoric, became Hitler’s ally along withnthe “Zionists.” Today, Fred Hechinger in the New YorknTimes (21 January 86) points out that Soviet high schoolnhistory textbooks apply the term “imperialist,” withoutndistinction, to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, imperial Japan,nand the United States. The U.S. role in defeating Fascism isndownplayed and distorted and the Japanese are said to havensurrendered in response to the 1945 Soviet entry into thenwar. In his V-E Day anniversary speech, Mikhail Gorbachevnminimized Allied military aid to the USSR sayingnthat this assistance was “not as great as they in the West likento say.”nTo understand the meaning of the Party-State’s monopolynof memory better, it may be useful to examine thenpathology of induced memory loss. Harrison’s Principles ofnInternal Medicine defines memory as “the retention ofnlearned experiences.” For this retention, according to thenaccepted medical knowledge, certain ordered mental processesnare necessary. First, the perceived experiences mustnbecome a part of the brain’s mental activities. This, then,nmust be followed by the process of “mnemonic integrationnand retention.” Third comes recall, followed, last, byn”replay” of the experience. This is a paradigm of the normalncondition when memory belongs to a free individual, anHomo sapiens. In totalitarian society, the pattern is quitendifferent. Memory, by command, becomes “unlearned”nand supplanted by “relearned” nonexperiences. Homo sovieticusncan never say, “But I remember it differently.” Homonsovieticus may know differently, but may not rememberndifferentiy. The consequences of such public dissent, i.e.,nof remembering “differently,” can be severe. Since thenUSSR is not governed by rule of law, punishment isnunpredictable.nTo safeguard himself and his family. Homo sovieticusnmust create for himself a transient historical memory andninstill the same failing, with the help of schooling, in hisnchildren. For example, according to the New York Times,nthe Soviet high school history syllabus shows mnemocracynat work: “The teaching of history is given the task of formingnin youth a Marxist-Leninist world view, deep ideologicalnconvictions, a clear, class-oriented approach to phenomenanof social life, Soviet patriotism, loyalty to proletarianninternationalism, devotion to the party’s cause, the task ofndeveloping a Communist attitude toward work, a feeling ofnduty and discipline and irreconcilability to bourgeois ideology.”nIn other words, registering and assimilating unautho-nnnSEPTEMBER 1987119n