221 CHRONICLESnPoemnby Andrei NaviozovnGeisha—gazelle or gypsy,nQuietly sad, or sly?nWild, like spring in Ipswich,nSudden, like winter’s flight?nBreathe, and the sun is setting.nStop, and the crickets sing.nEvening, like circus nethng.nNoiselessly closes in.nReal? Try to distinguish!nHonest? The ghost of Banquo—nSpilling, like fluent English,nOver the gray embankment.nWhat else is there to observe.nWhile the tongue ties, panicking.nAll of you to a single nerve.nMotionless as a mannequin . . .nGeisha—gazelle or gypsy.nBolting away or dancing?nKind as an elipsis,nAs a long winter’s passing.ndiflFerent name. Within ordinary reality, thenopposite of freedom is slavery. If two people in anconversation agree upon the same word, but notnupon the reality to which it refers, that same wordnwill mean two difierent things. And so the oppositenof freedom, in the Soviet sense, is what we callnfreedom. The opposite of detente is detente. Thenopposite of the defense of peace is the defense ofnpeace. Contrary to the accepted idea, the Sovietnworld is characterized not by double-talk but bynsingle-talk/single-talk within duplicate realities. Onenword, two realities.nThe tragedy of the Soviet people (the people of East Europendo not suffer to the same degree from Korsakoff’s syndrome)nis that they must, though physically healthy, behave amongnthemselves as victims of Korsakoff’s syndrome. Since theynmust be pro-Stalin one day, anti-Stalin the next week,npro-Stalin the following month, anti-Stalin a year later andnthen pro-Stalin still another year thence, there is nothingnfor them to do but lapse into anterograde amnesia—that is,nan impaired ability to acquire new information, to learn, ornto form new memories. For example, a geneticist might onenday be required to believe in Lysenko and another day innVavilov, and any mistake in his timing might cost him hisncareer or freedom or even his life. The effects of such anmental state might be described as an acceptance ofnunlimited restrictions on thought and action since everythingnmight be forbidden in the future or it might alreadynhave been forbidden but not publicized and, moreover, benretroactively punishable. Also, some things may be forbid­nnnden to some but not to others. The question to be asked,nthen, is this: If he is behaving like a confabulatory amnesiacnevery moment of his waking life, can Homo sovieticus be antruly normal human being?nThe psychological and even physical consequences ofnconstantly living falsely were once summed up by BorisnPasternak:nThe great majority of us are required to live a lifenof systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to benaffected if, day after day, you say the opposite ofnwhat you feel, if you grovel before what you dislikenand rejoice at what brings you nothing butnmisfortune.nWhile the Korsakoff syndrome may affect millions ofnpeople in the USSR, there are tens of thousands of others,nprimarily intellectuals, living in democratic societies, whonseem to be victims of this malady as well. As AlexandernZinoviev has written:nIt is the intellectuals who are now the real bearersnof the communist tendency in the West, notnworkers and peasants. The communist system is ankind of paradise for intellectuals. A shabby andndirty paradise, but paradise all the same.nThese willing and witting Western political pilgrims see thenUSSR as an aberrant Utopia, arguing that if the USSR isnbad, the U.S. is worse; yet who controls their memory?nNicola Chiaramonte, the Italian political philosopher, oncenraised this question in Survey: How could a great physicistnlike Paul Langevin, “who would not have accepted thensmallest mathematical or physical proposition without anlong series of proofs and counter-checks, when faced withnthe prosecutor [Andrei] Vishinsky’s charge claiming to havenproved Trotsky’s intention to sell the Soviet fatherland toninternational capitalism, agree without question to supportnthe condemnation of the ‘traitors'”?nWhat is it that distorts the sense of reality of the moralnequivocators, the anti-anti-Communists, the fellow travelers,nthe Marxist academics and their acolytes, the neutralists,nand the Korsakoff neurotics in our pluralistic societies?nOr of a fool like Phil Donahue who really believes that thenSoviet citizens he put on one of his television shows are freento speak their minds like their American counterparts?nThe great peril which endangers world peace and freedomnis the Soviet power over its people’s memory. Andictator who was far worse than Hitler, if only because henlived and lasted longer, is being turned into a folk hero bynhis successors. Can there be genuine peace in freedomnwhen hundreds of millions of Soviet peoples must livendegraded by a system of memory control never before seennanywhere?nMore than ever before, the Western nations must endeavornto restore and expand the remembrance of thingsnpast among the exploited and downtrodden people of thenUSSR. The Single Lie can only survive in a world ofnwilling or unwilling amnesiacs. Free societies can restorenthe human balance which The Single Lie/Single Truthnsystem seeks to destroy. But only if they themselves grownmilitarily strong, remain morally free and united, andnrefuse to accept every abomination in the name of survival.n