18 I CHRONICLESnNever mind, it’s one thing that most of you kids are reallyngood at. Cultivate a full rich fantasy life and try to behavenyourself. Being an integral part of someone else’s fantasynlife, maybe that’s the modern definition of true love. . . .nWhere does all this leave us, except almost out of time?nSince this is a (pardon) commencement, we need to end onnan uplifting note. In a few minutes 1 am going to have tonclimb back between the pages of my book. At the same timenyou are going out into the Real World. I don’t envy you. 1nbelieve there is some kind of a natural law (probably anmatter of hydraulics) which keeps the level of corruption justnabout the same in every given area of human endeavor. Nonmatter what you do or don’t do, the natural depravitynquotient will remain roughly the same. The Arts are annexception, attracting more than an average share of scumbags.nBut please remember we are an open, free society.nAnd one good working definition of freedom is they can’tnmake you be an artist and you don’t even have to pretend tonappreciate Art. Be careful, though. Best to keep yournaesthetic contempt to yourselfnLet me conclude with a few words about Freedom. Sincenthe economic aspect of the American Dream is long gone,nexcept to people coming here from Latin America or othernplaces like (pardon) Bulgaria, Freedom is the main thing wenhave got left. Enjoy it. We have fairly free speech. You cannsay pretty much what you want to, including the F- Word,nprovided you do not openly or seriously question any of thenassumptions which grease the cogs and wheels of ournsociety. I wish 1 had time to discuss some of thosenassumptions with you. But you know them all already ornyou wouldn’t have come this far. You have learned a thingnor two. You know how to watch what you think. That’snwhere all serious trouble begins, with unmonitored thinking.’nAt this late stage of your development, while you are asngood-looking and healthy (even though plenty of you are asnA SOVIET PSYCHOSIS? by Arnold BeichmannAs Mikhail Gorbachev moves forward in his role as thennew Vozhd of the USSR, he must take pride in anunique achievement. In a few years, he has managed toninternationalize a Russian word—glasnost—and by itsnrepeated use at home and abroad has dazzled the world withnmiracles that have yet to materialize. Whatever greatnreforms he pulls out of his hat, however, liberation ofnmemory is the one which the ruling Soviet ideology cannotntolerate, for the power of memory is the human attributenmost dangerous to a totalitarian rulership. For Sovietnsatraps, the safest and most useful human condition isnamnesia. True, there is a certain process of recall whichnvegetates between real memory and amnesia: It is selectivenmemory by which Homo sovieticus accepts what the partynwants remembered.nArnold Beichman is Research Fellow at The HoovernInstitution. He is the author of several books and coauthornof a biography of Yuri V. Andropov.nnnplain as pig tracks and probably feel lousy a whole lot of thentime) as you ever will be, it will not occur to you to questionnanything important. And even if it does occur to you, not tonworry and never mind, you won’t know how.nMaybe you are wondering where a fictional character, antruly bookish guy, gets off making big fat generalizationsnlike that. 1 mean, here 1 am, about as alien as ET, trying tontell you things about yourselves that you don’t even know.nYou want to know what some other aliens, smart and legalnones and not a bit fictional, have said? Here’s Solzhenitsynnand his notorious 1978 commencement address at (pardon)nHarvard: “Enormous freedom exists for the press, but notnfor the readership, because newspapers mostly give emphasisnto those opinions that do not too openly contradict theirnown and the general trend. . . . Nothing is forbidden, butnwhat is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way intonperiodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally, yournresearchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashionnof the day.” Well, you can shrug that off. He’s a Rusky whonnever went to college and spent more years in the Gulagnthan I have in my book. They didn’t even have TV innSiberia. No wonder he can’t tell Kiwi from Shinola. . . .nWell, then, here’s another who, even though he’s anforeigner, too, had a better (British) education than any ofnyou did. Here’s V.S. Naipaul, in 1979: “The young peoplenat the university, the ones you try to talk to, are really likenold men. Their minds are closed, by television discussions,nby newspapers, by their own successes.” Get it? Good, butndon’t worry about it. Always remember that being happy isnthe best F- Wording revenge. Always remember the handydandy,naccurate definition of happiness—the state of beingnwell-deceived. And 1 hope you will all live happily evernafter.nThanks for your kind attention. May the good Lord blessnand keep you all.nSoviet man lives constantly racked between memories.nHe must be prepared to blank out—in an instant—onenmemory—something he has actually seen with his ownneyes or heard with his own ears or read in a newspaper ornbook—to reregister another memory of a pseudo-event,nwhich he has not seen, read, or heard and which likelynnever happened. “A” can become “non-A” in a twinkling.nFreedom of memory—the choice to remember or notnremember—is perilous to the Politburo and to the CentralnCommittee, because it threatens the structure of The SinglenLie which props the Soviet Union within and makes itnacceptable beyond its borders as a perfectly normal, everydaynnation-state. Freedom of memory demands civil freedomsnand a civil society; it is the enemy of comprehensive,nredemptive, yet implausible doctrines such as “liberation”nand “scientific socialism.”nTo ensure the success of The Single Lie, everybody in thenUSSR from Gorbachev down must believe in it, even whennpretending not to. Every Soviet action, every Soviet diplo-n