Freedom House II: Sharansky Speech

Sharansky spoke three times–in an address to the group, in a Q&A forum beside Kang Chol-Hwan, and in a rather sparsely attended press conference (as always, watching the press turns out to be just as interesting than watching the speaker).

Sharansky was introduced by Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy, and his introduction contained two significant statements: first, that “a dissident movement in North Korea will come in [due] time;” and second, that “people with the moral clarity to see evil . . . can bring about its final demise.”

A note for readers: the quality of my reporting is limited by the speed at which I write. Items in quotes, or those in Q&A format should be considered 90% accurate, but always faithful to the speaker’s thought. If anyone else who was there can point out where I’ve misstated something, I’d gratefully accept the criticism. Speaking of which, where were you, Aaron?

Five minutes into Sharansky’s speech, I knew why the apparartchiks in the Siberian eventually abandoned all hope of breaking him. Like Kang, he’s a physically tiny man, just five-foot-three, but welded onto a ferrous framework–a will and a voice on the scale of the Magnitogorsk Steel Works. Sharansky’s accent is no less grandiose; he can be difficult to understand at times. His voice and tenor are forceful, and often loud. To paraphrase a great European intellectual, Sharansky can come on a bit like a flying mallet. Yet Sharansky’s intellect is deft and incisive, although it’s more evidence when he’s debating than when he’s lecturing. He’d devoured Kang’s book and thought through the similarities and differences of the Soviet terror system to that of North Korea. Despite his admission that the North Korean system is far harsher than what he himself had experienced, he came prepared to apply the lessons of his own experiences to North Korea.

Still, the speech was mostly a condensation of Sharansky’s book, which I’d venture most of those in the crowd had already read. I strongly recommend you read it, too (less so for the last third of it, which mostly deals with internal Israeli politics). The main themes were these:

Democracy is for everyone. Sharansky drew on the example of those who one said, “There will be no democracy in Japan,” where thousands of years of civilization had produced no democratic experience. Likewise, he rejects the idea that democracy cannot take root in the Arab world, or in Korea. To Sharansky, democracy is the natural condition of societies. “You can’t give people a little bit of freedom. When you’ve experienced freedom, you never want to go back.” He recalls finding common cause with Christians and even Ukrainian nationalists in prison–the latter not being known for their affection for Jews (in his book, he describes how one made him a prayer shawl that Sharansky still treasures).

What distinguishes “Fear societies” and “free societies.” Sharansky applies the now-famous “town square test.” If you can go to the town square to criticize the state without fear of persecution, the society is free.

How people survive in fear societies. Sharansky classifies those living in fear societies into three general groups: true believers, dissenters, and doublethinkers (a term borrowed from Orwell). Dissenters differ from doublethinkers in that they dare oppose the regime openly. Sharansky noted the unlikeliness that North Korea contains any dissenters today; those who oppose the regime must take refuge in doublethink. He recalls the moment he first became a doublethinker when Stalin died in March 1953, when Sharansky was just five years old. At the time, Stalin was gearing up the state’s purge machinery for a mass deportation of Soviet Jews to Siberia (more here), starting with the same critical broadsides in Pravda that had preceded so many other purges before. Sharansky’s grandfather pulled him aside and whispered that he should go to school and cry like all the other children, but that inside, he should remember that they had all been saved by a miracle. Sharansky noted the unlikeliness that North Korea contains any dissenters today, but that the growth of doublethink is fastest in the most repressive societies like North Korea’s.

How “fear societies” maintain power. First, through terror–the containment of dissent and the persecution of suspected doublethinkers. Of the latter, Sharansky cited Kang’s description of hiding under layers of blankets to listen to South Korean radio. Second, by creating external enemies toward which to divert popular resentment. Third, by obtaining aid from those same enemies (Sharansky may be speaking of communism’s unique economic inefficiencies; China, having abandoned communism, seeks trade on favorable terms instead). Such a strategy requires mobilizing disaffected people for a sacred struggle against an enemy, even as the regime tries to mobilize its suffering people for a sacred struggle against the foreign “enemies” who are feeding them. A regime wishing to do this must control the free flow of information.

On the importance of moral clarity. There are people who would make “any compromise to avoid war.” Sharansky sees this as a false choice. “We can’t send troops all over the world.” “Dictatorships have strong militaries, but they are always weak from the inside” because of the extraordinary expenditure of energy required to maintain internal control. This brought Sharansky back to the power of radio and its potential for awakening dissent, and the importance of free societies using radio to tell dissenters and doublethinkers that the free world stands with them. That requires moral clarity and the willingness to link aid to demands for political liberalization. Here, Sharansky credited Reagan by name for demanding human rights concessions from the Soviets, and denounced the South Korean government for giving trade and aid without demanding liberalization or transparency as conditions. Separately, Sharansky remembers:

In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan’s “provocation” quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth ““ a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

Spreading democracy makes the world safer. “To stay in power, a democratic leader mut please his people. In a fear society, the leader must simply keep control.” One way they do this is to “mobilize people for a sacred struggle against an [external] enemy.” Thus, “dictators need to sustain tension with the outside world while getting support from the free world.” Sharansky sees dictatorships as feeding conflict for the sake of their own survival. He contrasts this with free societies, whose populations are inherently opposed to war. “Freedom,” declared Sharansky, “is the best guarantor of stability,” which was one of the big applause lines of his speech.

On North Korea. Had Sharansky not corrected his geography a moment later, the day’s headline could have been, “Sharansky Calls for Regime Change in South Korea.” He also called on the United States and South Korea to link assistance to North Korea with political liberalization.