“We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigor, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self; to have faith in this self and in life.” Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom”
“Behind Closed Doors” by award-winning historian Lawrence Rees, and continuing with “The Grand Failure” by the best foreign policy expert in his time, Zbigniew Brzezinski was not only difficult reads for me. Both books had me destabilized for a time from within and without for a time.
All that I have known about the Atlantic Treaty, the rationale behind the engagement of the western powers of the Second World War was made farcical. When America and Great Britain became accommodating to the Soviet Union as their ally, the Great War became the most destructive human quest for power, for spheres of influence, not the freedom of peoples.
Joseph Stalin’s unbridled ambitions, his lust for power, were ignored. The world turned a blind eye to his evil system of terror of domination and control, the mass murders, the deportation of families and communities, deprivation and imprisonment, among others. Instead, being in power, he was extolled in poetry, hailed by music, idolized by thousands of monuments in the Soviet Union, and the West by some of the world’s best intellectuals along with government propaganda during the early beginnings of the War until the onset of the Cold War.
The authors of these important documents interviewed thousands of survivors and participants like soldiers and administrators of the Soviet system. They also read the dossiers of victims from the archives of the Soviet Union that survived destruction by the KGB at the rate of five thousand per month from the 1930s to 1940s. The surviving dossiers were made available by Mikhail Gorbachev during the Glasnost era and reveal that Stalin was eviler than Adolf Hitler. His crimes along with Russian Communism, their lust for power, during war and peace times were worse than those committed by the Nazis.
Stalin’s lust for power can show us what happens when this quest is not rooted in strength but in weakness. The application of this individual quest that later became common in the Soviet government that he used was the subjugation and total control of life in Poland, and the Eastern European block countries including parts of conquered Germany. These countries fall under the Soviet “Sphere of Influence” that he proposed the Western Allies to ensure “friendly borders and countries around Russia.”
The irreconcilable differences of understanding over this policy by the allied powers after the Second World War, is among the concerns that ultimately led to the Cold War. For Stalin and the Soviets, the “Sphere of Influence” is not about friendship and partnership towards economic progress and full expression of sovereignty but total dominance and control by Soviet Russia of the countries under them.
Now I am not a foreign policy expert or historian. Like many of you, I am an ordinary person who seeks to eat three decent meals a day and to live a peaceful life in a community of civil people.
The two books I am reading are directly concerned with the complexities of the relationship between the leaders of the Western Powers with Stalin, and the birth and death of communism. These are lessons for experts to digest and are beyond my intellectual powers.
But what got me going, in reading these books page by page, are the images and expressions of the inability of a peasant, housewife, and a child to fight, defend their homes or simply live in the face of hatred that herds, deports and deprives them of life. It is despicable but understandable to see subjugated and suffering individuals becoming traitors to their people to gain favor or secondary strength from the enemy because they lacked genuine strength.
Those who study power for its use in organizations can readily identify Fromm’s twofold meaning of the word in these historical documents. “One is the possession of power over somebody, the ability to dominate him; the other meaning is the possession of the power to do something, to be able, to be potent. The latter meaning has nothing to do with domination; it expresses mastery in the sense of ability.”
Humankind’s irrational passions for power and destructiveness are expressed in his unbridled ambitions for power and freedom to do as he pleases. These people worship money, the position of wealth and power in the state or society. They may appear religious and quote the teachings of the great spiritual leaders of the human race, transforming these instead into a confusing jungle of superstitious and idol-worship.”
Genuine power must help individuals and groups of people gain freedom, from one stage to the next maturing freedoms, not the kind that teaches you to do anything you want, anytime you want it.
Many today understand power and freedom in this manner. It is associated with buying and selling of even your very soul like a commodity in the market.
Each man or woman must find real and inherent freedom and power available to them.
Under their given circumstances and situations, people consciously and independently exert effort to choose from a bundle of possibilities at their disposal. They may not be free from financial constraint or illness but each is free to do something about the situation. Freedom lies not on the capacity to say yes to everything but to say yes only to that which really matters to the individual and who ultimately must decide if it’s good for himself and everyone else.
A happy Cordillera Day folks!