"Olaf Stapledon - Light and the Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

representatives from among themselves, but only those who had completed a rigorous political training, practical and theoretical,
could stand for election. Parallel with this system there was a kind of Soviet system, based on occupation. All important
legislation had to be sanctioned both by the representatives of the Active Citizens and by the body which formed the elected apex
of this occupational system. This constitution could never have been put into action had there not already existed throughout the
country a high standard of political education and a body of trusted leaders, proved in the revolution.

The new government at once passed a mass of progressive legislation. Ownership of all means of production was vested in the
state, but delegated, with suitable checks, to the occupations themselves. In particular, the peasants were assured of ownership of
their land. For some purposes their control was individualistic, and for other purposes co-operative. The government also issued
'an appeal to all persons of goodwill throughout the world' to work with new courage to found a new and unified world order, 'to
establish freedom and the rule of the spirit'. The Tibetans, it declared, dedicated themselves absolutely to this end.

It is to this point of the history of man that I shall return when I begin to tell of the triumph of the will for light. Meanwhile I must
from this point pursue the story of increasing darkness; for at this very moment, when seemingly the will for the light had gained
unprecedented power, the will for darkness gathered its strength for final triumph.




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Darkness and the Light




The actual bifurcation of history may have begun long before this date. It may have begun in China, in Russia, in America, in
Britain, or in all these countries at different dates. But equally it may well be that Tibet was the crucial point. Whatever the truth
about the actual bifurcation, the relations of the new Tibet with its two mighty neighbours constituted the occasion on which the
great duplication became unmistakable and irrevocable. Henceforth my experience was dual. On the one hand I witnessed the
failure of the Tibetan renaissance, and the destruction of the Tibetan people. This was followed by the final Russo-Chinese war
which unified the human race but also undermined its capacity. On the other hand I saw the Tibetans create, seemingly in the
very jaws of destruction, a community such as man had never before achieved. And this community, I saw, so fortified the forces
of the light in the rival empires that the war developed into a revolutionary war which spread over the whole planet, and did not
end until the will for the light had gained victory everywhere.

Part II - DARKNESS

4 - THE QUENCHING OF THE LIGHT

i.REPERCUSSIONS IN BRITAIN
ii. A SYNTHETIC FAITH
iii. THE TIBETANS DEFEND THEMSELVES
iv. THE DESTRUCTION OF TIBET

i. REPERCUSSIONS IN BRITAIN

THE AWAKENING of the Tibetans caused a stir throughout the world. For a while it seemed that at last the light would win.
Bold young Tibetans, 'itinerant servants of the light', left their frugal and crag-bound 'incipient Utopia' to spread the gospel across
the high passes of the Karakorum Range into Sinkiang and far into the Russian plain. Others, still more daring, penetrated
eastward to the upper reaches of the Hwang Ho. Evading the efficient Chinese police, they carried the word even to Shanghai,