"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The march of the hypocrites " - читать интересную книгу автора

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The march of the hypocrites

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Source: The London Times 21 August 1997
Translation: unknown

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In the Computer Age we still live by the law of the Stone Age: the
man with the bigger club is right. But we pretend this isn't so. We
don't notice or even suspect it - why, surely our morality progresses
together with our civilisation. Professional politicians, meanwhile,
have deftly covered certain vices with a civilised veneer.
In the 20th century we have enriched ourselves with innovations in
the field of hypocrisy. We find ever more ingenious ways to apply
double (triple? quadruple?) standards.
The bloody Yugoslav tragedy has unfolded before our eyes (and is
it over yet?). To be sure, blame for it lies with the Communist
coterie of Josip Broz Tito, which imposed an arbitrary pattern of
internal borders upon the country, trampling on ethnic common sense,
and even relocating ethnic masses by force. Yet blame lies also with
the venerable community pf Western leaders, who - with an angelic
naivete - took those false borders seriously, and then hastened at a
moment's notice, in a day or two, to recognise the independence of
several breakaway republics whose political formation they apparently
found to be advantageous. It was these leaders, then, who nudged
Yugoslavia toward many gruelling years of civil war; and their
position, declared as neutral, was by no means such.
Yugoslavia, with its seven estranged peoples, was told to fall
apart as soon as possible. But Bosnia, with its three estranged
peoples and vivid memories of Hitlerite Croatians slaughtering up to a
million Serbs, had to remain united at all costs - the particular
insistence of the United States Government. Who can explain the
disparity of such an approach?
Another example: the Trans-Dnestr Republic and Abkhazia were
deemed illegitimate simply because they were "self-prociaimed". But
which of the CIS countries was not "self-proclaimed'? Kazakhstan?
Ukraine? They were immediately and unconditionally recognised as
legitimate, even democratic (and the "Ukrainian Popular Self-Defence"
Brownshirts continue to march about freely, torches and all). Did not
the United States also "self-proclaim" their independence? Meanwhile,
the Kurds are not allowed even to self-proclaim. When they are not
being squashed by Iraq, with the tacit consent of the United States,
then they are being smashed by Nato member Turkey even on non-Turkish
territory, while the whole civilised world looks on with utter
indifference. Are the Kurds a "superfluous nation" on this earth?
Or take the Crimea and the port city of Sevastopol. Any sober mind