By Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn Delivered at the Taipei City Auditorium Taipei, Republic of China October 23, 1982 (Translated from the Russian)
For 33 years, Taiwan, I believe, has attracted, by its specific fate, the attention of many people throughout the world. I myself felt that way long ago. Three score countries have already fallen under the yoke of communism. Scarcely one of them has been fortunate enough to retain even a tiny patch of its independent national territory, where its state authority could continue to develop despite the disruption, and through comparison show the world the difference between itself and communist disorganization. In Russia, such a patch of land could have been Wrangels Crimea. But lacking any external support and abandoned by its unfaithful former allies, it was soon crushed by the communists. But in China, thanks to a wide Strait, a fragment of the former state became the Republic of China on Taiwan, which, for a third of a century, has proved to the world what heights of development could have been reached if the whole of China had not fallen under the yoke of communism. Today, the Republic of China on Taiwan differs from others in its development, its industrial achievements and the well-being of its population, thereby proving how logically the forces of a nation can be guided, if they are not in inimical hands.
It would seem that the population of our planet should clearly perceive such an instructive comparison and should have its eyes opened to see how peoples who escape communism flourish and how those who fall victim to communist tenets perish by the millions. The history of communist destruction in the Soviet Union, Poland and Cambodia are now known to all. The history of the millions destroyed in China, Vietnam or North Korea is yet to be revealed in detail, but many signs allow us to judge this history even now.
But NO! It is Free China which has had to endure and suffer from the greatest injustices and ignoble attitudes of other countries. The United Nations, long degraded to an irresponsible side show, disgraced itself by expelling from membership the 17 millions of Free China. The majority of countries on our planet treacherously expelled your country from the U.N., whose delegates, adding insult to injury, whistled, jeered and shouted. The majority of Third World countries behaved like madmen who don't know the price of freedom but are themselves waiting for the kick of the boot.
For centuries the Western World has known very well the price of freedom. But with years passing and well-being achieved, it is less and less prepared to pay for it. The Western people value their state systems but are less and less inclined to defend them with their own bodies. From decade to decade, the West has become increasingly senile and unable to defend itself. The betrayal of one country after another had already begun before the Second World War. Afterward, no scruples were felt in abrogating the whole of Eastern Europe just for the sake of the West's own well-being. How easy it was to betray the government of Mikolaychik; how easy it was to withdraw support from one's ally Chiang Kai-shek. And soon we shall witness how one country will betray another for the price of surviving just a little longer. Should it be surprising that the majority of the frightened Western countries are even afraid to sell you weapons for fear of angering Peking. That's how much their drive and concern for freedom is worth. Meanwhile, threatened Europe should understand your position better but is so cowardly that it fails to recognize that the Republic of China and other countries of Asia are themselves endangered. Just recently, the former premier of Japan declared that the arming of Free China would destabilize the Far East! What more can be said?
They are all obsessed with the search for self-protection and the quest for a stand-in. So there emerged an attractive myth--that there are "bad" and "good" communisms. And out of such a myth grew the image of communist China as a good-natured peacemaker! But should that be surprising--when in South Korea, which herself survived a Communist assault, there exists a myth that actually the Soviet Union is not directly hostile to them, not so much an enemy, not like North Korea. The South Koreans have also been doing their utmost to curry favor with Peking. Now they are hesitating about whether to give a defecting Red Chinese aircraft to Free China.
No, it is not out of shortsightedness, not out of stupidity, that such myths are believed, but out of despair, out of the loss of spirit.
In a particular relationship to you is the United States of America. Up to this day, the United States provides the only outside guaranty restraining the communists from attacking your island. But how difficult it becomes for the United States to remain faithful to Taiwan, how much has already been lost on the way! The Americans have also succumbed to the general world trend to leave the Republic of China to its perils, to abandon it to its fate. America moved to abrogate its diplomatic relations with the ROC For what? For what fault of hers? Only to follow the futile Western dream of gaining an ally in Communist China. America has restricted its connections with you, curtailed its military support and is denying you much of what you need.
What pressures have been exerted upon American presidents, urging surrender of Taiwan! Not all of them could bear the strain. Here we have a former president, just back from a visit to China, where he flattered his hosts by saying that "a strong Communist China is a guarantee for peace" and that America seems to be interested in a strong Red China. Such people in former years have governed the United States and there is no guarantee that another such person might not succeed President Reagan.
The United States is highly heterogeneous. There are many currents, of which the capitulatory tides are quite powerful. Extremely powerful circles are leaning toward betrayal of a free country in favor of a friendship with a totalitarian one. They gladly picked up the hypocritical offer from communist China on "peaceful unification." Many American journalists cry from the housetops that Peking is now "bound by promises" to effect unification peacefully. They wanted to forget, and therefore successfully forgot, how many times the communists have already cheated. The experience of "governments in concert with communists" in postwar Eastern Europe has taught no lesson. This hopeless experiment now is being conducted in Cambodia. Similarly, according to Kissinger's agreement, North Vietnam was "bound by a ceasefire"--until it set the day for the seizure of South Vietnam. And leading American newsmen reached such heights of stupidity as to write that the United States doesn't make mistakes. If Red China "breaks its promise" and seizes Taiwan by force--then -- only then--America would be freed from obligations and could again start to deliver arms. . . to whom, then?. . . Yes, such delirium appears on the pages of leading American newspapers, and they don't realize what they are doing!
And thus the influential circles in the United States want to force Taiwan to accept capitulatory negotiations, to relinquish voluntarily its freedom and power.
What, then, does communist China want from you? Certainly, it is eager to grab your blossoming economy, to plunder and devour it. After all that has happened in the 20th century, only shortsighted simpletons can trust Peking's promises that it will totally preserve your economic and social system, and even your armed forces along with some elements of freedom. But the main issue is not to take away your wealth, to steal the fruits of your hard work. The main thing is that the communist system does not tolerate any deviation in anything or anywhere. Not even the wealth of your island is important. What matters is the deviation from their system. Communist China hates you for your economic and social superiority. For them it is not permissible that other Chinese should know that there can be a better life without communism. The communist ideology does not tolerate any islets of freedom. And so, with all their might, the Communists want to cut off the sale to you even of defensive arms, to try to weaken your defense capability, to disturb your balance of power in the Strait--and thus to bring closer the day of intrusion into your island.
In order to nurture the apathy of the United States, Red China plays speculatively on the negotiations between Peking and Moscow on matters of China-Soviet rapprochement. Such rapprochement is not make-believe. It is a very realistic perspective. Both governments have long had common roots, a fact which everybody seems to forget. As far back as 1923, a Soviet agent Grusemberg, alias "Borodin," prepared a communist coup, and it was he who promoted Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai to the highest positions in the party.
All that I am telling you--because of the deadly danger in which you find yourself--is understood well by many, if not yet by all. The threat is understood better here than in South Korea, where the young generation, the students, have quite forgotten the brief horrors of communist intrusion, so that the present freedom seems to them not enough. But they will remember and revalue their present "nonfreedom" when, after a command "hands back," they are driven under armed guards into concentration camps.
It seems to be fashionable in the West: to demand from all who stand in the forefront of defense, under machine-gun fire, to demand the widest democracy, and not just simple but absolute democracy, bordering on total dissoluteness, on state treason, on the right to destroy their own state and country--such freedom as Western countries tolerate. Such is the price the West demands from each menaced country, including yours. But it seems that on your island the logical limits are known and will sustain your struggle.
There is another danger stalking you. Your economic successes, your living standards and well-being are of a two-fold nature. These are the bright hope of all the Chinese people. But they also can become your weakness. All prosperous people tend to lose the awareness of danger, an addiction of the good living conditions of today, and consequently lose their will for resistance. I hope and I urge you to avoid such a weakening. Don't permit the youth of your country to become soft and placid, to become slaves to material goods, until finally they will prefer captivity and slavery to the struggle for freedom. That for 33 years you lived peacefully does not mean that you might not be attacked in the following three years. You are not a serene, care-free island; you are an army, constantly under the menace of war.
You are 18 millions, about as many as there are Jews in the world and your problem is of the same dimensions. But the Jewish problem attracts the attention of all states and has become one of the central problems of contemporary times. Comparing this with the uniqueness of your position, I don't perceive why the fate of Taiwan should not command the equal attention of the world.
But in today's world betrayal from weakness reigns supreme, and it is only your own strength upon which you can really rely. But there is also one more big and bigger hope: the peoples of the enslaved nations, who will not endure indefinitely but who will rise in one menacing hour--menacing to their communist rulers.
In your books you write that your island is "a bastion of national recovery." So be it! Not only defense, not only self-preservation should be your goal--but help, but the liberation of your compatriots suffering on the mainland, and first of all, free and courageous radio broadcasts.
It may seem, since no one comes to mind, that you have no firm, reliable allies, although they might appear in the hour of destruction. But you have the most formidable ally in the world: one billion Chinese people. Their sympathy is your moral and spiritual support. Just a few days ago, you had an encouraging signal from your compatriots through the act of defection of a Red Chinese air force pilot. Often I think of still anonymous prisoners of the Chinese Gulags whose true story might not be told until the 21st century.
All the oppressed people, including the peoples of the Soviet Union, cannot rely on outside help, only on their own strength. At the best, the whole world would watch indifferently, but possibly with a great deal of relief, if the mad rulers of China and the USSR should unleash war among them. I hope that won't happen. But in any case, let us testify here and now to the mutual amicability and trust between the Chinese and Russian peoples, to the absence of contradictions amongst them; even more, let us hope for a union of our long suffering compatriots against both communist governments. Whatever might happen between these two self-interested, anti-national governments, let us preserve mutual understanding, mutual compassion and friendship; let's not allow them to blind our eyes and deaden our ears through fruitless national hatred.
We don't know how long the plague of communism will affect our world. One hundred and thirty-five years ago, who would have told the leaders of the then great empires that the tiny group of utopists--communists who organized themselves in Europe--would conquer them all with iron and blood and force to their knees their might and pride? They would not even have smiled at such a prophecy. Such forces could not then be seen anywhere. The strength of the communists was based on their drive and their cruelty; the weakness of the West was rooted in the absence of the will to fight.
We don't know what whimsical zigzags human history will follow. I have already expressed a supposition that world communism will outlive both Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes and spread over other countries, many of which are still eager to experience communism. But in our two countries national commonsense shall finally prevail!
Anyway, both our peoples have suffered too much, lost too much! They are already moving along the way of liberation and recovery!
[Picture Caption]
1. Solzhenitsyn said, "The Chinese and Russian peoples should rise up together in opposition to these two communist regimes." 2,3,4. Solzhenitsyn lecturing.
1. Solzhenitsyn was presented with an English version of The Soviet Union in China. Here he is seen with Director General of the Government Information Office, James C. Y. Soong and Secretary General to the President, Admiral Ma Chi-chuang. 2. Solzhenitsyn was presented with a photo album by Wu San-lien. 3. On a tour of temples in southern Taiwan.
Left: Solzhenitsyn took notes everywhere he went. Right: After his lecture he received a standing ovation.
Solzhenitsyn was presented with an English version of The Soviet Union in China. Here he is seen with Director General of the Government Information Office, James C. Y. Soong and Secretary General to the President, Admiral Ma Chi-chuang.
Solzhenitsyn was presented with a photo album by Wu San-lien.
Solzhenitsyn was presented with a photo album by Wu San-lien.
Solzhenitsyn took notes everywhere he went.
After his lecture he received a standing ovation.
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