Soundings, April 2003

"A Spanish art historian has uncovered what was alleged to be the first use of modern art as a deliberate form of torture, with the discovery that mind-bending prison cells were built by anarchist artists 65 years ago during the country's bloody civil war.

"Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky, Klee, and Itten, as well as the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel and his friend Salvador Dali were said to be the inspiration behind a series of secret cells and torture centers built in Barcelona and elsewhere, yesterday's El Pais newspaper reported. . . .

"El Pais commented: 'The avant garde forms of the moment—surrealism and geometric abstraction—were thus used for the aim of committing psychological torture.'" (The Guardian, January 27, 2003.)

In a New York Times Magazine article ("Reagan's Son," January 26) one of the paper's leading columnists, Bill Keller, offered a surprising assessment of President George W. Bush: "What Bush is striving for, on the evidence of choices he has made so far, is bold in its ambition: markets unleashed, resources exploited. A progressive tax system leveled, a country unashamed of wealth. Government entitlements gradually replaced by thrift, self-reliance, and private good-will. The safety net strung closer to the ground. Government itself infused with, in some cases supplanted by, the efficiency and accountability of a well-run corporation. A court system dedicated to protecting property and private enterprise and enforcing individual responsibility. A global common market that humans to the tune of American productivity. In the world, America rampant—unfettered by international law, unflinching when challenged, unmatchable in its might, more interested in being respected than in being loved." Well, that would be a start. But for those of us old enough to remember when Barry Goldwater was decrying the Eisenhower administration's intrusive domestic policies and timid foreign policies, President Bush has a long, long way to go.

"Allegedly, a [Canadian Broadcasting Company] interviewer is blaming 'American arrogance' for the destruction of Columbia.

"Well, if this is arrogance—exploring space for science, pushing the envelope of the human experience, doing what our species has always done—then I support it. If it is arrogant to want to learn, we are arrogant. If it is arrogant to want to explore, we are arrogant. If it is arrogant to risk our lives for the possibility of a better future for all mankind, we are arrogant.

"Mankind is arrogant. We believe foolish things—that we may one day cure cancer, that we may one day develop new forms of energy, that we may one day walk on Mars. We believe these foolish things, and we dedicate ourselves to achieving them. How ridiculous. How arrogant.

"And people die for these things. And people are injured for life. The astronauts of Apollo 1, and the Challenger, and now, sadly, the Columbia have died for the arrogant belief that we can be more than we are, that we can walk on the moon, that we can touch the stars.

"This arrogance is not American in nature. It is human. It is human arrogance that led us from the veldt of Africa to the ice-bound wastelands of Europe, across the Bering Strait into the Americas, across oceans to Australia and Oceana. It is human arrogance that leads thousands of people to live in the frigid environment of Antarctica, that leads explorers to dive miles under the oceans in bathyscapes.

"This arrogance is our species' birthright. It is what defines us. If we were not arrogant, we never would have flown. We never would have domesticated the horse. We would have died in the caves, unwilling to strive to be more than we are.

"So call us arrogant for building the space shuttle. Call the men and woman who gave their lives today arrogant for believing they could fly to space and return to tell about it. But don't call us wrong. For this arrogance defines humanity. And I would rather our species be arrogant than afraid." Jeff Fleck, "Blog of the Moderate Left," February 1, 2003.

In the New York Times of January 25, a story from France reported that Justice Minister Dominique Perben had ordered the appointment of three new experts to determine whether Maurice Papon, 92, should have been released from prison on the grounds of age and ill health. Papon was convicted in 2000 of having collaborated with the Nazis.

In the Times of January 26, a story from Mississippi reports that on February 24, ex-Klansman Ernest Avants, 72, will be brought to trial in federal court for the murder of a black farmhand named Ben Chester White.

Question: Why do we read no such articles coming out of the former Soviet Union? Or, at least, why do we read no articles asking why we read no such articles coming out of the former Soviet Union? Nazism was crushed in 1945, fifty-eight years ago, yet Nazis are still being brought to trial. Stalin did not die until 1953, and the death of Stalin was not the death of Soviet totalitarianism, as Anatoly Marchenko's My Testimony (1967) made all too clear. Indeed, Marchenko died in prison in 1986, under the Gorbachev regime.

We need to remember the words of Dmitry Shostakovich. Speaking to a biographer, the composer recounted a Stalinist outrage involving the traditional, blind folksingers of the Ukraine. In the mid-thirties, he said, the government called all these folksingers together for a meeting. "There were several hundred of them at the congress, they say. It was a living museum, the country's living history. All its songs, all its music and poetry. And they were all shot, all of those pathetic blind men killed. . . . And that's just one story out of many like it. I am not a historian. I just wanted to tell what I know well, too well. And I know that when all the necessary research is completed, when all the facts are gathered, and when all are confirmed by the necessary documents, the people who are responsible for these evil deeds will have to answer for them. . . . If I didn't believe in that completely, life would not be worth living."