Key ideas: Год 1979. “The dream of absolute, universal equality is amazing, terrifying, and inhuman. And the moment it captures people’s minds, the result is mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, accompanied by attempts to straighten the stooped and shorten the tall.” (V. Bukovsky)
The dream of absolute, universal equality is amazing, terrifying, and inhuman. And the moment it captures people’s minds, the result is mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, accompanied by attempts to straighten the stooped and shorten the tall.
I remember that one part of the psychiatric examination to which I was subjected as a prisoner was a test for idiocy. The patient was given the following problem to solve:
Imagine a train crash. It is well known that the part of the train that suffers the most damage in such crashes is the carriage at the rear. How can you prevent that damage from taking place?
The idiot’s usual reply is expected to be: uncouple the last carriage. That strikes us as amusing, but just think, are the theory and practice of socialism much better?
Society, say the socialists, contains both the rich and the poor. The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer—what is to be done?
Uncouple the last carriage, liquidate the rich, take away their wealth and distribute it among the poor.
And they start to uncouple the carriages. But there is always richer and poorer, for society is like a magnet: there are always two poles. But does this discourage a true socialist?
The main thing is to realize his dream; so the richest section of society is liquidated first; and everyone rejoices because everyone gains from the share-out
The main thing is to realize his dream; so the richest section of society is liquidated first; and everyone rejoices because everyone gains from the share-out.
But the spoils are soon spent, and people start to notice inequality again—again there are rich and poor. So they uncouple the next carriage, and then the next, without end, because absolute equality has still not been achieved. Before you know it, the peasant with two cows and a horse turns out to be in the last carriage and is pronounced a kulak and deported.
Is it really surprising that whenever you get striving for equality and fraternity, the guillotine appears on the scene?
It is all so easy, so simple, and so tempting—to confiscate and divide! To make everybody equal, and with one fell swoop to resolve all problems. It is so alluring—to escape from poverty and crime, grief and suffering, once and for all.
All you have to do is want it, all you have to do is reform the people who are hindering universal happiness and there will be paradise on earth, absolute justice, and good will to all men!
It is difficult for man to resist this dream and this noble impulse, particularly for men who are impetuous and sincere. They are the first to start chopping heads off and, eventually, to have their own chopped off.
They are the first to put their head on the block or go to prison. Such a system is too convenient for scoundrels and demagogues, and they are the ones, in the final analysis, who will decide what is good and what evil.
You have to learn to respect the right of even the most insignificant and repulsive individual to live the way he chooses.
You have to renounce once and for all the criminal belief that you can reeducate everyone in your own image.
You have to understand that without the use of force it is realistic to create a theoretical equality of opportunity, but not equality of results.
People attain absolute equality only in the graveyard, and if you want to turn your country into a gigantic graveyard, go ahead, join the socialists.