From fear to freedom
Even the most brainwashed individual can find liberation
A leader of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, Natan Sharansky argues in his new book that democratization of the Middle East is a crucial ingredient for a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In this excerpt, he describes the common features of totalitarian societies in North Korea, Iran, or elsewhere. A citizen of Israel since his release from the Soviet gulag in an East-West prisoner exchange in 1986, Sharansky asserts that the Palestinian Authority must stop its brainwashing of Palestinians, which Sharansky says incites hatred toward Jews and creates a climate for terrorism.
The power of a fear society is never based solely on an army and a secret police. As important is a regime's ability to control what is read, said, heard, and, above all, thought. This is how a regime based on fear attempts to maintain a constant pool of true believers.
The Soviets went to great lengths to shape the minds of their citizens, subjecting the nation's older generations to a mixture of overt and subtle reprogramming while forcing its youth to imbibe the official wisdom of the Soviet government. The voluminous State Encyclopedia in my father's house was a constant reminder of the malleability of Soviet history. Every few years, after a high-profile death or trial, our family received official pages of revision. We were advised by the authorities to put those pages in the appropriate place and burn the ones earmarked for removal.
For those living in a free society, the idea that a state would try to thoroughly brainwash its subjects is particularly difficult to grasp. On my first trip to America, I met with the publisher of Random House, Robert Bernstein, a vociferous critic of the Soviets' human-rights record. He asked me whether people in the Soviet Union could freely enter bookstores and buy books. At first, I couldn't believe he was serious. Then I understood that he simply had no idea how a fear society worked. I explained to him that we were free to go in but that the books were not.
All fear societies are based on a certain degree of brainwashing. State-controlled television, radio, and newspapers glorify the actions of the regime's leaders and incite their populations against those it deems to be enemies. Recently, an officer in the North Korean Army who had defected described how he oversaw experiments at a prison camp in which parents were placed in gas chambers together with their children. Asked how he could take part in such barbarism, the officer told the BBC:
"I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided, and not making progress as a country. . . . It would be a total lie for me to say I felt sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."
North Korea's regime has an easier time brainwashing its subjects than do regimes that preside over less insular societies. The Palestinian Authority, however, has shown that it is possible to poison minds in much more open societies as well. For 25 years, the Palestinians lived under Israeli military control. Palestinian laborers worked in Israel, and Palestinian society was thoroughly exposed to Israel's democratic way of life. But after Israel transferred control over Palestinian-populated cities to [Yasser] Arafat's Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords, the PA used every tool at its disposal to incite Palestinians to hate Israel and hate Jews. By the time the campaign of Palestinian terrorism began in September 2000, the level of indoctrination among the Palestinians had reached fever pitch. On PA-run television, 5-year-olds donning suicide belts beckoned viewers to join them in the struggle to liberate all of Palestine, and schools were let out so that children could participate in the fighting.
Such systematic brainwashing is bound to have ill effects, particularly on the young. Not everyone will be lucky enough to have a father who will inform them that their "Great Leader and Teacher" is a butcher. And the lasting effect of such indoctrination should also not be exaggerated. The day-to-day life of a fear society cannot be made palatable forever. Eventually, bitter experience belies the propaganda so that not even some of the people can be fooled all of the time.
Eyes open. The 1979 revolution against the shah of Iran had broad support in the population. It would quickly become clear, however, that the revolution had imposed a totalitarian religious order that was no less corrupt and even more repressive. In less than a generation, popular support has turned completely against the regime. Though elections in Iran are strictly controlled, with candidates vetted by the ayatollahs and with the media fully controlled by the state, Iranians have increasingly shown their opposition to the mullahs by electing those candidates who are seen as the most hostile to the ideology of the regime. After 25 years of failure, oppression, and economic stagnation, few Iranians can be brainwashed into supporting the ayatollahs.
The attitude of those living in fear societies toward America is a reflection of their attitudes toward their own regime. If America is seen as supporting that regime, as in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the people hate America. If America is seen as opposing the regime, as in Iran, the people admire it. A few months ago, a leader of a former Soviet republic told me about his recent visit to Iran: "It reminded me of the Soviet Union. All the officials criticize and condemn America, and all the people love America."
Even those who genuinely do hate America do not necessarily hate free societies. Rather, part of their hatred is due to the perception that by supporting the nondemocratic regimes that are oppressing them, America is betraying the democratic values it claims to uphold.
Even the "truest" of true believers will not indefinitely support a fear society. For decades, [Joseph] Stalin terrorized not only the Soviet people but also the entire Communist Party leadership. After Stalin died in 1953, none of the Communist leaders were willing to grant the same level of absolute authority to his successor. The next leader's power was restricted not because the Communist leadership wanted to bring an end to totalitarian rule but rather because they themselves no longer wanted to live in fear.
The deeper the level of control that a society tries to exercise over its subjects, the faster the change will occur. In 1989, a North Korean student who defected a short time after he began his medical studies in Czechoslovakia noted that "most North Koreans, raised almost from birth to regard the two Kims as all-providing deities, accept the propaganda, as I did until I saw the relative freedom of Czechoslovakia." Once the systematic brainwashing stops, once the truth begins to come to light, once the double-thinkers are no longer afraid, in every society a majority who will not be willing to live in fear again quickly emerges. More than any other reason, this is why Germans, Japanese, Italians, Spaniards, Russians, and so many others made the transition from fear to freedom during the 20th century. They have very different cultures, beliefs, religions, ideals, values, and lifestyles, but in one respect they are all the same: None of those peoples wanted to live in fear again.
Lifting the burden. The determination of men and women who are free never to return to a life of fear should never be underestimated. Indeed, the sense of freedom that comes from leaving the world of brainwashing and double-think is a liberation that is not soon forgotten. My own liberation from the world of fear began when I was still a student at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, a school that liked to compare itself to MIT. Figuring that in this school of "wunderkind," the conventional methods of brainwashing would have little impact, the authorities used other methods. The more sophisticated propaganda we were subjected to appealed to the importance of the work we were doing. All talk of rights, freedom, and justice, we were told, was just that, only talk. What do mere words mean compared with the immutable laws of Newton, Galileo, and Einstein? Political values will come and go, while science offers universal, eternal truths. Ironically, I was inspired to leave a life of double-think by a man perched at the very apex of the world of "eternal truths." In 1968, in an essay directed at the Soviet leadership, Andrei Sakharov, the most prominent scientist in the Soviet Union, wrote that scientific progress could not be disconnected from human freedom. The stifling intellectual environment inside the U.S.S.R. was retarding its people's capacity for invention and crippling the nation's ability to be a world leader, Sakharov wrote. The ideals of socialism would never be reached, he explained, if the Soviet Union did not embrace intellectual freedom. In one courageous statement, Sakharov had dealt a severe blow to Soviet power. The chief scientist of a superpower that prided itself on its scientific achievement was arguing that the nature of Soviet society was making it impossible for the U.S.S.R. to keep pace with the free world.
For a young scientist contemplating his future, the message was loud and clear. Sakharov, who would later risk everything by challenging the regime to respect human rights, became an inspiration for me, and I quickly gravitated to his side. When I later worked as his liaison to foreign journalists, diplomats, and politicians, I saw that there was never a gap between this remarkably humble man's inner thoughts and public statements. In my case, the convergence of my thoughts and words--which happened when I first became a Jewish activist--would bring an end to my own inner discomfort. As self-censorship and double-think gave way, I was overcome by a powerful sense of liberation. It was as if an enormous weight I had borne for years and whose burden I had become habituated to had finally been lifted. All of a sudden, I was free to think what I liked and say what I thought. Even when I was on a prolonged hunger strike in my punishment cell, the sense of freedom never left me.
For most of those who have lived their entire lives in fear, this feeling will be experienced only when their society is free, when they feel it is safe to go to the town square and express their views without fear. But it will be no less exhilarating. I am certain that this feeling of exhilaration transcends race, religion, creed, and culture and that the drug of freedom is universally potent. I am equally certain that once a people live in freedom, the vast majority of them will never want to live in fear again. To suggest, as the skeptics do, that the majority of a people would freely choose to live in a fear society is to suggest that most of those who have tasted freedom would freely choose to return to slavery.
From the book The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky. Copyright (c) 2004. Reprinted by arrangement with Public-Affairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved.
This story appears in the November 22, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.