His [the
Russian man] word is not his bond. He
will lie to you on the smallest provocation; and his promises of today he will
utterly repudiate tomorrow.
(Joubert, p.38; 1904)
 |
| Soviet propaganda excelled in mixing lies with an element of truth. Students were often sent to help gather potatoes in the autumn; but the figures for the size of the harvest were nearly always false, which helped to contribute to shortages in the USSR. |
No-one seems
to be able to say for sure why it is that Russians tell so many bare-faced
lies; but there is no denying that they do, from top to bottom in society. When
Russian troops invaded Crimea in February 2014, President Vladimir Putin denied
any knowledge of the action, claiming that these troops in immaculate if
unmarked military uniforms were simply local people who wanted to save Crimea
from falling into American hands. A year later, in a television documentary
marking Crimea again becoming a part of Russia (according to Moscow but not
recognised by the United Nations), Putin gave an interview in the programme in
which he openly said that after an all-night sitting in February 2014 he had
given the order for Russian troops to seize Crimea.
In other words,
Putin admitted that he had told a blatant lie a year earlier. Russian media, of
course, did not come out and say that. This is partly because the media is now
under the control of the Kremlin; but also because Russians are so used to lies
that few people would even have been bothered that the President completely
contradicted himself from one year to the next. The fighting in Ukraine has
seen a constant stream of lies from Moscow. There is a mass of evidence that
regular Russian forces have been fighting there, yet the Kremlin insists that
it is just Russian soldiers on leave who have chosen to go to Eastern Ukraine
(which begs the question, also unasked by Russian media, what kind of army is
it that allows its soldiers to go and fight as mercenaries in another country
when they are on leave?)
 |
| A protest on the streets of Moscow in August 2015 showed that not everyone was indifferent to the Kremlin's lies about Ukraine |
When some
bold Russian journalists visited Pskov in the summer of 2014 where they had
been told fresh soldiers’ graves had appeared, there were instant denials that
the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, based in Pskov, had been in Ukraine (and
the journalists were attacked). Yet just a few days later, Putin issued a
Presidential Decree awarding the 76th Guards Air Assault Division the Order of
Suvorov, one of the Russian Federation’s highest military honours – and given
only for distinguished conduct in battle.
But whilst
the war in Ukraine and social media has given Russia the chance to spread lies
more widely and in greater quantities, Russians’ notorious reputation for lying
goes back a long way, even before the Revolution; witness the comment at the
head of this section by Carl Joubert, based on his nine years living in Russia
in the late nineteenth century. After the Revolution, the Soviet system had an
amazing ability simply to deny what it didn’t like to acknowledge (for example,
see the section on Sex to see denials
of the existence of prostitution and sex before marriage), and some of these
denials which were particularly absurd were turned into jokes (as will be seen
in the final chapter, You’ll Die Laughing). But undoubtedly the lie
became sharpened in Soviet times, and the distinction between vranyo and lozh is a highly significant one.
(Shipler, p.21; 1983)
Vranyo is the more innocent of two distinct terms denoting the dissemination
of untruths, its more serious equivalent being lozh. To impute vranyo involves
little more than the affectionate charge of possessing a lively imagination: vryote, “You’re having me on.” But to accuse
someone of lozh is harsh: lzhosh, “You bloody liar!” …
Indeed, vranyo’s continuing late twentieth century vogue may well derive from its
function of enlivening the drabness of modernity, since the official doctrine
that totalitarian Russian life is somehow more exhilarating than life elsewhere
is itself so extreme an example of creative fantasy.
(Hingley, pp.77-79; 1978)
One could also
throw into the mix obman,
“deception”, another common way of not telling the truth. Or simply talking for
a long time but actually saying nothing (a common trick with Western
politicians, too). When Bill Browder was trying to find out information about
the Sidanco oil company to consider whether it was worth investing, he hit a
brick wall when he finally had a meeting with a representative of the company.
(Browder, p.143; 2015)
Robert
Kaiser, both quoting Alexander Solzhenitsyn and adding his own conclusion
highlights the problem for society when the distinction between truth and lies
becomes blurred.
But the lie is more than a means of coping with life’s embarrassments. In
the contemporary Soviet Union, in Solzhenitsyn’s bitter but indisputably
accurate phrase, “the lie has become not simply a moral category, but a pillar
of the state”. It is a harsh judgement, but there is no way around it …
When lies are accepted as readily
as the truth – and that is just what happens in the Soviet Union – then the
distinction between them inevitably begins to disappear.
(Kaiser, pp.235-236; 1976)
The idea
that “lies are accepted as readily as the truth” has once again become the case
– not only in Russia but, thanks to the information explosion brought on by
social media, worldwide. It was very telling that the Oxford English Dictionary
declared in November 2016 that the word of the year was “post-truth”. There is
much talk of “fake news”; and also of a term which came into English from
Russian: “disinformation”. “Information” and “misinformation” (the accidental
reporting in good faith of something which is not accurate or true) are English
words, and the Russian информация (informatsiya)
comes from Latin via English. But “DISinformation”, the deliberate spreading of
false information and lies, has come into English from the Russian word дезинформация (dezinformatsiya).
Ivan T, in
conversation with Kevin Klose, puts forward the idea which we have already met
(put forward by David Willis in the section Russians
en masse in the chapter, National
Characteristics) that Russians have Asiatic characteristics, which Ivan T
feels helps to explain the innate ability to lie without compunction.
“…we are Asiatic in a way that you are not. In fact, while we think we
look and act like Americans, we are completely different from you. As I
understand our character, it is that we have the essential characteristics of
Asians, which is the possibility of carrying two kinds of thoughts in one head.
This makes it relatively simple for people to accept the idea that the rights
set forth in our fundamental law [the Soviet Constitution] exist here as a lie. So we understand as well that the existence of
freedom which the party claims to have achieved for us is a factual myth. Yet,
we can quickly mouth the slogans that show freedom exists here, and in fact, in
a certain way, we can believe this.” [Ivan T.]
(Klose, p.117; 1984)
As David
Shipler indicates, telling the truth was not an essential part of the Soviet
education system.
Truth telling is not the forte of Soviet education. In the structure of
values the façade is more important than what stands behind it; a smooth,
unbroken surface of acceptance comforts both teacher and pupil, political
leader and citizen. To crack the veneer is to violate the basic ethic of
hypocrisy and to embrace utter loneliness.
(Shipler, p.114; 1983)
Even though
pupils in the USSR received a sound education in what is known in English as
“the three R’s” (of Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic), a template had to be
applied over the whole system of education, from kindergarten to university, of
learning the pillars of the political system: the History of the Communist
Party; Marxist-Leninist Philosophy; Political Economy; and Atheism. This
produced the joke about the kindergarten teacher who is waxing lyrical about
how wonderful life is in the Soviet Union, when she notices little Ivan at the
back of the class starting to snivel and then sob. “Ivanushka,” she asks,
“what’s the matter?” “I want to live in the Soviet Union!” wails the child.
 |
| In the 1930s Stalin was portrayed in Soviet propaganda as 'the children's friend'. At the same time he was sending millions of parents to their deaths or to the labour camps. |
People who
wanted their children to grow up and be able to think for themselves stood on
the horns of a dilemma, as Hedrick Smith points out: they could lie to their
children, or teach them to lie in public.
[The son of a Soviet official had
found a banned book on his parents’ bookshelves, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914. The father told Hedrick
Smith:] “I have to choose between lying
to my son about what we read and what we think or teaching him to lie,” said
the man, in a moment of searing honesty. “I prefer to be honest with our son. I
love him. He will never be happy because he will understand too much. But at
least he will not grow up like a stupid ass.”
(Smith, The Russians, p.214; 1977)
The added
absurdity here is the fact that Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914 was a banned book. It is a great work of literature
which helps to highlight the difficulties and chaos in Europe at a particularly
crucial and soon to be terrible time in history. It was banned because of the
author – who had upset the Soviet authorities by telling the truth about the
Soviet labour camp system in which he had suffered unjustly. (See the quotation
from Boris Kagarlitsky in Chapter 42, Freedom
of Speech.)
The
following quotations highlight the issue of “official lies”: lies told by the state-run
media to put across an official view. It is a situation which Russia has
returned to under Vladimir Putin. Laurens van der Post was shocked that someone
could be sentenced to death in the 1960’s for making counterfeit money, while
no action would be taken against someone broadcasting lies:
It has always seemed to me extraordinary that, in law, the counterfeiting
of money should be a serious crime incurring heavy penalties (in Russia
counterfeiters are shot) but that fabricating, inventing and falsifying news
should go unpunished.
(van der Post, p.123; 1965)
The
newspaper of the Communist Party, Pravda,
could turn the truth on its head (doubly ironic, given that “pravda” means
“truth”) and even publish letters which, in the era before the internet and e-mail,
could not even have reached its offices by the time they were published:
(Kaiser, p.212; 1976)
A senior editor of the paper [Pravda] once admitted
to me that some letters…are contrived by Pravda’s correspondents. This was evident after Alexander Solzhenitsyn was
expelled from the country. The next day Soviet papers printed letters
applauding the expulsion that were allegedly written by citizens living in
remote cities – cities from which letters to Moscow take at least a week to
arrive.
(Kaiser, p.214; 1976)
Public
lectures were another way of getting a false version of the news over to the
Soviet public:
The authorities also provide the general public with alternative sources
of information, most commonly in the form of lectures …
Lies and blatant errors of fact
were common at the lectures I heard. “American bread now costs more than a
dollar a loaf,” a lecturer said in Moscow in 1973. “Seventy five per cent of
the means of mass communication in America are under the control, directly or
indirectly, of Zionists and Jews,” said another. [US President] Lyndon Johnson’s visit to the Soviet Union – which he cancelled after
the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 – did not take place
because “we could not agree to have President Johnson in the Soviet Union after
he began the Vietnam War,” according to another lecturer.
(Kaiser, pp.224-227; 1976)
In the wake
of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in April 1986, the paucity of
information issued by the Soviet authorities led to speculation in the Western
media. Some reports, such as there being thousands of deaths in the explosion
or just after it, were wildly out and were strongly criticised by the USSR.
But, as Martin Walker points out, people both inside and outside the Soviet
Union were by now wary of “the lie”, especially when lives were at stake:
The Soviet system was paying the price not only for its secrecy over
Chernobyl, but for the accumulated hostility and suspicions of generations. A
society that had lied for days about the fate of the Korean airliner shot down
in 1983, that had still not faced the truth about Stalin’s gross slaughters,
was not going to be easily believed or trusted over Chernobyl.
(Walker, p.237; 1986)
A few years
later I interviewed Alexander Yakovlev, who at the time of the accident at
Chernobyl was the Politburo member responsible for ideology. In the course of
the interview, I asked him about why there was such poor information given out
about Chernobyl. “Because we in Moscow didn’t have a clue about what was going
on, either!” he exclaimed.
And, as if
to illustrate that old habits die hard, Peter Pomerantsev found that in the
twenty-first century Russian TV from its base at Ostankino in northern Moscow
could turn out lie after lie until his head was spinning:
(Pomerantsev, pp.271-272; 2015)
Even when
dealing with foreigners who are better informed, as the Russians know, they
have an amazing ability to argue with a straight face that black is white.
Soviet officials will blandly deny to an American legal delegation that
the Soviet Union imposes the death penalty (though the Soviet press
occasionally reports executions); contend to Congressmen that emigration by
Jews and others is completely free; insist that the Soviet labour camps have an
excellent medical system (after the death of a well-known political prisoner
operated on for an ulcer by another prisoner because no professional medical
care was available); and make other claims that immediately cause a foreigner
to raise a sceptical eyebrow.
(Smith, The Russians, pp.31-32; 1977)
(Newby, p.155; 1980)
Once at the Berlin restaurant in Moscow, some friends of ours recognised
the band playing the Lara theme from Doctor Zhivago,
strictly verboten. After a few
minutes, one of them asked the band to play it again.
“We didn’t play that song,” said
the combo’s leader.
“Oh, yes,” my friend insisted. “I
heard it myself and so did my friends. We recognised it.”
“No, you must have been mistaken.
We didn’t play it and so you didn’t hear it!” The reply was spoken in that
frozen Soviet voice that is less a denial of the actual truth than a rejection
of an inconvenient one.
(Smith, The Russians, p.220; 1977)
Perhaps Eric
Newby is right that it has something to do with, “the innate love of secrecy
inherent in the Slavonic soul”; why else? But it is disarming when something
happens like asking the band to play again a tune they’ve just played and being
told that they didn’t play it. One begins to doubt one’s own senses.
But sometimes
Russians will rely on foreigners to tell them the truth – and they will believe
what the foreigner tells them.
Several years ago a Russian woman who worked as a cook for a western
diplomat in Moscow asked her mistress what had really happened to Vladimir
Komarov, a Soviet cosmonaut. That very day Komarov had received a hero’s burial
in the wall of the Kremlin after dying in a space accident – as the diplomat’s
wife told the Russian woman.
“Oh, it’s really true, then?” the
cook asked. “We’d heard that he’d brought his spaceship down in America and
defected.”
(Kaiser, p.251; 1976)
This story
is merely the tip of the iceberg of a particular pack of Soviet lies and
incompetence. In April 1967, Vladimir Komarov was chosen to be the sole pilot
of Soyuz-1. The USSR already had a series of “firsts” in Space – first
satellite, first animal, first man, first woman, first crew, first spacewalk –
and wanted to create the first link-up in Space: Soyuz-2 would rendezvous with
Soyuz-1, and one cosmonaut would transfer from 2 to 1 for the journey back to
Earth. For the Politburo, the timing was crucial: to be close to Lenin’s
birthday (on 22 April) and May Day, and in the year in which the Soviet Union
celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
However,
engineers warned the politicians that the new capsule wasn’t ready: tests had
shown up 203 design faults. The politicians refused to listen. Komarov insisted
on flying, because he was worried that if he refused the authorities would
simply put the back-up cosmonaut in his place. The back-up was Yury Gagarin,
the first man in Space and a national treasure. Komarov knew the risks, but did
not want the country to lose Gagarin if something went wrong.
From the
moment Soyuz-1 went into orbit, things started to go wrong when a solar panel
malfunctioned. The launch of Soyuz-2 was postponed because of bad weather, and
as more and more things went wrong on board Soyuz-1 it was agreed that Komarov should
return to earth early, having coped admirably with all the problems which, as the
engineers expected, had arisen. He couldn’t cope with the final problems,
though. After returning through the Earth’s atmosphere, the braking parachute
failed to open. The capsule hit the ground at a speed of 140km per hour. If the
crash didn’t kill Komarov (which it probably did), the retro-rockets fired only
after the capsule crashed, engulfing the spacecraft in flames. Nothing
recognisably human was left of Komarov. It was some years before the truth of
what had happened came out; hence the rumours among the populace that he may
have defected.
 |
| This post-Soviet poster parodies the propaganda posters of the Soviet era: 'ARE YOU TIRED of the System, of Cheating and Lies? Then welcome to the ranks of the HOMELESS!' |
Appropriately,
the last quotation in this section involves the man known as “the conscience of
the nation”, Andrei Sakharov. Smith met Sakharov on a number of occasions.
Sakharov was one of the “fathers” of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, but in the late
1960’s began to criticise the system and became known as a dissident, for which
he was hounded by the Soviet authorities. Once a person began to be attacked in
the Soviet media, they quickly found that friends and colleagues would start to
keep a distance from them, or even join in public criticism of them. Sakharov
described this to Smith.
“There is an unbelievable cynicism among people,” he [Sakharov] remarked one evening. “The honest man makes the silent ones feel guilty
for not having spoken out. They cannot understand how he had the courage to do
what they could not bring themselves to do. So they feel impelled to speak out
against him to protect their own consciences. In the second place, they feel
that everyone everywhere is deceiving everyone else, based on their own
experience. Homo Sovieticus is like
the prostitute who believes that all women are whores because she is. Soviet
man believes that the whole world is divided into parties and that every man is
a member of one party or another, and there is no real honesty. No one stands
for the truth. And if anyone says he is above Party and is trying to speak the
truth alone, he is lying.”
(Smith, The Russians, p.549; 1977)
I saw the
reaction of ordinary people to Sakharov’s human rights activities when I was
living in Kiev in 1980. Sakharov protested about the invasion of Afghanistan at
the end of December 1979, for which he was exiled to Gorky (now once again
Nizhny Novgorod) and forbidden from going to Moscow. Gorky was a city which was
closed to foreigners, so the idea was to make it impossible for him to speak to
foreign journalists. The attitude of the Russians I was with when this was announced
on the news showed no sympathy: “Serves him right – he’s a scientist; what does
he know about human rights?!”
Sakharov was
brought back from Gorky in 1986 by Mikhail Gorbachev; won a seat for the new
Soviet parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies in March 1989; and died at
the age of 68 in December of that year. There was an outpouring of public
grief, and that was when he was labelled, “the conscience of the nation”.
Nowadays it seems that Sakharov’s message has been lost, and the atmosphere he
describes in this extract is returning.
See also: Chapter 2, Geography, Kaiser, “Geographers in the Soviet Union…”; Chapter
8, Sex, Skariatina, “This place used
to be…” and Kaiser, “An American journalist and his wife…”; Chapter 9, Language, Kaiser, “Soviet ceremonies are one manifestation…”; Chapter
50, Foreigners, Siddiqi, “Zhdanovshchina explicitly linked science with national
identity…”
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