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Alexander Sergeyevich Yessenin-Volpin, 1970. |
1. Alexander Yessenin-Volpin and the
Legality Program.
One of biggest failures of traditional scholarship — and a grave historical injustice — is that historians of the Soviet era systematically overlook the importance and originality of Yessenin-Volpin's theoretical and political work, many on the misperception that the ideas that motivated the dissident movement were "typical of the era" or "spontaneous." Others, prefer to concentrate on the "external" — and admitedly more colorful — events of the Soviet dissident period: the demonstrations, the trials, the mental institutions, the Gulag, the Human Rights Committee, Sakharov's exile. Probably, because the interpretation of such phenomena is much easier in the context of the traditions of Western political history and thought, in which most historians are usually trained.
And yet, as we will show, the true importance of the Soviet dissident movement was not in the heroic opposition it exhibited to the Soviet regime, nor in the examples of personal activism, heroism, courage and sacrifice that the dissidents offered. Although all these are undeniable — and not suficiently recognized — the dissident movement's tremendous ideological and scientific achievement was much less overt: It was hidden in the Legality Program:
It is the Program, its inventor — Alexander Yessenin-Volpin — and his comrades-in-dissent, who must be credited with much of what came later: the deterioration of the Soviet ideological supports and the peaceful capitulation of the Soviet regime. And it will be to the eternal glory of the Soviet dissident movement, that instead of following the usual and tempting path of violent resitance (a practice that, after all, had long roots in the Russian political traditions,) it spawned the most modern political theory of its time, and that its members faced prisons, mental institutions and exiles, with the sole demand to be awarded the civil rights they supposedly had.
In many ways, even the replacement of the Soviet system by states that aspire to be incorporated in the West, can be attributed, to some extent, on the influence that the Legality Program through the dissident movement of the 60's and 70's is still exerting on ex-Soviet societies.
To explain the reasoning behind these statements we have, first, to examine the true origin of the Legality Program and to understand the role it played in the dissident movement. For this we must turn to Alexander Yessenin-Volpin's narrative in Part 1 of this text, which shows very clearly his personal perspective of the dissident movement:
To sketch its main components:
a. Alexander Yessenin-Volpin's involvement in the political struggle starts as a personal opposition to the Soviet regime's crudity and illogicality.
b. Gradually, he understands that the logical inconsistencies of the Soviet political structure could be exploited for the benefit of the opponents of the system.
c. This idea is systematized and transmitted to other members of the Soviet opposition, for use during their own confrontations with the authorities.
d. Yessenin-Volpin's ideas develop into the Legality Program, which finds a fortuitous application in the dissident movement, and whose core demand was to insist that state organs can prescribe behavior only to the extent that explicit laws allow them to, highlighting in this way the illogical foundations of the Soviet system and the illegal practices of the Soviet regime, which consistently violated its own legislation.
e. The narrative ends with the Soviet regime, unable to defeat the Legality Program, resorting to the expulsion of its creator and other "dangerous" dissidents from the country.
We have to stress, here, that this sketch is only an interpretation of Yessenin-Volpin's narrative. In fact, the philosopher has never claimed that his ideas were extraordinary, or, even, that they were exclusively his own. At different times he has told the author that the ideas he proposed were common, at the time:
"The psychology arose, but not only me, I also had predecessors. Indeed, it is hard to indicate a case as visible as the Moscow demonstrations, which started on December 5th, 1965. And the movement started in September 65, but the ideas as such, scarcely. "
And he has always been more ready to extol the contributions of other dissidents — Bukovsky, Chalidze and Sakharov, for example — than to emphasize his.
Such sentiments may be laudable for the philosopher — but they can be a true impediment for the historian. To reach, then, a positive conclusion on what did the Soviet dissident movement mean for Soviet and — I will add — world society, we have to answer, first, the following four questions:
1. How faithful is Yessenin-Volpin's narrative to the events of the era?
2. What exactly was the Legality Program and how much can we identify Yessenin-Volpin with its invention?
3. To what extent were the other dissident activities of this time expresssions or applications of the Legality Program?
4. What did "Legality" express?
Starting with the first question, it is obvious that Yessenin-Volpin's narrative conforms highly with the known facts. There is no doubt, of course, that the story's concise form forces the narrator to omit many events and to conflate others. But all the major episodes of the pre-Detente dissident struggle are there. The narrative ends, of course, in 1972, the time of Yessenin-Volpin's forced "emigration" from the Soviet Union. But, since for the rest of its history the dissident movement never changed the theoretical foundations of its methods, neither this shortcoming constitutes a major problem for the historian. And finally, there is no discrepancy between what Yessenin-Volpin reports on the actions of the protagonists of the various events, from what we know from other sources. In essence, the events are described accurately.
The answer to the second question is equally categorical: The Legality Program, the proposition that dissidents should focus their political activity on the demand that Soviet citizens were awarded the rights that the Soviet Constitution proclaimed they enjoyed, by every account we have, was invented by Alexander Yessenin-Volpin.
Here is what Vladimir Bukovsky says on the way Yessenin-Volpin introduced his ideas on the legal rights Soviet citizens were entitled to, in the "legal seminars" he gave to threatened dissidents:
"It was now that I learned for the first time about a witness's legal rights. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Yesenin-Volpin, recently released from the Leningrad Special Mental Hospital, read us a whole lecture on the subject. ... At our first meeting he hadn't impressed me much — he was an eccentric sort of fellow wearing a tattered fur cap, and he spent the whole evening holding forth about the need to respect the law. But his words were of practical help, and now none of us allowed himself to be confused or was tricked into blabbing."(1)
And this is how he describes Yessenin-Volpin's application of the Legality Program in the trial of Bakstein, Kuznetsov and Osipov:
"The trial was closed to the public, of course. They didn't even want to let anyone in to hear the sentences. But our great legal wizard Alik Volpin, a copy of the Criminal Code in his hand, proved to the guards that the pronouncement of a court sentence must always be open to the public.
Alik was the first person we had ever come across to speak seriously of Soviet laws. We used to make fun of him. "You really are cracked, Alik," we would laugh. "Just think what you're saying. What laws can there be in a country like ours? Who pays any attention to them?" "That's the whole problem-that no one pays any attention to them," replied Alik, not in the least disturbed by our mockery. And when they let some of the boys in to listen to the sentence, he exulted. "Look, you see. We've only ourselves to blame if we don't demand that our laws be observed." But the rest of us shrugged our shoulders.
Little did we realize that this absurd incident, with the comical Alik Volpin brandishing his Criminal Code like a magic wand to melt the doors of the court, was the beginning of our civil-rights movement and the movement for human rights in the USSR."(2)
This is what Bukovsky says about the December 5, 1965 demonstration in the Pushkin Square:
"And so it came about that in November 1965 a number of people started distributing typewritten leaflets among their friends containing a "Citizens' Appeal." The text, calling for a mass meeting to demand a public trial for Daniel and Sinyavsky, had been composed, of course, by Alik Yesenin-Volpin. It ended: "You are invited to a public meeting on December 5 at 6 p.m. in the public garden in Pushkin Square, beside the poet's statue. Please invite two more citizens by showing them the text of this appeal."(3)
And this is how the same events are described by Ludmilla Alexeyeva,(4)an important member of the dissident movement, herself:
"Alek Esenin-Volpin was planning a demonstration, and just about all of Moscow knew it. It was discussed at the Lenin Library smoking room. It was discussed at the university. It was discussed in kompanii. ..."(5)
Since Yessenin-Volpin's precedence in the creation of the Legality program cannot seriously be doubted, and since the program's central role in the demonstrations and trials of the 60's is obvious, a question would be if the Legality Program was equally relevant and in the next phases of the dissident movement — what about the struggle for Human Rights, for example?
Valerii Chalidze, the co-founder with Andrei Tverdokhlevbov and Andrei Sakharov of the Moscow Human Rights Committee makes this connection between the "Legality Program" and the work on Human Rights:
"Another activity in the defense of rights has been the study of Soviet laws and international law. Not many have been engaged in this. But since it involves not only research but also the legal education of samizdat readers, the work has had an influence on the whole movement. This is all the more true since, from its inception, the movement has been somewhat law-oriented-in part because of the long-standing program of legal education vigorously carried on by Professor Volpin, which he began even before the movement developed. And there is one more activity that I would call basic to the movement: the exercise of rights in areas where, although it is not prohibited by law, it is not something the public and the authorities are accustomed to, and even where it may involve unlawful persecution by the authorities. There are many examples of such activity, including exercising freedom of the press by means of typewriters (samizdat), demonstrations, and the founding of associations- the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights and the Moscow Human Rights Committee"(6)
Chalidze had known Yessenin-Volpin since the days of the seminars the logician gave in 1958, in the University of Moscow, and had absorbed many of his ideas. As Sakharov writes:
"Influenced by his friend Esenin-Volpin, he [Chalidze] had mastered the criminal and procedural codes, and many people sought his advice. "(7)
In fact, the Human Rights Committee, which consisted of three members, two "experts" — one of them Yessenin-Volpin who served as a "legal expert on human rights" — and two corresponding members ( Galich and Solzhenitsyn ) can be regarded as a true embodiment the Legality Program. A free association of Soviet citizens, whose first act was to publish a document that announced openly the Committee's formation, purpose, rules and members and declared that their first concern was for the Committee to operate "in accordance with the laws of the state as well as in accordance with Regulations and Principles as stated below" cannot be seen as anything but an application of Yessenin-Volpin's ideas.
According to its founding document, the Committee's purpose was to provide:
" Consultative assistance to the organs of state in the field of creation and application of guarantees of human rights, undertaken on the initiative of the Committee or the concerned organs of governance. Creative assistance to persons interested in constructive study of theoretical aspects of the problem of human rights and study of the specifics of that problem in a socialist state. Legal educational work, including propagandizing of documents on international and Soviet law pertaining to human rights."(8)
All of these aims, of course, were faithful expressions of Yessenin-Volpin's program. That the Committee was a Legality Program institution becomes even more obvious by the importance that members of the Committee attributed to its internal bylaws.
Alexeyeva has preserved for us this side of the work of the Committee and her impressions on its functioning:
"...'I called Chalidze. 'This is Ludmilla Alexeyeva. I would like to petition the committee.' 'I am sorry, but the committee doesn't hear petitions from the public,' Chalidze said.'Then, under what conditions does the committee receive information from the public?' 'Please, be so kind as to submit your petition in written form.' Formality, after all, was the pillar of the teachings of Aleksandr Sergeyevich Esenin-Volpin. 'In that case, I would like to ask the committee for leniency. I have a very important matter to discuss, but lack the time to formalize it in written form. I would like to testify before you and have my testimony registered in your minutes.'...'If you insist, we will make an accommodation in your case, but, please understand, the committee meetings are not open to the public. Your testimony will be put on the agenda; you will be allowed to address the committee, after which you will be expected to leave the chambers.' I showed up at the appointed hour. ... 'The committee has received a request from Ludmilla Mikhailovna Alekseyeva to discuss the right of prisoners to maintain correspondence,' Chalidze announced to his fellow Committee Members. I stood up and made a brief presentation as the distinguished panelists looked up awkwardly from their chairs. 'Thank you, Ludmilla Mikhailovna. The committee will take this into consideration,' said Chalidze. For weeks, I entertained my friends with the story of my wondrous journey into that inner sanctum of Alek-Esenin-Volpinism."(9)
The influence of Yessenin-Volpin's Legality Program on the dissident movement did not dissipate, even after he was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972. The last major struggle of the dissident movement, was the fight for the Soviet Union to honor its commitment to the Helsinki Final Treaty of 1975. Initially the Treaty, signed at the height of American defeats in South-East Asia and political turmoil at home, was seen as a major victory for the Soviet Union, as it legitimized its control over the territories its armies had occupied since the second World War — in essence all Eastern Europe — and gave political substance to the Soviet regime's claims of the separate identity and cohesive interests of the Soviet World.
The Treaty, though, contained a Concluding Act that proclaimed that subjects of the participating States had the right to enjoy the Human Rights guaranteed to all by the United Nations Charter. A legal interpretation of the Concluding Act, forwarded by the dissident Yuri Orlov, was that by the Treaty the Soviet Union had undertaken the obligation to ensure these rights for its citizens, in exchange for western concessions in Eastern Europe. Orlov argued that the Treaty, instead of solidifying an unquestioned Soviet sovereignty over the Soviet World, provided, instead, a vehicle for the rest of the signatories to intervene and force the Soviet Union into acknowledging the rights that the dissident movement was fighting for. Orlov, proposed the formation of a group that would monitor the compliance of Soviet authorities to the Act, a group that was soon formed, under the name of Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, and included Yuri Orlov, Ludmilla Alexeyeva, Alexander Ginzburg, Yelena Boner — Andrei Sakharov's spouse, Pyotr Grigorenko, Anatoly Marchenko and other known members of the dissident movement, most of whom had taken part in dissident activities from the very start. Similar groups very quickly were formed and in other cities, some of which played important roles later in the disintegration of the Soviet Union.(10)
Even today Yessenin-Volpin is cited as an inspiration for action, when citizens confront authoritarian behavior in ex-Soviet societies. Alexandra Sviridova, for instance, quotes Yessenin-Volpin's Legality Program as an explanation for her own demand for observance of the laws by the authorities, in 1997, in modern Russia:
"... "it is my right to know what law I have violated," I said firmly, like a young Pioneer in opposition to senior comrades — like Esenin, Bukovsky, and Kovalev, who had dreamed of finding a form of bloodless resistance to the regime. ... No one before Esenin had thought to make the legal demand that the system obey its own laws. ... I, too, accepted Esenin’s idea as absolutely viable in all systems and countries, and I never failed, after meeting him, to ask everyone everywhere about the law. ... I know that the law exists. It is, as before, when Esenin read and studied the Constitution, beautiful. But, as usual in Russia, it does not work. No one reads it. But they will. I know for sure that, just as the dissidents taught the police and KGB a lesson during the trials of human-rights activists, the corporal scribe will remember me. For in her own hand she wrote down the position of a person in opposition to the authorities: “Does not consider herself a violator.”"(11)
In short, every participant in the Soviet dissident movement of the 60's and 70's agrees that it was the Legality Program that provided direction for the dissident activities of the era and gave cohesion to the dissident movement. And there is no dissident of the era who disagrees that the inventor of the Legality Program was Alexander Yessenin-Volpin.
The reason for this close identification of the Legality Program with Alexander Yessenin-Volpin is simple: the theory and methods of the Legality Program were not the result of an accidental inspiration — they were straightforward applications of Yessenin-Volpin's pre-existing scientific, philosophical, mathematical and logical work, work that drew strong inspirations from the ideas of the cybernetic movement.
2. Cybernetics confronting Historical Materialism - The Legality Program and the idea of the State as Computer.
We come now to, arguably, the the most critical question of Soviet history: What was exactly the meaning of the Legality Program, in the context of the dissident movement and the Soviet society? And what was its logic and aims?
To answer these questions, we have to start from an interesting observation. If we examine the list of the Soviet dissidents that is contained in the Sakharov archives,(12) and isolate those who were connected with the proposal, adoption and implementation of the Legality Program, we find that an inordinate number of the most prominent among them, were positive scientists. Andrei Sakharov, for example, was a physicist — and so were his co-founders in the "Moscow Human Rights Committee," Chalidze and Tverdokhlebov. Bukovsky was expelled from the University, but did graduate studies, after his exile, in neuroscience. Nikolsky — whom Yessenin attributes with playing an important role in the first realization of the Legality Program was also a physicist, as was Orlov. And of course, Alexander Yessenin-Volpin was a mathematician and logician and is considered by S. Gerovitch a "prominent figure in the cybernetic movement."(13)
There is always the possibility, of course, that the data contained in such a list may be exhibiting an unknown bias — leaders of Soviet society, after all, were frequently members of the intelligentsia, and Party officials, Soviet "economists," and "philosophers" are hardly expected to be over-represented in a list that contains those opposing their own rule. And, as Alexander Gribanov writes in his introduction to the list, "These photographs [and the list] do not cover the entire movement, representing just a small number of the people involved in this struggle. In many cases no photographs of these men and women survived, in other instances the images are too poor to reproduce."(14)
But still, there must be a reason for the fact that, from the about thirty leading dissidents of the late Soviet period whose opposition to the Soviet regime is not attributed to nationalist or religious feelings, fourteen were physicists, mathematicians and chemists, five were biologists, and most of the rest are described as authors, poets, and journalists. This composition is contrary to the traditional image of the repressed element of Soviet society as representing a cross-section of the populace, and encompassing people from all walks of life, opposed to the oppressive character of the Soviet regime — a picture that Solzhenitsyn so vividly paints in his overpowering "The Gulag Archipelago."(15) While this picture may be valid for the whole of Soviet history, the facts that emerge from an examination of the Sakharov archive list of the dissidents of its last period, suggest that the peculiar mix of professions that is evident in it, must have another explanation.
An interesting indication is provided by the professions of the participants in the list, themselves: Positive scientists, biologists, professionals of the information structure, a number of cultural workers. For someone accustomed with the cybernetic scene — and, particularly, its Soviet part — these fields look suspiciously familiar. In fact, they are the exact fields which saw the most intense cybernetic activity during the last years of the 50's and the first years of the 60's. A more plausible explanation, then, for the "slant "in the data above, is that the dissident movement, instead of being formed by a random process, had been constructed on an ideological framework that was more acceptable to people receptive to cybernetic ideas, who had responded disproportionally favourably to such a message.
The obvious question would be, then, "Is there an idea, central to the worldview expressed by the actions of the members of the dissident movement, that also contained a sound cybernetic core?" The answer is yes: the Legality Program, Yessenin-Volpin's invention.
Here we must draw a very important distinction between usual political programs and Yessenin-Volpin's Legality Program. While political programs — Leninism, for example — prescribe desired goals and pursue the modification of social mechanisms to achieve them — and, in the process, force members of the societies they control to accept and communicate these series of constant modifications — Yessenin-Volpin's approach was entirely different. His proposal was that the focus of political activity should be the construction of a rational set of rules that would guarantee the stable and predictable functioning of the social mechanism, in order that specific inputs would correspond to equally specific outputs. Such an algorithmic functioning of the law, in Yessenin-Volpin's view, would liberate societies from the oppression that is the result of the arbitrary application of state and personal power — in effect elevating their members from the state of the "subject" to the state of the "citizen."
Equally radical was Yessenin-Volpin's view of personal political activity. He did not see political involevement as a series of personal interventions in history. Instead, he understood it as a personal stance in support of the correct functioning of the system-wide program he envisioned, whose operation would then, in turn, produce history itself. Or, in cybernetic terms, Yessenin-Volpin attempted to propose the construction of a Soviet society modelled not after the paradigm of the Leninist and Stalinist "Dictatorship of the proletariat," but based on the idea of the "State as Computer."
Today, when the success of cybernetic ideas is widely accepted as self-evident, it is easy to underestimate the revolutionary character of such proposals in the conditions of the Soviet Union. And yet, the ideological apparatus of the Communist Party had recognized very early on that cybernetics represented a true danger for the Soviet system, and a violent anti-cybernetic campaign had been launched against the new science in the early 50's.
The reason for this enmity can be found in a peculiar phenomenon that afflicted Soviet society. Even a cursory read of Soviet history reveals that a particular aspect of the Soviet system that is usually disregarded as incidental, had in reality systematic dimensions: Every new Soviet administration, in four consecutive successions — assuming the three of the stagnation period as one — presided over a radical reversal of the structure of the Soviet system, that redefined completely the rules of conduct of Soviet society. These reversals of the social order did not represent the kind of tranquil change of leadership Western democracies are accustomed to. They were gigantic upheavals in which the fabric of Soviet society underwent dramatic changes, and hundreds of millions of lives were forced into new patterns of social behavior. As a result, the social cost of such changes must have been enormous — in actual economic costs, in lost know-how, in lost labour-hours — and the Soviet economy was forced to absorb it. At the same time it was directed to sustain a prolonged competition with the much more sophisticated, economically, Western World.
Putting the phenomenon in a more diagramatic form — albeit giving somewhat arbitrary values to the extremes — we have an even clearer picture:
Of course, to what degree this massive oscillation of the social direction — which we will name the Soviet Oscillation — contributed to the eventual demise of the Soviet Union it is not easy, yet, to evaluate. But it is obvious that the immense dislocation of social structures and mindsets that was at its heart, must have had a very disruptive effect on the mostly experimental Soviet system.
What no Soviet administration could overlook was the obvious fact that the results obtained from the Soviet social experiment deviated considerably from the predictions which the political leadership of the country was constantly making, based on the assumptions of Historical Materialism for a linear progression to Communism. Lenin and his inheritors confidently predicted that Soviet society was fast approaching the Communist state — Lenin believing initially that two years would be enough for Communism to emerge, and Khruschev forecasting its dawn for 1980. The Soviet Oscillation, on the other hand, proved conclusively that the formative theory of the Soviet State was not accurate, and forced he Soviet hierarchy to confront the inevitable question: "What does Historical Materialism's inability to describe Soviet reality mean for the Soviet system as a whole?" Or, to be more exact, it forced Soviet authorities to suppress the public expression of this question — because, in private, most Soviet citizens had already answered that the absolute infallibility of the theory was a myth.
As would be expected, different Soviet administrations offered contrasting interpretations for the discrepancy between the theory's predictions and reality. A large number of the convinced Leninists believed — in fact, still do — that the system was doomed by the "deviation" from Leninist orthodoxy that Stalin and his accomplishes had committed. And, equally predictably, the modern neo-Stalinists offer as an explanation for the system's failure the decrease in social control that the neo-Leninists attempted which, in turn, released the hostility of the national minorities of the U.S.S.R. against the Russian center.
From the perspective of the social scientist, though, the most important question is different: Since the failure of the Soviet "experimentum crucis" carries very ominous implications for Historical Materialism itself, does Historical Materialism possess a mechanism that can explain the very clear pattern that we see above — the successive and dramatic reversals of course every few years, from the very birth and till the very end of the Soviet system? If not, is there another theory that can explain this effect? And if there is, can this theory be used to modify Historical Materialism, or is it completely incompatible with its foundations?
As a matter of fact, Historical Materialism proposes such a process — but its underlying logic makes the incorporation of its results to the Soviet edifice even more problematic.
Here is how Stalin describes the process in question, in his "Dialectical and Historical Materialism:"
"dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for they all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes."
But which were the two different sides combating inside the Soviet system — the positive and the negative, in Stalin's definition — that produced the observed social oscillation? The two obvious trends in Soviet politics (at least in the mind of its leaders) were one leading to stricter controls on Soviet society — for a society more consistent with the principles of Historical Materialism, and one advocating a less centrally oriented system — and a society more adapted to its environment. Or, to use a much more semantically charged, but ultimately more realistic terminology, one force advocating an absolutely ideologically consistent Soviet system and one force trying to abolish it.
Now we see why the normative formulation of Historical Materialism leads to a major logical contradiction: If the theory is correct, it leads to the inevitable conclusion that the internal conflict of the Soviet system that was patterned after its assumptions, was won by the new, the positive, that "which is [being] born." And yet, what was really "born," after more than seventy years of conflict, was the negation of the Soviet system itself — and in no uncertain terms, if we examine the progressively larger deviation of Soviet society from the ideas of a Soviet militant orthodoxy, that is exhibited by the results of the diagrams above, a pattern which in 1991 lead to the dissolution of the system and the country. Accordingly, either Historical Materialism is wrong — which implies that the Soviet system, in the first place, was motivated by a faulty scientific analysis, or it is right — which means that the dissolution of the Soviet Union proves that the social system it produced was the "negative, dying and disappearing."
There was, though, a school of thought, that since the middle of the 1950's was pointing out that the ideological supporters of the Soviet system did not understand what was really at the heart of the Soviet malaise, that Historical Materialism did not possess the semantic and scientific tools to perceive the Soviet problems and that, as a result, the "answers" the Soviet leadership was trying to find in its theory were non existent. In the eyes of these critics neither Khrushchev, nor Gorbachev, nor any other "progressive" leader would be able to "regenerate" the Soviet system — because the theory the system was based on was antiquated.
The ideas these critics expressed viewed the Soviet system from the perspective of a multi-disciplinary scientific paradigm that had spread rapidly among the western academia and industry, during the middle of the 20th century. It was the product of a scientific field that, at its birth, was named by one of its main creators "Cybernetics," but its core subject today is usually understood to cover the related fields of Information Science, Robotics and Computing and, in some form or another, to have important applications in almost all scientific fields — even in fields as diverse as medicine, sociology and astronomy.
For the cybernetician the systemic problem that the Soviet Union faced is not unknown. Here is, for example, an excerpt from the foundational text of the field, the seminal treatise "Cybernetics," which Norbert Wiener wrote in 1948 and in which he prescribed the boundaries of the new science:
"...When we derive a motion to follow a given pattern the difference between this pattern and the actually performed motion is used as a new input to cause the part regulated to move in such a way as to bring this motion closer to that given in the pattern. For example, one form of steering engine of a ship carries the reading of the wheel to an offset from the tiller, which so regulates the valves of the steering wheel ... Under certain conditions of delay, etc., a feedback that is too brusque will make the rudder overshoot, and will be followed by a feedback in the other direction, which makes the rudder overshoot still more, until the steering mechanism goes into a wild oscillation or hunting, and breaks down completely." (16)
If the phenomenon described above seems innocent enough — after all Wiener is talking about a ship's tiller — we have to keep in mind that the central claim cybernetics made was that its analysis could be applied equally successfully to all systems imaginable — accordingly to the political system of the Soviet Union. And, here, a series of overreactions, overcorrections, changes of course, was already obvious in Soviet politics which, in turn, signifies that, long before the eventual failure of the Soviet system, there existed a scientific field that could offer at least some preliminary speculations on the reasons behind some of the problems that the Soviet leadership was facing.
From the very beginning, though, the relationship of the Soviet system with this new science did not promise to be easy. Here is another interesting reference, in the same text, that must not have helped much the disposition of the Soviet leadership towards cybernetics:
"If the proprioceptive sensations are wanting and we do not replace them by a visual or other substitute, we are unable to perform the act of picking up the pencil, and find ourselves in a state of what is known as ataxia. An ataxia of this type is familiar in the form of syphilis of the central nervous system known as tabes dorsalis, where the kinesthetic sense conveyed by the spinal nerves is more or less destroyed."
Ataxia is a Greek word composed of the negative "a" and the word "taxis." Taxis has a dual meaning. It may denote the order — and ataxia the absence of it. Or, in a much more poignant coincidence under the circumstances, taxis is also the Greek word for class — and ataxia the social condition of an absence of classes. We may easily surmise how much the Soviet "ideologues" must have appreciated the professed aim of the Soviet system — a classless society — being in this new scientific field, literary connected with the debilitating results of syphilis.
Even more ominous for them, thoug,h would have been the next words by Herbert Simon, another founder of the emerging science:
"It is well known in control theory, ... , that active, feedforward control, using predictions, can throw a system into undamped oscillation unless the control responses are carefully designed to maintain stability. Because of the possible destabilizing effects of taking inaccurate predictive data too seriously, it is sometimes advantageous to omit prediction entirely" (17)
In the Soviet philosophers' eyes the true danger in cybernetics was hidden in what it implied for Historical Materialism and Soviet society itself: Instead of being the omniscient, omnipotent and everlasting scientific theory that the Soviet theoreticians insisted it was, the ideological weapon of the Soviet system was suddenly in danger of being relegated to the infamous ashheap of scientific history. And the plans for a society aimed at a distant Golden Socialist Future proved to be hampered not by the ellusive "enemies" and "saboteurs" that the Soviet authorities were always looking for, but by its own theoretical foundation.
Now we can understand the alarm of the Soviet authorities when a young, gifted, and known dissident thinker began articullating similar ideas among his fellow Soviet academics. In fact, philosophical, social and political ideas with clear affinity to the cybernetic paradigm can easily be found in Yessenin-Volpin's earliest poetry. But they become an open challenge to the ideological status quo of the Soviet Union in the "Free Philosophical Treatise," his philosophical essay that is included in the book that brought him his second major incarceration, the collection "A Leaf of Spring."
Yessenin-Volpin's critique of the prevalent conceptual apparatus of his contemporaries — and, more narrowly, the philosophical and political apparatus of Soviet society — stems from his work on mathematical logic and starts from a very obvious point: Reality cannot be dichotomied into clear and precise domains, something that holds also true for human ideas. Yessenin-Volpin believes that reality and ideas are not intrinsically digital — they are amorphous. Accordingly, in man's attempt to reach an understanding of his environment, the tendency to simplify the data provided by reality leads to the construction of thought models that are prone to logical inconsistencies and fallacies. These fallacies, which are fomented by the vagueness of language and its inability to reflect reality with precision, are expressed, in turn, by the emergence of pseudo-problems on which various political operatives — demagogues, in his word — depend to promote their own power over society.
The major pseudo-problems that Yessenin-Volpin identifies in his "Free
Philosophical Treatise" were:
- The reality of being — because he believes that we must first address the complex nature of thought and existence which, in his view, form a continuum.
- Materialism — which he condemns as a theory full of contradictions that make it unable to incorporate the phenomenon of thought.
- Determinism — because he can not be persuaded to accept a universal causality of which he can not see its own cause. And, additionally, because of the dire implications that crude interpretations of determinism have for the idea of freedom.
- Monism — which he rejects on the basis that reality is obviously multidimensional and, accordingly, monism represents a form of intellectual laziness.
- Faith — which he sees as irrelevant, choosing instead to reason about everything the intellect can perceive.
- Death and immortality — because he believes that the personal self is constantly changing and, in this sense, it continuously dies and is revived, making the fact of death only an instantaneous event.
- The problem of the conscious and the subconscious — because he views the distinction as a product of the ambiguities created in the effort to express the world through limited linguistic means.
The clear impression from this list is that Yessenin-Volpin's ideas were absolutely irreconcilable with the ideological basis of the Soviet system. Materialism, Monism, Faith and — especially — Determinism were the unshakable foundations of Historical Materialism and of Soviet society, and their constant invocation was an indispensable part of the ideological arsenal of the Soviet regime.
Even more revolutionary than Yessenin-Volpin's opposition to Historical Materialism, was the source of his criticism: Yessenin-Volpin placed at the center of his interest the processes of thought, their interaction with self and reality, and the forms that this interaction is takes. In this, Yessenin-Volpin's ideas mirrored the cybernetic conception of the world. This becomes even clearer in his approach to the matter-spirit problem, in which he proposes that the real difficulty lies with the terminology that is traditionally used, which overlooks the true connections between the two phenomena. As a solution, Yessenin-Volpin proposes more rigorous definitions.
For him, a phenomenon is:
" ... 'material' if it is perceived through the sensory organs (in modern science, the readings of instruments are added to 'the senses,' and, in conformity with this, the concept of "materiality" can be expanded).
... 'spiritual' if it is perceived through the aid of the intellect.
... 'psychical' if it is perceived directly as an emotion, or if it is not perceived at all."(18)
Yessenin-Volpin is very aware that his first two categories correspond exactly to the cybernetic view — in which a computer comprises a central unit that processes external data — which it "perceives" through either direct input or through remote censors — and that his third category adds only a necessary element of indeterminacy to the system. In fact, he invokes here the problem of the locus of existence of the intellectual being, a central cybernetic concern, and positions himself among those that question the identification of being and body, citing explicitly cybernetics as providing a possible solution:
"The problem of the Fremdenpsychisches is involved here, but, ultimately, the analysis is not very complex. In altering the conception of ego and in attributing ego to the actually thinking subject rather than to the biological individual, we shall in all probability be able to abstract ourselves from the part played by the sensory organs in the cognition of these phenomena, just as, during the logical analysis of ideas, we abstract ourselves from the processes occurring in the brain. Cybernetics should contribute far greater clarity to this question, and perhaps it has already done so."(19)
A very clear proof of the affinity of Yessenin-Volpin's ideas with the cybernetic paradigm is the use he makes of examples based on the game of chess — a staple of cybernetic research — to argue for the untenable position of materialism. Even a materialism distilled to its very essence is rejected:
" ... it [is] conceivable that everything would actually be reduced to one kind of process, and in that case "matter" could apparently claim the universality of its role. From this circumstance, perhaps, the materialists draw their reliance on the validity of their doctrine. ... Do we conceive of a law by which such a reduction could take place? Let us attempt to imagine its formulation. It must be applicable in every instance (since it is a question of a law), including also our example. Therefore, it must include a formulation of the interrelation which exists between the physiological brain processes and the chess rules. Another example: on first reading Pushkin's 'The Bronze Horseman,' I perceive the images through the printed text:
On the shore of a waste of waves
He stood, replete with lofty thoughts
And gazed afar.
The formulation of the proposed law must incorporate a description of the forms of letters of the Cyrillic alphabet (which in themselves are not material!) and be sufficiently general so as to explain the immutability of the brain's physiological processes, corresponding to the image arising in the imagination and taking into account the changes in orthography which occurred in Russia in 1918."(20)
In other words, by the end of the process, a materialist universal "law" would be indistinguishable from the "phenomenon" — a case of A = A — not a particularly impressive intellectual feat, for the philosopher.
Accordingly, the only way that the world can be understood is as an ever developing process, which the being perceives unfolding an instant at a time, with the only instrument it possesses: its thought and the rules that govern it.
"... A friend of mine, when he heard [the statements on] this page and a summary of the treatise, said: 'In other words, you believe only in thought and reason?' Yes, of course, there is nothing else in which to believe. But even these matters need not be believed. It is not necessary to believe in reason. It is sufficient for the thinking man to be reasoning."(21)
For Yessenin-Volpin, the impossibility of the construction of a universal law is also the only justification needed for freedom:
"I reject an orderly system; but what do I propose in its place? Nothing, for the present: in fact, I want nothing but freedom of opinion on this question. Freedom does not tolerate dogma. Freedom is a vacuity."(22)
The same absolute freedom from compulsion he wants extended to society — although he knows perfectly well that such a thought is Eutopian:
"What is to be said about anarchy? It is my political ideal. But the attempt to realize it in practice would, in our time, prove to be a revolting crudity, brigandage, demagogy, and it would probably terminate in usurpation."
Still, he believes an anarchic model has its use:
"Well, the role of ideals does not lie in their realization. It is good if fine but unattainable ideals exercise some influence on our morals."(23)
If anarchy is only an unapproachable ideal, authority and power should receive the most thorough scrutiny:
"The study of the principle of authority, its role and its limitations, is an important problem in practical philosophy. The concepts bearing on this problem must be worked out on a scientific level, and the conclusions which suggest themselves must be made accessible to all. This problem may acquire important practical significance in the matter of liberating minds from various orthodoxies."(24)
Here we have a concise political plan stated as clearly as the medium and the period permitted: Yessenin-Volpin foresees a scientific (logical, in his eyes) study of the concept of authority, its role and limitations, whose results must be made available to all, with the practical goal of liberating minds from various orthodoxies.
Since the only "orthodoxy" in the Soviet system was the Soviet system itself, and since, most definitely, Yessenin-Volpin soon followed his own advice by studying the logic of the Soviet system and, through the "Legality Program, by making his results available to all, it is clear that the essay, far from being a sterile philosophical discussion, was the programmatic text of the philosophical, ideological, and political revolution that Yessenin-Volpin's ideas soon spawned, whose express practical purpose was to liberate "minds" from Soviet orthodoxy.
The only question that remains is how are these ideas connected with the "Legality Program?"
Here, we have to understand what the main objective of the "Legality Program" was: Far from "perfecting" or "repairing" the Soviet system — in the manner that "pure Leninists," Stalinist cyberneticians and, even, an early Sakharov aspired to — a program faithful to Yessenin-Volpin's thoughts would be one that would produce the Soviet system's eventual decomposition. The reason is that, although, Yessenin-Volpin does not oppose political systems per-se, he would, also, be the last person advising them. Accordingly, for him, political activism is necessary by the intellectual, mainly as a defense against the usurpation of power by the various demagogues, and the imposition of compulsion on members of society. For Yessenin-Volpin, exactly as freedom is understood in the negative, political activity aims also to the negative: the establishment of conditions of absence of compulsion.
And, from the very start, Yessenin-Volpin was convinced that the Leninist system was beyond any reformation because at its root was the Leninist conception of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." As Andrei Sinyavsky writes:
"Finally, Lenin's fourth finding — grounded in science and applied in practice — consisted in his rejection of all freedom and democracy, outside as well as inside the Party. To maintain democracy would have been utopian and the Bolsheviks' downfall. As a scholar, Lenin gave us a concise definition of the term "dictatorship" and, by extension, of Soviet State power: 'The scientific concept of a dictatorship signifies nothing other than a power which, unrestricted by any laws, uninhibited by any absolute rules, resorts freely to the use of violence.'
There is no denying the honesty of this formula or its scientific basis. That it sounds frightening to all liberals, democrats, and humanists, to you and to me, is another matter. It sounds equally frightening to all utopians of the Marxist or generally socialist persuasion, since it deprives them of any hope that socialism will bring democracy and freedom, that the revolution will be that leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom described by Marx. On the contrary, as Lenin says and proves, the revolution is a leap into the kingdom of unlimited violence sponsored by the State power on behalf of the proletariat. The power is this violence, which extends in principle to the entire population and without which this utopia could not exist."(25)
Yessenin-Volpin understood perfectly the logic, honesty and ruthlessness of Lenin's doctrine — after all, his father had commited suicide under its pressure, his brother had been executed for "threatening" Stalin, and he had been incarcerated to a mental hospital for writing poems. The only solution to the Soviet problem that he could see, was the destruction of the Soviet system itself. The method that he chose to accomplish this goal was the "Legality Program."
Here is how Bukovsky describes the same:
"Volpin's idea, therefore, came down to this. ... We wish to live in a state ruled by law, where the law is unshakable and the rights of all citizens protected, where it would be possible not to lie without risking the loss of our freedom. So let us live in such a state. We, the people, are the state. Whatever we are will mold the character of the state. A close examination of the laws we have been given fully supports such an interpretation. Let us, therefore, like good citizens of our country, observe the laws as we understand them, that is, as they are written. We are obliged to submit to nothing but the law. So let us defend our laws from being encroached upon by the authorities. We are on the side of the law. They are against it. Of course, there is a great deal in Soviet law that is absolutely unacceptable. But not even the citizens of free countries are completely satisfied with their laws. When citizens don't like a law, they seek by legal means to have it reformed.
'But they can't get by without using coercion,' we objected to Alik. 'If they were to introduce a strict observance of the law, they would simply cease to be a Communist state.'
'Actually, I agree with you,' Alik would say in a conspiratorial whisper, and everyone burst out laughing."(26)
Or, to paraphrase Bukovsky's words, Yessenin-Volpin's idea came down to this: "Since political systems function, in essence, as cybernetic (logical) machines and since we wish to live under the minimum compulsion possible, we will introduce in the Soviet system a program that will advance the demand of a state ruled by law. This, though, will create a logical paradox for the Soviet system: If it agrees to our demand "the dictatorship of the proletariat" will have to be abolished and the Soviet state will dissolve. If it opposes it, it will have to admit that it functions outside the law — an impossible admission in this day and age."
This was exactly the idea that the "Legality Program" expressed. Much more than a demand for "freedom," "civil rights," or "observance of the Constitution," the Legality Program was a true cybernetic program designed to exploit the logical inconsistency of the Soviet state "computer" and lead its functioning to a crisis.
Bukovsky, who had the best understanding, between dissidents, of the "automatic" nature of Yessenin-Volpin's argument, writes:
"Imagine, for a moment, that the KGB has taken it into its head to arrest a computer. The computer simply won't understand the ambiguous language of the investigator's questions or of Soviet law. Its logical circuits will give out answers of the "true-false" variety, and if an attempt is made to get an extended answer, it will simply cough out a long perforated ribbon with an infinity of units and zeros on it. What would you have them do with it? I guarantee that the case would end, as with Alik, in the mental hospital..."(27)
In reality, though, the situation was inverse: Yessenin-Volpin was the human programmer who had introduced an alternative program in the Soviet system, in place of Lenin's program of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." The new program's central idea was that the state should behave as a computer. And the Soviet regime — whose own justification was that societies function on fixed rules — by using the direct intervention of KGB to suppress the dissident movement, was trying to circumvent the paradox that the dissident demand for "Legality" was forcing it to confront.
And now we understand Yessenin-Volpin's words "Enough of emotions we have in our life, we have now to be liberated of emotions, rather than them to be brought forth." Because when "emotions" were inserted in the political activity of the dissident movement, they produced an equally emotional response by the defenders of the Soviet state, who overcame, temporarily, the logical arguments of the "Legality Program" and their implications.
3. Cybernetic Politics amd the Dissident movement: The Legality Program, its transmission and operation.
A crucial part of the Cybernetic paradigm is that it is concerned with both, information, and the communication structures through which information is transmitted. So, after we have reviewed the ideas around which the dissident movement coalesced, it is imperative now to examine the other aspect of the dissident movement: its internal structure and its modes of operation. For this we have only to see exactly how Yessenin-Volpin constructed the message of the original appeal for the Demonstration at Pushkin Square, and how he conceived its dissemination.
Alexeyeva has preserved for us the full text of the appeal:
"Several months ago the organs of state security arrested two citizens: writers A. Sinyavsky and Yu. Daniel. There are reasons to fear violation of glasnost of the legal process. It is commonly known that violation of the law on glasnost (Article 3 of the Constitution of the USSR and Article 18 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) constitutes an illegal action. It is inconceivable that the work of a writer could constitute a crime against the [secrecy of the] state.
In the past, unlawful actions by the authorities have taken the lives of millions of Soviet citizens. This bloodstained past demands vigilance in the present. It is more prudent to give up one day of tranquility than to spend years suffering the consequences of lawlessness that has not been stopped in time.
Soviet citizens have a means for resisting capricious actions of the authorities. That method is the Glasnost Meetings whose participants chant only one slogan: 'WE DE-MAND GLAS-NOST FOR THE TRIAL OF (followed by the last names of the accused)!' or where the participants display a corresponding banner. Any shouts or slogans that depart from demands of strict adherence to laws must be regarded as counter-productive or, possibly, provocational and must be halted by the participants of the meeting.
During the meeting, it is essential to observe decorum. At the first demand of the authorities it is essential to inform the authorities about the purpose of the meeting, then to disband.
You are being invited to a Glasnost Meeting which will be held on December 5, at 6 P.M., on Pushkin Square, by the monument to the poet.
Invite [at least] two other citizens by means of this appeal.' "(28)
It is clear, now, how closely Yessenin-Volpin's appeal conforms to the model of a cybernetic program: First it contains, a message for the promotion of the Legality Program — the demonstration. Then it contains a message on what is the exact meaning of the Legality Program and how it should be applied — the set of precise, terse and strict instructions on how the demonstration must be carried out. Deviations from these instructions are discouraged to the point that demonstrators who will disobey the prescribed rules are in danger of being denounced as possible agent-provocateurs. And, finally, in its last line, the appeal contains explicit instructions for its own replication and dissemination. Today, when communication networks are so ubiquitous that they have almost become invisible, the operation of such a program is very familiar:
a. The carrier of the program (leaflet with the appeal) would transmit it
to new potential carriers.
b. The new carriers — those among the recipients who accepted the message
— would now become new carriers of the program themselves, who would
transmit it to new potential carriers. And this would be repeated ad infinitum.
A classic account of this process of cybernetic transmission, in which the recipient of a message is transformed by it to a new carrier, and an independent verification that Yessenin-Volpin' theory was indeed the force that attracted members to the movement, comes to us from a combination of two different sources: Vladimir Bukovsky's account of his reaction to Yessenin-Volpin's teachings, and General Grigorenko's comments on his response to Bukovsky's suggestions for dissident action.
As Bukovsky writes,
"I used to argue fiercely with Alik, sometimes into the small hours. And not only because at the age of nineteen one tends to argue with everybody, but also because his entire line of reasoning and all his premises were unacceptable to me, and nothing he said seemed to have any application to real life. But returning home early in the morning, still burning with indignation, I would suddenly discover, to my horror, that I had completely accepted one or another of his arguments.
The central concept in his argument was the position of a citizen, which offered a laughably simple way out of all my dilemmas. These dilemmas began at the point where I was required to be a "Soviet man."Alik Volpin argued, however, that there was no law obliging us to be "Soviet people." A citizen of the USSR, on the other hand, was quite a different matter. We were all citizens of the USSR by virtue of having been born on its territory. But there was no law obliging all the citizens of the USSR to believe in communism or to help build it, or to collaborate with the security organs, or to conform to some mythical ethos. The citizens of the USSR were obliged to observe the written laws, not ideological directives.... This line of reasoning was extremely important, since in practice the authorities simply proclaimed as anti-Soviet everything they didn't like. According to strictly juridical criteria, none of us was committing a crime so long as we didn't directly assail the power of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies."(29)
And here is how General Grigorenko — a prominent Soviet military cybernetician himself, reports his meeting with Bukovsky at about this time:
"When I asked Volodya what type of action he preferred — open struggle or organized underground conspiracy, he replied forcefully, 'Open struggle! Why should we hide? The law is on our side. People will hear public statements and the honest and brave among them will join us. What methods could one use for underground conspiracy? Given the corruption of our morality, I am convinced that from the very first one would encounter a provocateur. Only an idiot would go underground.'
How my opinion of Volodya changed in this brief encounter! In the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital, thin, with his work clothes hanging on him, and with his cropped hair, he had seemed to me a mere boy. Now he captivated me, and I ceased to feel the difference in our ages."(30)
In other words, the message of the Legality Program had been accepted by General Grigorenko and had provided for him the proof of the maturity of the dissident movement. In this series of transmissions, then, Yessenin-Volpin's Legality Program message provided the cohesive force among three different dissidents of vastly different backgrounds, ages and purpose (Grigorenko considered himself, at the time, a Communist, Bukovsky and Yessenin-Volpin anything but) a role that it performed till the last stages of the dissident effort.
The cybernetic paradigm was reflected, also, in the structure of the dissident movement itself. The traditional image of a political structure is that of a close-knit community of similar-minded individuals, who are arranged in more-or-less hierarchical command networks, headed by a well-defined leadership from which orders for the direction of the structure's functioning emanate — in essence, traditional political strucures follow a mechanistic paradigm. The dissident movement, though, was constructed and operated in the exact opposite way: as a network of independent members, each of whom could initiate any activity they felt would conform with the aims of the "Legality Program," and who did not feel particularly compelled to follow a central plan. There was, of course, a small number of individuals who enjoyed the respect of their fellow dissidents and, in this way, functioned as an informal — and very diffuse — leadership of the movement. But, by every account we have, the Soviet Union dissident movement of the 60's and 70's is much better described as a large group of small networks (many of them consisting of only one member) arranged mostly horizontally and connected together by the "Legality Program" practices, than as a traditional political party with members arranged in a pyramidal structure, strictly controlled by a focused leadership.
Chalidze gave the perfect description of this characteristic of the dissident movement:
"Typical among them [ the dissidents] is a profound intellectual individualism, a striving to choose for themselves the patterns of their own individual protests, behavior, and a considerable weariness with the external dictates of "optimality" and correctness customarily accepted by most of the population. It is precisely this individualistic spirit in the movement for human rights which has made possible joint action by people who would never agree to restrict the freedom of their critical thought by subordinating themselves to collective requirements — even those that might promote greater tactical effectiveness.
There is no organization in the movement and no one is under any obligation. Nobody is required to submit to the opinion of the majority; and for that matter the opinion of the majority is not usually known. Everyone does what he considers acceptable for himself, either on his own or together with others wishing to do the same thing. In saying this I am of course not trying to deny the role of mutual moral influence on the actions of individuals, nor the influence of friendly solidarity. But this is not what is usually called organized behavior, and it does not interfere with individual freedom."(31)
This aspect of the dissident movement was not accidental. It was a direct result of the operation in the movement of the "Legality Program's" core idea: Since, for the Program, the central aim of the dissident message was not the promotion of a particular end result, but the advocacy of a specific method of personal and social behavior, the only "membership" in the movement consisted in the insistence on the limits and proper functioning of the written laws. As a result, dissidents need only support the activities that each of them felt best expressed the goals of the Program — a process that gave the movement an "organic" flexibility and an adaptability impossible in more traditional structures, but typical of cybernetic systems.
Even more important, dissent could now expand and in spheres outside the small dissident community. And here we reach the phenomenon that in the late 60's terrified the Soviet authorities: The expansion of the message of the Legality Program in groups that were traditional bastions of the Soviet system. Since the Legality Program advocated only the rule of law — in other words the prescription of the powers of the Communist Party and its hostage State — demanding its application was a relatively safe means by which groups adjacent but not entirely controlled by the regime promoted their interests, also. Among the latter, the intelligentsia was a prominent supporter of the Program. But its attraction was, also, felt by the managerial classes of the Soviet Union — whose members were always under the threat of dictatorial persecution when economic activities did not produce the result that the political leadership forecasted and demanded.
The power of the Legality Program argument was enhanced by its cybernetic method of transmission, that followed the pattern of a geometric progression — with each new stage of transmission expanding the message to an ever increasing number of new potential converts. If the Program was advocated by a few dissidents at the beginning of the 60's, by 1965 it was expanding so rapidly that new carriers were not even aware of the dissident movement's internal structure, attributing their participation in dissident activities to its method of operation: the Legality Program, itself. When Yessenin-Volpin was detained later in a mental institution, over ninety members of the academia signed a letter in his defense, asking that he be permitted to resume his work. Many among them did not know of his exact role in the dissident movement — or did not believe that his membership in it warranted such treatment. For instance, P. Novykov, the brother in law of the president of the Soviet Academy of Science M. Keldysh, had to endure a four-hour harangue by the latter who was trying to persuade him to retract his signature — after which ordeal he suffered a severe heart attack.(32)
It was this rapid expansion of the "Legality Program" message that turned
it to the "language" that A. Gribanov alludes to. And, in fact, the pressure
from the petition in support of Yessenin-Volpin achieved its aim: Yessenin-Volpin
was transferred immediately to a less restrictive facility and three months
later was altogether released.
4. The true triumph of the dissident movement.
It is argued, sometimes that the importance of the dissident movement is overexagerated. After all, goes the argument, even at its peak the dissident movement did not exceed a few thousands of dissidents and a few tens of thousands of sympathizers. This, of course, is one more misapplication of Western viewpoints on Soviet reality. In a country controlled by a political machine whose active center comprised only a few hundreds of political operatives, the sudden emergence of an oppositional political movement of the size the dissident movement attained, constituted a major crisis. In fact, the Legality Program was understood by the Soviet elite as so dangerous that in September 1966 the Soviet regime tried to control it by expanding its suppressive capabilities. This was achieved by incorporating in the Criminal Code of three new articles — articles 190-1, 190-2, 190-3 — that provided heavy penalties for "slandering the Soviet system." Prominent members of Soviet society objected vehemently. As Alexeyava writes:
"Before the new law was ratified, a petition signed by twenty-one prominent writers and scientists warned the Supreme Soviet that the proposed Article 190 contradicted "the Leninist principles of Socialist democracy" and threatened to 'infringe on liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of the USSR.' Dmitry Shostakovich was among the petitioners. So was Andrei Sakharov, a nuclear physicist living in the shadows of the Soviet hydrogen-weapons program. The Soviet elite had risen to demand that the Supreme Soviet be guided by the Soviet Constitution. The ideas of Alek Esenin-Volpin were acquiring a life of their own."(33)
That the two defining characteristics of the Soviet dissident movement of the 60's — its organic, non-hierarchical structure and the rapid expansion of its message — were results of the cybernetic conception of is central idea, is now clear. Equally clear is the astounding success of the Legality Program. In a matter of months it motivated the first extensive political opposition in the history of the Soviet Union, that proved effective in challenging the ideological domination of the Soviet society by the Communist Party. What is not as widely understood is that this was only the first victory of the Legality Program. Soon it would become the central demand of a series of dissident movements across the Soviet world, that would embrace its demands and lead the Soviet system to its final crisis.
Part 1: Alexander Yessenin-Volpin, in his own words. His Life and the Legality Program.
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Notes:
(1) Vladimir Bukovsky. To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter (New York : The Viking Press,1977) p. 160. text
(2) Ibid., p. 163. text
(3) Ibid., p. 249. text
(4) Ludmilla Alexeyeva (1927- ) Prominent dissident, heavily involved in the publication of the samizdat "Chronicle of Current Events," the primary source of dissident information in the Soviet Union. text
(5) Ludmilla Alexeyeva The Thaw Generation Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Boston : Little, Brown and Co., 1990), p. 119.text
(6) Valerii Chalidze To defend these rights: human rights and the Soviet Union, ( New York : Random House, 1975), p. 56. text
(7) Andrei Sakharov Memoirs ( New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 314. text
(8) Alexeyeva, p. 255. text
(9) Ibid., pp. 255-257. text
(10) Petro G. Grigorenko Memoirs. (New York : W. W. Norton , 1982) p. 435, Alexeyeva, p. 281. text
(11) Alexandra Sviridova Citizen and Law after Communism Living in Lawlessness. East European Constitutional Revue. Volume 7 Number 1, Winter 1998. text
(12) Introduction to the collection "Faces of Resistance in the USSR (Photo Exhibit)" on the http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/sakharov/Exhibit/faces.html text
(13) Slava Gerovich From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A history of Soviet Cybernetics. (Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 2002.) p. 288. text
(14) Introduction to the collection "Faces of Resistance in the USSR (Photo Exhibit)" text
(15) Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 An Experiment in Literary Investigation (New York : Harper&Row, 1973). text
(16) Norbert Wiener, Norbert Wiener Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine, (New York , The M.I.T. Press, 1961), p.7 text
(17) Herbert Simon Models of My Life (New York: Harper Collins, 1991) , (New York , The M.I.T. Press, 1961), p.7 text
(18) Alexander Yessenin-Volpin A Leaf of Spring, p. 119. text
(19) Ibid., p. 119. text
(20) Ibid., p. 125. text
(21) Ibid., p. 171. text
(22) Ibid., p. 129. text
(23) Ibid., p. 166. text
(24) Ibid., p. 142. text
(25) Sinyavsky, p. 62. text
(26) Bukovsky, p. 239. text
(27) Ibid., p. 237. text
(28) Alexeyeva, p. 120. text
(29) Bukovsky, p. 238. text
(30) Grigorenko, p. 318. text
(31) Valerii Chalidze To defend these rights: human rights and the Soviet Union. (New York : Random House, 1975.), p. 58-59. text
(32) Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 371. text
(33) Alexeyeva, p. 163. text