Original interview in Russian: https://youtu.be/rjTAfSEWkFU
Translated by Lubov Yudovich
Leon Weinstein: We are discussing Vladimir Bukovsky’s book Judgment in Moscow, which was originally written in 1996. I learned of the story of its publication just recently, when I received proofs of the English translation. The story is mind-boggling, so I wanted to talk about it with Vladimir Konstantinovich. The thing that makes this so incredible is that it happened here in America, not in Russia where it was first published.
Vladimir Konstantinovich, if I am not mistaken, there was a publishing house that had contracted with you to publish the book here in the US in English. By that time the book had already been published in other languages, and was selling quite well. However, the US publisher canceled the contract because you refused to ‘make changes’ they had asked for. Here we’re not talking about minor edits. They were asking for the kind of changes that you could never agree to make; and as a result they would sever their relationship with you, and not publish the book. Could you tell us exactly what happened, what sort of changes they required, and why you wouldn’t agree to make them?
Vladimir Bukovsky: Part of my correspondence with the publishing house editor can be found in the first chapter of the final version of Judgment in Moscow, so those who are curious can read the correspondence and judge for themselves what happened. In essence, they demanded that I re-wrote the entire book from the point of view of a liberal of the left. For example, I write [in my book] that a specific publisher [George Bobolas, Greek construction magnate who ventured into media] entered into a contract with the Soviets to publish articles about the Soviet Union under the direct editorial control of the Soviets….
Leon Weinstein: You’ve got to be kidding me?
Vladimir Bukovsky: No kidding. Everything is documented: all the agreements with all the archival data—you can see for yourself. Another example is of several companies who agreed to do business with them [the SU], again under their ideological control; and so on. So, the publisher demanded that I threw all of that out. We corresponded by fax, back and forth, for quite some time. In the end I just replied that “Due to certain peculiarities of my biography, I am allergic to political censorship, so I can’t do what you are asking me to do.” So, they canceled the contract; it was a large contract as well.
Leon Weinstein: I get that.
Vladimir Bukovsky: It slowed me down enormously. I spent a very long time looking for a new publisher. As you understand, publishing is a small world—if one publisher drops you, the others grow cautious too. But finally, I did find a publisher—an old small publishing house in the UK—John Murray. They don’t exist anymore, but at the time they did. They were a very proud family publishing house. The point of pride was the fact that at they had originally published Byron. They bought the rights to my book; and the next thing we knew—a team of lawyers is paying them a visit and telling them, “You try to publish this book, and we will bankrupt you. You will be sued non-stop. Non-stop! You are a family publishing house, you don’t have the resources to fight us.” And they didn’t fight. They gave up. They dropped the contract. They didn’t try to keep it a secret from me, I later received all this information.
This is why I couldn’t get the book published in English for such a long time. It had been already published in French, Italian, German, Polish, Romanian, not to mention in Russian—that version had been published instantly. Nobody anywhere thought of stopping its publication. Nobody had tried to sue; it should be obvious that there were no grounds. But the English-language publishers kept silent, and didn’t dare publish the book.
Finally, a group of supporters in America, who are not professionals in this field, decided to publish the book in English using their own resources and investing their own labor. Everything is being done by the efforts of volunteers. The translator who translated this book from Russian, people who worked on footnotes and searched for references, the editors—all these people worked for free. This is pure enthusiasm. They understand that this book must exist, and that people want to read it, so they put in the effort. Let’s praise and thank them.
Leon Weinstein: Absolutely! But your other books were published in English, is that right?
Vladimir Bukovsky: Yes, of course. My first book even became a bestseller in several countries.
Leon Weinstein: So then, just this one specific work containing accurate, undisputable facts, and supported by documentation—that book for some reason was not. The only thing, I am assuming, they could have contrived was to allege that you had manufactured all these documents yourself; or had obtained them from some completely different source. But it’s such an unlikely allegation, that I doubt anyone would have tried to make it.
Vladimir Bukovsky: But you see, it would have been completely useless to try to do that. There was a hearing of the Constitutional Court in Moscow, where I insisted on most of these documents being admitted into evidence in the court records. These documents are exhibits in the court case. You can go to the Constitutional Court, check out the case file, and read through them.
Leon Weinstein: Oh, that’s great. And it sounds like it would also nullify any future attempts to sue.
Vladimir Bukovsky: Of course.
Leon Weinstein: But still, why? Were some famous public figures mentioned who had worked with the KGB, or the Political Bureau, or the Central Committee of the CPSU? I mean, those are all the same really, all of them worked toward the same goal.
Vladimir Bukovsky: Sure….
Leon Weinstein: Were there Americans who would have wanted to keep their names out of such a damaging book?
Vladimir Bukovsky: Of course. The establishment left, including artistic circles, had been open and willing to have contacts with the Soviets. They [the left] thought that was a way to secure peace on earth. Take a certain Cyrus Vance, who later became a member of the Palme Commission in Sweden. That Commission was basically engaged in the justification of Soviet foreign policy. I have a lot of material in my book on this. At one time, Cyrus Vance together with a group of other left-wing actors approached Arbatov—the Soviet representative on the Commission, and told him, “Look, could you not use such blatant Soviet language for the declarations on the Commission’s decisions? It’s very difficult for us to have our decisions announced in such an obvious Soviet style. At least rephrase them.” This is shown in one of the documents that I have.
Leon Weinstein: Cyrus Vance is very well known here. And what about modern-day Hollywood personalities?
Vladimir Bukovsky: Well, I have a document which shows that in 1979 Francis Ford Coppola, at the request of President Carter approached the Soviet Cinematography Committee with a proposal for a documentary on disarmament. The Soviets agreed, but only on condition that the Soviets would have total control of the production. And the Americans accepted. They were ready to roll, but in the end this film was never made, because the invasion of Afghanistan interfered, and relations went to hell, but the Americans were ready to do it.
Leon Weinstein: That’s just incredible. To agree to make a film about disarmament under Soviet control! I always thought that Carter saw the world through rose-tinted glasses, but I clung to the belief that at least he held anti-Soviet views, mostly because of his stance toward Iran and that whole border region. But now you are dispelling my illusions. My goodness: to do a film about disarmament and to surrender control over the final cut to the other side! My background is in film, so I know exactly what that means.
Vladimir Bukovsky: Yes.
Leon Weinstein: Tell me this: we say that the Cold War was over with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But is it really over? I get the feeling that we have moved from the Cold War into some sort of a new phase. And also, who exactly won when the USSR collapsed?
Vladimir Bukovsky: Those were the exact questions I was asking in Judgment in Moscow, writing 25 years ago: is the Cold War over? And if so, who won? Show me how it’s over, explain it to me. Because I didn’t see it as being over. I didn’t think it could be over until communism was put on trial in Moscow. This is the central message of the book Judgment in Moscow.
Leon Weinstein: In liberal, or as they call themselves ‘progressive’, circles here in the United States and Europe, the established opinion is that Moscow supports the American right wing; the “fascists”, the nationalists and the like. I however have the feeling, that in fact Moscow is left-wing-oriented. What is your view on this?
Vladimir Bukovsky: You see this is an old, old trick; the so-called false dichotomy. It was conceived by the Communist International (Comintern) in the 1930s, and it works like this: if you are for Stalin, then you are against Hitler; and if you are for Hitler, then you are against Stalin. This trick has been used to brainwash the world’s population until very recently. Even today many still don’t see through it. For example: either you are for the gays, or you are for Putin. If you are against Putin, then you are for the “sodomites”. [Laughs.] It’s a marvelous trick—false dichotomy; you just can’t lose. Anything beyond it is “tertium non datur” [“no third possibility is given”], as the ancient Romans would say; a third option does not enter into people’s minds.
Leon Weinstein: Some people in Moscow and in Russia took to calling us who live in the US, “Americosi” to rhyme with the gay slur and term of abuse “pendosi”…. It’s the same trick.
Vladimir Bukovsky: Yes, yes.
Leon Weinstein: In my view, national socialism/fascism and international socialism are not even two sides of the same coin, they are one and the same side of the same coin….
Vladimir Bukovsky: You know, the only person in my memory who grasped this was Margaret Thatcher. She said that fascism was not a right-wing movement, but a left-wing one, the same as bolshevism.
Leon Weinstein: Precisely. And another thing: we are constantly being told that Moscow doesn’t want to see a united Europe (EU). But you write that it was Moscow who came up with the very idea of the EU in the first place. Why did they do it?
Vladimir Bukovsky: Well, you see, at that time the Soviets were still hoping to save their system. Gorbachev—contrary to current opinion—was very much trying to save the Soviet system. He went about it in a very sophisticated way, and put extraordinary effort into it. One of the means for saving the Soviet Union was to set up a sort of quasi-Soviet structure in Europe. Gorbachev did not come up with this idea himself, but when he was approached with it he gave it his support. If you look at the documents, at the end of the 1980s this idea was proposed as “Our Shared European Home”. This is how they articulated it.
Gorbachev was hoping that it would stabilize him and prevent the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. Because where would all these Eastern European countries run to get away from the Soviet Union? They would run to the European Union—which would be a good thing, because he was going to come to an agreement with the EU leaders on this. It was all going to be done within the framework of socialism—that was the original plan for the European Home, and that was the original agreement with the leaders of the future EU. But what happened was that the need for such a ‘European Home’ disappeared. Russia fell by the wayside; Eastern European countries went each on their own way; some of them joined the European Union, some didn’t. But generally speaking, the main reason for creating such a bipolar system, to keep the Eastern European countries and Russia latched on to each other, disappeared.
Leon Weinstein: So what you are saying is that originally the concept of a “European Home” included [was conceived in collaboration with] Russia, who wanted to get a foothold inside the European Union, and then, with the assistance of their socialist ‘brothers’, proceed to suck the lifeblood out of this very large European entity?
Vladimir Bukovsky: You know, they state it quite clearly. There are minutes of the negotiations between Mitterrand and Gorbachev where Mitterrand says plainly “We need a strong Soviet Union to control everything between Paris and Moscow.” A simple idea, isn’t it? [Laughs.]
Leon Weinstein: It’s a shocking idea, really.
Vladimir Bukovsky: Yes, and we have it in black and white.