Centrepiece

Runcie's contribution

Colin Welch

Grave misdemeanours have been alleged against Archbishop Runcie. Last week in the Spectator, for instance, A. N. Wilson charged him with spending more time shak- ing hands with foreigners than in thinking or reading, and with rushing about making contributions or, even worse, important contributions here, there and everywhere. Dearly would I wish to defend the Arch- bishop. Yet even since Mr Wilson wrote, the unrepentant prelate has compounded his offences by making a contribution more shamelessly important than ever. I refer not to his very proper contribution in the Lords on public morality, which alas came too late for comment, but to his earlier contribution in Dresden, a city which has now in his view acquired 'a reputation as a centre for peace- making'.

The first theme of his contribution was, unless he was misreported, that 'present reality', by which he apparently meant the nuclear arms race, is 'madness': 'so-called developed societies are spending their best brains and a very large part of their resources planning for lunacy and destruc- tion. This is a world where children are dying of hunger while we (sic) continue to pour our best efforts into preparing for Ar- mageddon.' This is a variant on the familiar North-South paradox, which points out that one fighter costs as much as hundreds of dispensaries, ignoring the fact that at cer- tain times of crisis (in 1940, for instance) fighters may be even more important than dispensaries.

So far the contribution, wherever it was made, seems to me on the face of it scan- dalously unjust to the rulers of the West. To have made it anywhere in Russia's con- quered, oppressed, regimented and militarised empire adds only an extra note of bad taste. If our Western rulers are in fact 'planning for lunacy and destruction' and 'preparing for Armageddon', this is certainly not what they say they are doing. On the contrary, they ceaselessly protest that their deterrent strategy is designed to prevent lunacy, destruction and Armaged- don. Mere mortals, they cannot in a dangerous world be sure of success. But their logic and apparent sincerity, their restraint and success so far convince me of their good faith. If the Archbishop is not so convinced, if he can see into their hearts and discern there evil or mad intentions carefully hidden from the rest of us, he should perhaps be more specific.

Perhaps on the other hand. the Arch- bishop meant only or primarily the rulers of the East, who do indeed spend propor- tionally much more on military might than we do, and much more than is necessary for self-defence. If so, his words were ill- chosen, and will not be so understood or so used by the rulers of the East in their ceaseless unscrupulous propaganda war- fare. He may not have meant to give them comfort, but has done so.

Doubtless in the recent Lutheran junket- ings the Archbishop has had a basinful of Luther, though his hosts may tactfully have spared him the more sensational bits about burning synagogues and blowing the Jews to hell. I would commend to him the words of another great German: 'The most pious man can't stay in peace/If it doesn't please

his evil neighbour'. This quotation from Schiller's William Tell may, if pondered, do

much to explain the present 'madness' and reconcile impatient clergymen to its seem- ingly inscrutable manifestations.

Of course the Archbishop may regard the present 'madness' as caused not by the pious man's evil neighbour but by two evil neighbours. I suspect he does. For the next part of his contribution denounced 'the propaganda and the distortions which in- crease hostility between nations' and 'the sterile abuse between East and West which posions language and turns other human beings into sub-human monsters'. With the letter of such eirenic statements no one could reasonably quarrel. Yet I cannot believe that the Archbishop is familiar with the Eastern press, with its media, scholar- ship and propaganda, or with what directs them or to what end, if he supposes, as he implies, that there is an equal, two-way ex- change of abuse and distortions, of which West and East ought equally to be asham- ed; or if he imagines that his carefully if misleadingly balanced words will have any effect there as opposed to here.

Where in the East, for instance, would the Archbishop find Western society and institutions analysed with such scrupulous scholarship as, say, Professor Schapiro devoted to Russia? Where in the East will the Archbishop find Mr Andropov so open-

ly reviled and ridiculed as President Reagan was on Monday's World in Action? Plenty

of distortion here, but we in the West fair- mindedly distort each other. And what about Solzhenitsyn, for instance, or Mrs Mandelstam: would he find them guilty of 'sterile abuse' and 'distortions'? Would he accuse them of increasing 'hostility between nations' or of 'turning other human beings into sub-human monsters'? If so, Solzhenitsyn might plead for both of them a love, knowledge and understanding of Russia far beyond anything taught at Westcott House.

As an example of the tolerant easy-going way in which sophisticated 'wordly wise' people in the West often talk about Russia's rulers, I might cite the Economist's leading article this week, 'The man who wasn't there'. `Mr Andropov was chosen,' it declares, 'a year ago, to lead a coalition- for-change after 18 years of Brezhnev's coalition-against-change.' Was he, indeed? And, if so, how on earth does the Economist know? Part of this supposed coalition-for-change is apparently, of all things, the KGB. Of this I would take a lot of convincing. To change anything in a rigid monolithic society like Russia is not only near impossible but very dangerous to the regime. Surely the KGB would be the first to realise this, and would back An- dropov only if convinced that he would pre- vent change. In a changed Russia, what role would there be for the KGB?

The Economist then saunters off into a sort of history, back to the revolution of October 1917, 'which was a gallant (sic) idea that let itself be driven by a monstrous engine. The remnants of this original gallantry are still visible.' Most Soviet com- munists 'probably still believe in the equali- ty of man': they could have fooled me! 'Communism has at least the merit of good intentions. The engine that drove these good intentions on to the rocks was the single-party system. Communists have never understood that the point about power is nol who has it, but that nobody should have too much of it, because power is a bad thing.' Do communists think it a bad thing? No one would think so from the way they grab, relish and monopolise it.

In these bizarre ruminations we find no trace of 'sterile abuse', and the 'distortions' are all, so far as I can see, favourable to Russia's rulers. In particular I hope it is not abusive to suggest that the evil entered the Russian revolutionary movement not after the revolution but long before it. Dostoyev- sky saw it clearly, and with horror. So did Tibor Szamuely in his magnificent book, The Russian Tradition. Lenin was not a

gallant idealist who was corrupted by power. He was corrupted already. His good intentions were not thwarted. Of a recognisable kind, he had none. The course of Russian history since his death is not a betrayal but the fulfilment of what he ac- complished. From his own point of view he understood the point about power very well indeed. Power was a good thing; who had it ('Who, whom?') was of supreme impor- tance; it had to be him, and he couldn't have too much of it. Is all this distortion?

We have to know and understand the Russians, even to love them, which is not to love their oppressors. Agreed, sterile abuse and distortion are no help. But nor is that smiling dilettantism which characterises the deliberate murder of Russia's freedom, law and parliamentary institutions, of her art, happiness and children without number, as in some way 'gallant'. The truth alone will do and, if it hurts, too bad.