[2008.08.09] 索尔仁尼琴：不畏强权 仗义执言

Alexander Solzhenitsyn
亚历山大索尔仁尼琴

Speaking truth to power
不畏强权 仗义执言

Aug 7th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s example-and the heirs who failed him
亚历山大索尔仁尼琴做出了榜样-但继承人们令其失望

GEORGE KENNAN, the dean of American diplomats, called “The Gulag Archipelago”, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s account of Stalin’s terror, “the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levied in modern times”. By bearing witness, Solzhenitsyn certainly did as much as any artist could to bring down the Soviet system, a monstrosity that crushed millions of lives. His courage earned him imprisonment and exile. But his death on August 3rd (see article) prompts a question. Who today speaks truth to power-not only in authoritarian or semi-free countries such as Russia and China but in the West as well?
美国外交界领袖乔治凯南曾经说过，”《古拉格群岛》”，亚历山大索尔仁尼琴叙述斯大林恐怖统治的著作，”是对现代某一政体最强有力的指控。”通过讲述其目击之事，索尔仁尼琴沉痛地打击了苏维埃体系，展现了艺术家良心的极致。他的勇气令他遭受了监禁和流放。但8月3日他的逝世向我们提出了一个问题。当今世界还有谁不畏强权仗义执言？-不仅仅指在极权国家或者半自由国家诸如俄罗斯和中国，而且也指在西方。

The answer in the case of Russia itself is depressing. Russia’s contemporary intelligentsia-the should-be followers of the example of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and the other dissident intellectuals of the Soviet period-is not just supine but in some ways craven (see article). Instead of defending the freedoms perilously acquired after the end of communism, many of Russia’s intellectuals have connived in Vladimir Putin’s project to neuter democracy and put a puppet-show in its place. Some may genuinely admire Mr Putin’s resurrection of a “strong” Russia (as, alas, did the elderly Solzhenitsyn himself). But others have shallower motives.
这一问题在俄罗斯的答案令人沮丧。俄罗斯当代知识分子-这些理应成为索尔仁尼琴继承者的人，萨哈罗夫和其他苏维埃时期的异议知识分子-不仅懒惰而且在某些方面非常懦弱。许多俄罗斯知识分子不仅没有不遗余力地捍卫共产主义终结之后所得到的自由，反而对弗拉基米尔普金阉割民主，上演一出又一出木偶剧的行为表示了默许。有些人也许是真心希望普金能够重建一个”强大”的俄罗斯（年迈的索尔仁尼琴就是如此）。但其他人支持普金的动机就浅薄了很多。

In Soviet times telling the truth required great courage and brought fearful consequences. That is why the dissidents were a tiny minority of the official intelligentsia which the Soviet Union created mainly in order to build its nuclear technology. Today it is not for the most part fear that muzzles the intellectuals. Speaking out can still be dangerous, as the murder in 2006 of Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist, showed. But what lurks behind the silence of many is not fear but appetite: an appetite to recover the perks and status that most of the intelligentsia enjoyed as the Soviet system’s loyal servant.
苏维埃时期讲真话需要极大的勇气，并且往往会带来极其可怕的后果。这就是为什么官方知识分子当中异议者只占其中一小部分的原因-当初苏联成立这一官方知识界主要是为了建立自身的核工业。今天广大知识分子缄默不言很大程度上并不是因为上述原因。虽然2006年调查记者安娜•波利特科夫斯卡娅被谋杀说明讲真话仍然很危险。但大部分知识分子选择沉默并不是因为害怕而是因为贪婪：希望有着一日能够得到自己梦寐以求的至高无上的身份与地位，成为苏维埃体系的忠诚仆人。

The problem of authoritarianism
极权主义的弊端

In China the intellectuals’ silence is easier to forgive because voicing dissent is still sharply controlled. For all its new openness, China has created few opportunities for Solzhenitsyn-type greats to emerge. It has tolerated a modicum of writing about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, but then the government too now says the Cultural Revolution was horrific. You would search in vain in China itself for literature about the misery of the 1950s after the communists took over, or the deaths of tens of millions in the famine of the early 1960s. The window opened a bit in the 1980s, but the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 banished free thinking well into the 1990s.
在中国知识分子的沉默更容易得到原谅，因为直言不讳的异议者仍然被严密的控制着。虽然不断加大开放力度，但中国出现像索尔仁尼琴这样伟大的人物的可能性不大。它虽然可以接受对恐怖的文化大革命的零星记述，但现在即使是中国政府也承认文化大革命的可怕。如果你想在中国调查1950年共产党接管大陆后发生的悲剧，或者60年代早期导致几千万人饿死的饥荒，其结果一定是徒劳无功的。虽然80年代时，政府控制有一定程度的放开，但1989年发生的天安门事件禁止了自由思考进入90年代。

The emergence of the internet and a market-driven publishing industry has changed China less than it should. Several intellectuals post critical views of the party online. A good example is Hu Xingdou, an academic who lays into the party at every opportunity. But not even he goes as far as to call for the end of one-party rule. In 2004 a Chinese newspaper caused a stir by publishing a list of 50 public intellectuals. They included Gao Yaojie, who helped expose an AIDS epidemic in Henan, Wen Tiejun, who has written about the suffering of peasants, and He Weifang, a law professor who has spoken out about the rights of the marginalised, such as migrant workers.
互联网和受市场驱动的出版业的出现改变了中国，但只是在一定程度上。一些知识分子在网络上发表对共产党的批评。胡星斗就是个很好的例子，一个抓住一切机会攻击共产党的知识分子。但即使是他也不敢倡导结束一党专政。2004年一家报纸刊登了50 位公共知识分子的名单，引起了不小的轰动。其中包括高耀洁，她揭露了河南省的爱滋病现状。温铁军，讲述了农民的悲惨现状。贺卫方，他为边缘人群比如民工争取合法权利极力奔走。

These are impressive people, to whom China will one day be grateful. But the voices of the dissidents count for less than they did in the 1980s. China then, like the Soviet Union, was a bleak place with little other intellectual stimulation. People yearned for provocative ideas. Now access to information is freer, the economy is flourishing and for a lot of intellectuals life is good. China has its bold thinkers, but in its present mood it is hard to imagine one of them galvanising an entire class the way Solzhenitsyn did.
这都是些令人印象深刻的人，中国总有一天会感谢他们。但现在的异议声音远没有80年代时那样响亮。当时的中国如果苏联一样，是一个阴郁的国家，知识界惨淡压抑。人民渴望具有煽动性的观点。而现在人民获取信息更加自由，经济蓬勃发展，许多知识分子的生活非常惬意。中国自有其勇敢的思考者，但从现今的状况来看，很难想像从他们中间会出现一个向索尔仁尼琴那样，能够激励一个阶级采取行动的伟人。

It is a bit too easy for people in the West to deplore the failure of intellectuals living in unfree societies to follow the example of a Solzhenitsyn. Such stories are rare. His arose from an unusual confluence: a great crime, a great silence, a receptive audience and personal courage well above the ordinary. There are parts of the Islamic world where secular thinkers, such as Egypt’s Nobel novelist, Naguib Mahfouz, have faced violence for daring to prick a suffocating conformity. The Western intellectual, by contrast, enjoys a charmed existence. In France, which pampers its men of ideas, De Gaulle is reputed to have ordered the release of the inflammatory Jean-Paul Sartre in 1968 by remarking, “You don’t arrest Voltaire.” Most democracies have pulled off the remarkable feat of creating in the universities a class of tenured academics whose salaries are paid by the state but who are free, and often inclined, to savage the hand that feeds them. Nice work, if you can get it.
生活在不自由的社会当中的知识分子不能追随索尔仁尼琴，西方人民往往片面地对此感到惋惜。事实上，索尔仁尼琴这样的例子非常罕见。他是诸多非常因素作用的结果：涛天的罪行，死寂的沉默，一个善于接受新思想的听众和异于常人的勇气。伊斯兰世界的有些地方，世俗思考者，比如说埃及的诺贝尔文学奖获得者小说家马哈福兹，如果敢批评它们世界那令人窒息的一致性，就很可能受到暴力袭击。与此形成鲜明对比的是，西方知识分子却享受着令人欣喜的自由。法国向来鼓励人民自由思考。戴高乐曾经因为命令释放发展煽动议论的让保罗萨特而闻名，他说”你不会逮捕伏尔泰。”许多民主政体已经完成了一项引人注目的事业，它们成功地在大学培养出一班长期聘用的知识分子，他们领国家的薪水但却享有思想自由，而且往往倾向于批评自己的衣食父母。如果你能得到这样一份工作的话，其实这活儿挺不错的。

The problem of democracy
民主的弊端

The West has printed a lorryload of angst-ridden books about the demise of the intellectual. Political correctness and academic over-specialisation have indeed hurt the quality of much that is said in the media and taught in the universities. But at the root of most complaints is the supposed problem of surplus. Authoritarian places nurture a class of recognised intellectuals whose utterances are both carefully listened to and strictly controlled. Democracies produce a cacophony, in which each voice complains that its own urgent message is being drowned in a sea of pap. “Repressive tolerance”, one ungrateful 1960s radical called it. It would cause not a ripple if MIT’s famous intellectual subversive, Noam Chomsky, were invited to speak to the annual capitalist jamboree in Davos.
西方世界已经印行了许多焦燥不安的书籍，讨论知识分子的消亡。政治正确和学术的过分专业化的确损害了媒体言论和大学教育的质量。但是大多数抱怨的根源却是意见泛滥。极权政体培养了一批有着自我认知的知识分子，他们的言论被仔细倾听，严密控制。民主政体产生了意见的喧嚣，所有人都在抱怨一些急迫的诉求被淹没在言论的海洋里。”残酷的压抑，”一位60年代满腹不满的激进派这样是称呼它的。即使麻省理工学院那位知名的颠覆分子诺亚乔姆斯基受邀到年度资本主义盛会达沃斯论坛发表演讲，恐怕也不一定能引起多少人注意。

The cacophony is the lesser evil. Ideas should not be suppressed, but nor should they be worshipped. Kennan was right to call “Gulag” a powerful indictment of a regime. Remember, though, that in 1848 two well-meaning intellectuals published another powerful indictment of a system, and their “Communist Manifesto” went on to enslave half mankind. There is no sure defence against bad ideas, but one place to start is with a well-educated and sceptical citizenry that is free to listen to the notions of the intellectuals but is not in thrall to them-and, yes, may prefer the sports channel instead. The patrician in Solzhenitsyn hated this lack of deference in the West. That is one respect in which the great man was wrong.
意见喧嚣没有那么邪恶。意见不应该受到压制，但也不应该受到崇拜。凯南把《古拉格群岛》称为对一个政体强有力的指控是很正确的。但要记住，早在1848年就有两位善意的知识分子发表过对某一体系的强有力指控，他们的《共产党宣言》随后使全世界一半的人民沦为奴隶。对于坏思想我们没有明确有抵制方法。但至少应该从如下开始：全社会有着受过良好教育，具有思辨精神的公民，他们可以自由的听取知识分子的各种理念，但又不会受到这些理念的束缚-虽然，他们往往喜欢体育频道。索尔仁尼琴当中的贵族成分认为西方缺乏对俄罗斯的尊重。这是一个伟人错误的地方。

译者：xsj191     http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13188&extra=page%3D1
本文同样优秀的另一篇译文（译者：topsun），请点击：http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13221&extra=page%3D1