Russian intellectuals
俄国知识分子
The hand that feeds them
食君之禄
Aug 7th 2008 | MOSCOW
From The Economist print edition
Individual voices are brave. But Russia’s intelligentsia, which could be much freer than in the bad old days, is still mealy-mouthed
个人的勇敢执言仍不鲜见。虽然享有远较昔日充分的自由，俄罗斯知识分子仍显缄默
THEY did not like each other much, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Russia’s liberal intelligentsia. Solzhenitsyn, who in the West was considered its paramount flower, was as rude about it as he was about almost everything else. He refused to use the word intelligentsia, engineering instead the ugly and pejorative obrazovanshchina, roughly “educatedness”. The intelligentsia responded in kind: it paid tribute to his courage, read his works in samizdat but was spooked by his anti-Western attitude and refused to recognise him as one of their number.
亚历山大•索尔仁尼琴和俄国自由主义知识分子，这两者之间一直龃龉不断。索尔仁尼琴，这位西方眼中俄国知识分子的杰出代表，对于本国的知识界延续了他一贯毫不客气的态度。他拒绝使用”知识界”（intelligentsia）一词来描述他们，而自造出一个语含轻蔑的贬义词，”obrazovanshchina”，意思基本等于”识字的”。俄国知识界也不示弱：他们虽对索翁的勇气表示尊敬，也拜读了在地下流传的他的作品，但却因其反西方的态度深感不安，并拒绝承认他为俄罗斯知识界一员。
His main charge was that the intelligentsia had failed in its most vital task-to speak on behalf of the people suppressed by an authoritarian state. Members had become part of the system, allowing themselves to get comfortable in its nooks and crannies. “A hundred years ago,” he wrote in 1974, “the Russian intelligentsia considered a death sentence to be a sacrifice. Today an administrative reprimand is considered a sacrifice.” He spelt out his commandments in capital letters: “DON’T LIE! DON’T PARTICIPATE IN LIES, DON’T SUPPORT A LIE!”
索尔仁尼琴对于俄国知识界最主要的批评是认为他们背离了知识分子的职责–为集权国家的受压迫民众执言。俄国知识分子已成为集权体系的一部分，全然融合其中。1974年，他在一篇文章中指出：”一个世纪前，俄国知识分子把死刑看作牺牲；如今，来自政府的斥责就已成为一种牺牲。”他还用大写字体写出他的戒律：”不制造谎言！不参与谎言！不支持谎言！”
When Solzhenitsyn wrote in this way, few dared to argue publicly with the great Russian writer-in-exile. But when he returned to Russia in 1994 he became a figure from the past. Few famous writers or artists came to pay respect as he lay in state. The most prominent faces were those of Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Gorbachev.
索尔仁尼琴写下上述文字的时候，俄国内少有人敢公开与这位伟大的流亡作家进行辩论。1994年，索翁返回故土，成为旧时代的象征。他去世之后，前来瞻仰遗容的少有写作或艺术界知名人士。瞻仰人群中最著名的面孔是普京和戈尔巴乔夫。
“The Gulag Archipelago”, published in 1973, had shaken the very foundations of the Soviet system, but it did not make the country immune from the restoration of Soviet symbols and elements. Russia today is ruled by the KGB elite, has a Soviet anthem, servile media, corrupt courts and a rubber-stamping parliament. A new history textbook proclaims that the Soviet Union, although not a democracy, was “an example for millions of people around the world of the best and fairest society”. Mr Putin bears a large share of responsibility for all this, but that does not exempt the Russian intelligentsia from its share. Putinism was made strong by the absence of resistance from the part of society that was meant to provide intellectual opposition.
1973年出版的《古拉格群岛》一书撼动了苏联体制的基础，但此书却无力阻止苏联遗毒沉渣泛起。今日俄罗斯，前克格勃执掌政权、苏联时期的国歌被沿用、媒体一味媚官、法制腐败不堪、议会沦为傀儡。一部新出版的历史教材甚至宣称，苏联虽不是民主政体，却”为世界大众树立了最好最公平社会的典范”。如今这种局面，普京应负大部分责任，但俄罗斯知识界也难辞其咎。普京主义之所以甚嚣尘上，知识分子异见的缺失是重要原因。
Shortly before Mr Putin was due to stand down as Russia’s president, Nikita Mikhalkov, a prominent Russian film director, together with a couple of Mr Putin’s other fans, wrote a letter “on behalf of Russian artists” pleading with him to stay in power. The letter provoked indignation and an open letter from an opposing camp, telling Mr Putin to go. The two letters were a blip on the intelligentsia’s cardiogram, which had been showing few signs of life. The death of its greatest intellectual is likely to become another blip on the same largely dormant machine.
普京离开总统宝座之前，俄知名电影导演尼基塔•米哈尔科夫偕同一些普京的拥趸，”代表俄罗斯艺术界”致信普京，恳求其续任。反对派对此表达强烈愤慨，并发表了一封公开信，要求普京下台。这两封信成为俄罗斯知识界垂死心脏的一次震颤。而索翁这位俄罗斯最伟大知识分子的辞世有可能再次刺痛这具沉睡的躯体。
The very word intelligentsia is a Russian invention. In the West it usually evokes the image of a talented intellectual, otherworldly, harassed by the state, soulful and conscientious. But the Soviet intelligentsia was different. It was summoned into being by the state for a particular purpose, one that had little in common with its 19th-century antecedents.
“知识界”(intelligentsia)一词源出俄语。西方人听到这个词，脑海中会浮现出一个知识分子的形象，他才华横溢、关注精神世界，为政府所忌，却依然心怀深切情感，保有知识分子的良知。但苏联知识界实则与此迥异，他们的产生只是为了满足政府的特殊需求，与19世纪的先辈已是云壤之别。
In Tom Stoppard’s trilogy about 19th-century Russian intellectuals (“The Coast of Utopia”), Alexander Herzen laments that Russia has made no contribution to philosophy and political discourse. “Yes, one! The intelligentsia,” retorts one of his friends. “Well, it’s a horrible word,” comments another. “What does it mean?” asks Herzen. “It means us. A unique Russian phenomenon, the intellectual opposition considered as a social force.”
汤姆•斯托帕德曾写过一部关于19世纪俄国知识分子的三部曲-《乌托邦海岸》。书中人物亚历山大•赫尔岑哀叹俄罗斯对于哲学和政治的发展毫无贡献。”有贡献！知识界。”他的一个朋友如此反驳。另一个朋友说：”那是个可怖的字眼。””它是什么意思？”赫尔岑问。”它就是我们。俄罗斯独有之物，反对者眼中的一股社会力量。”
Mr Stoppard’s characters are strangers in today’s Russia. Their hatred of autocracy, their lacerating criticism and their ability to articulate the concerns of the oppressed seem naive and out of date. Has the Russian intelligentsia lost its social force or its intellectual power? Or does the phenomenon exist only in an authoritarian society with no functioning parliament? Was Solzhenitsyn right in his diagnosis of the Russian intelligentsia, that it amounted to no more than people with diplomas and good jobs?
斯托帕德笔下的角色已不见容于今日俄罗斯。他们对独裁的憎恨、对社会的深刻批评，以及表达底层民众呼声的能力如今都显得天真而不合时宜。俄罗斯知识分子是否已丧失了推动社会的能力？是否已丧失了知识分子的力量？抑或这是缺乏实质议会的集权社会的通病？索尔仁尼琴认为俄罗斯知识界已沦为一帮有着体面工作、受过高等教育的乌合之众，他的诊断是否正确？
Solzhenitsyn was certainly not the first Russian intellectual to criticise the intelligentsia. Self-criticism and repentance have long been part of its identity. In “Vekhi”, an important self-reflecting book written in 1909, Sergei Bulgakov describes the sorry state of the intelligentsia, its conceit towards its own people, its lack of discipline and decency. “Russian society, exhausted by preceding tension and failures, is in a state of some numbness and apathy, spiritual disjunction and depression…Russian literature is flooded by a muddy wave of pornography and sensationalism.”
索翁并非将矛头指向俄罗斯知识分子的第一人。反思与忏悔一直伴随着俄罗斯知识分子。在1909年的《路标》这一重要的自省之作中，布尔加科夫描述了俄罗斯知识界的可悲现状，描写了他们对祖国人民的倨傲，以及他们的涣散与低俗。”俄罗斯社会经历了太多的压力与挫折，如今已经麻木不仁。社会产生精神断层，状态消沉……俄罗斯当代文学充斥着色情，一味追求感官刺激。”
Bolshevik Russia had no need for reflective thinkers like Bulgakov. He was among the first Russian philosophers to be expelled by Lenin in 1922. Many of his readers vanished into prison camps.
布尔什维克统治的俄罗斯不需要布尔加科夫这样的思想家。1922年，他成为最早被列宁驱逐的哲学家之一。许多他的读者也命丧集中营。
Come into my parlour
承沐上泽
Lenin and Stalin wiped out the old Russian intelligentsia as a political force. Yet, as culture-centric dictators, they bribed and remoulded the finest examples to their own needs. For example the Moscow Art Theatre, which embodied the Chekhovian intelligentsia, was gradually converted into a Soviet institution. Its actors were showered with privileges and comforts, were allowed to travel abroad and could rest in government sanitariums for as long as they could lend their art to the purposes of the Bolshevik state. In the late 1920s the Soviet government started to give out large plots of land to selected artists, scientists and engineers in a special compound.
列宁和斯大林对俄罗斯知识界进行了清洗，清除了他们的政治影响。然而，文化中心论的独裁者却耗费重金，将最杰出的遗产化作己用。其中之一是莫斯科艺术剧院，这一契诃夫时代俄罗斯知识界的象征逐步沦为一个苏维埃机构。剧院的演员养尊处优：出国旅行、公费疗养，只要他们将艺术献给布尔什维克政权，这一切都唾手可得。十九世纪二十年代末，苏维埃政府将大片土地赠予特定的艺术家、科学家及工程师，并对其集中管理。
Vasily Kachalov was a Moscow Art Theatre actor who played Chekhovian parts. According to his son, he dealt with the ambiguity of his new position by heavy drinking. And when drunk he cursed himself for allowing the state to see him as a symbol of continuity between the Russian and Soviet intelligentsia.
瓦西里•卡察洛夫是莫斯科艺术剧院的演员，曾扮演契诃夫作品中的角色。据其子回忆，新的地位使他的父亲内心饱受煎熬，终日饮酒度日。醉中，他还不断自责，责怪自己为政权所操纵，成为俄国知识分子转向苏维埃的典型。
In fact it was scientists, physicists particularly, who were at the core of the Soviet intelligentsia as a social phenomenon. Andrei Zorin, a historian at Oxford, argues that the intelligentsia was largely the product of nuclear research. Stalin needed a nuclear bomb and realised that scientists’ brains do not work unless you allow them a certain amount of freedom. The conditions created for the scientists were close to ideal: they had status, money, equipment and no distractions. “Science was the favourite child in the hands of the government,” says Vladimir Fortov, a member of Russia’s Academy of Science. “It was prestigious and well paid. We could do our research and not concern ourselves with anything else.”
实际上，苏联知识界的真正核心是科学家，尤其是物理学家。牛津大学的历史学家安德烈•佐林认为，苏联知识界基本上是核研究的产物。斯大林需要核武器，他也意识到科学家的创造力只有在宽松的氛围里才能得以发挥。他为科学家们营造的环境堪称完美：社会地位、资金、设备、无人打扰的环境，无所不有。”科学是政府的宠儿”，俄罗斯科学院院士弗拉基米尔•弗托夫曾如此说过。”科学工作者备受尊敬、锦衣玉食。我们可以心无旁骛地从事科学研究。”
Russian nuclear physicists were settled in closed or semi-closed towns and housed not in barracks but in attractive cottages, which resembled Swiss chalets or small Russian mansions, amid forests. The best Russian scientists were exempted from joining the Communist Party and had direct access to the Kremlin. The fact that Andrei Sakharov was one of Russia’s top nuclear physicists, the father of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, and a man who had direct contact with Lavrenty Beria, the security chief, gave special power and meaning to his dissent.
苏联核科学家被集中到封闭或半封闭的市镇，他们并不在集体宿舍居住，而是住在类似瑞士山间小屋和俄式别墅的舒适木屋中，四周山林环绕。苏联最顶级的科学家不用加入共产党，且可以直接通行克里姆林宫。作为苏联顶级核科学家、苏联氢弹之父安德烈•沙卡洛夫对于政治有着自己的不同意见，但他的地位以及他与秘密警察首脑拉夫连季•贝利亚的直接关系，使得他享有特别的权力和赦免。
The scientific colonies were well supplied not only with food but also with culture. The political clout which scientists possessed allowed them to invite artists who were not allowed to perform before larger audiences. Vladimir Vysotsky, an iconic Russian poet, singer and rebel, gave one of his first public concerts in Dubna, a nuclear-research town.
这些科学城镇饮食无虞，文娱活动也不缺乏。科学家们拥有的政治影响力使得他们可以欣赏到普罗大众难得一睹的艺术家的演出。弗拉基米尔•维索茨基，俄罗斯一代诗人、歌手，著名的离经叛道者，他最早的演出就是在核科学城杜布纳进行的。
Russia’s military needs led to an overproduction of all kinds of scientists, matched by a hyper-production of culture, says Mr Zorin. The consumers of this culture were the millions of engineers and scientists who worked in research institutes and construction offices with a postbox number for an address. In reality, the Soviet economy could not accommodate them all: as the Soviet joke had it, they “pretended to work and the state pretended to pay”.
佐林认为，军事需要使得苏联产生了大量各学科的科学家，文化产品也因此高度丰富。那些身处没有地址，只有邮编的科研所和建设指挥部之中的数百万的工程师和科学家成为这些文化产品的消费者。直到后来，苏联经济已无力负担这些人的开支：正如一个苏联笑话说的：”大家佯装工作，国家佯装付薪”。
A large number of educated, intelligent and underemployed people in their 30s and 40s with little prospect of moving up the career ladder provided a perfect milieu for brewing liberal ideas. With time, they formed a political class. They were not dissidents and they relied on the state for provisions, but they were fed up with the restrictions imposed by Soviet ideology and they were critical of the system.
这一年纪三四十的人群，受过良好教育、才华出众却壮志难伸，职业无望，他们成为自由主义思想孳生的温床，并逐渐形成一个政治阶层。他们的生存仰赖政府供给，并无政治异见，但却对意识形态的限制感到厌倦，对于体制心存不满。
They wanted to live “like people do in a civilised world”, they wanted to travel abroad, get food without queuing and have access to information. But they neither anticipated nor desired the dismembering of the Soviet Union.
他们希望”像文明人一样”生活，希望能出国旅行，不愿排队领取食物，不愿与外界断绝音讯。但推翻苏联体制并非他们的目的。
It was this political class of intelligentsia that prepared for perestroika and became the main support base for Mikhail Gorbachev. Perestroika offered everything that the intelligentsia desired while still keeping the Soviet Union in place. The late 1980s were, perhaps, the happiest years for the intelligentsia, combining a degree of freedom of expression with continuing state support. When in August 1991 Communist and KGB hardliners mounted a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, hundreds of thousands of the Russian intelligentsia gathered in front of parliament to defend the achievements of perestroika.
这一知识阶层为后来的”经济改革运动”奠定了基础，成为戈尔巴乔夫的主要支持者。”经济改革运动”为知识阶层提供了一切所需，却不动摇政体。十九世纪八十年代可能是苏联知识界的黄金时代，他们继续享受政府供给，同时享有部分言论自由。1991年8月，当苏共及克格勃的强硬派发动意在推翻戈尔巴乔夫的军事政变时，成千上万的苏联知识分子聚集在议会门口，试图捍卫”经济改革运动”的成果。
“I think of August 1991 with great tenderness and nostalgia. I thought then it was one of the highest moments in Russian history, that it would become a national holiday,” says Lev Dodin, the artistic director of the celebrated Maly Drama Theatre. Boris Yeltsin, tall, handsome, with a shock of white hair, standing on a tank and speaking on Mr Gorbachev’s behalf, was an image made for canonisation.
“回想起1991年8月，我心中充满了留恋。当时我觉得这是俄国历史上最荣耀的时刻，应当被列为国家节日，”著名的玛丽戏剧院艺术总监列夫•朵金如此说。白发浓密、英俊挺拔的叶利钦站立在坦克上捍卫戈尔巴乔夫的激情演说已成为历史上的神圣时刻。
Beginning of the end
末日来临
But the day when the KGB-inspired coup was defeated has not become a national holiday, and its tenth anniversary was celebrated with the restoration of the Soviet national anthem. The paradox was that the intelligentsia’s triumph-which led to the collapse of the Soviet empire-was also the beginning of its end. Soviet intelligentsia and the state were joined at the hip. When the state went, so did the intelligentsia. The defeat of the coup did not become an ideological watershed; it was not celebrated as the birth of a new nation, only as the collapse of the old one.
但挫败克格勃兵变的日子并未成为国家节日。它的十周年纪念日上，苏联国歌重又成为俄罗斯国歌。讽刺的是，苏联知识分子的荣耀之日–此后它导致了苏联的瓦解–也是他们的终结之时。苏联知识界与政府同声连气，唯政府马首是瞻。政变的失败并未带来意识形态的改变，也并没有促使国家的新生，只是导致了旧帝国的分崩离析。
Having smashed the bell jar which it inhabited, the intelligentsia felt disoriented. The contract-under which the intelligentsia barked at the state and the state occasionally hit back but continued to provide support-was broken. The state no longer needed intellectuals. It needed managers and businessmen able to avert starvation and total economic collapse. The intelligentsia had nurtured the cult of the persecuted and consecrated its own heroic struggle (a censor’s ban was a badge of honour). But it was caught unprepared for the practical and mundane tasks of building state institutions.
挣脱了无形的牢笼，苏联知识分子们却感到无所适从。他们同政府曾达成一种默契：知识分子可以批评政府，政府偶尔惩戒，却依然为知识分子提供保障。这一默契如今已经消失。知识分子已成为鸡肋，国家需要的是生意人来遏制饥荒，挽回经济颓势。长久以来，知识界形成一种受迫害者的心态，对于自己的斗争有一种混杂着英雄感的悲情意识（审查机关的禁令已俨然成为荣誉勋章）。但对于重建国家这一世俗而实际的任务，知识分子们却束手无策。
A large number of scientists left the country. Some went into business (most Russian oligarchs of the Yeltsin era, including Boris Berezovsky, were scientists in previous lives). A few took jobs in government. Some intellectuals dedicated themselves to human rights. But, as a class, the intelligentsia did not create lasting democratic institutions or solidify the freedoms granted in 1991.
大量科学家流失海外，一些下海经商（叶利钦时代许多政治寡头，比如別列佐夫斯基等，在苏联时代都曾从事过科学研究），另一些则在政府为官。少数知识分子也为维护人权奋斗终身，但作为一个整体来说，苏联知识分子并未形成一股民主力量，对于巩固1991年获取的公民自由没有发挥作用。
Russia’s media engaged in an exercise of self-deprecation and sneering. Almost nobody was prepared systematically to study the country’s history. According to Mr Dodin, one of Russia’s most thoughtful and influential theatre directors, “When we read ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ in samizdat, we thought that if ever this book gets printed, everything will change, for ever.” And then the unthinkable happened: the book was printed-and largely ignored. Russian liberals sneered at Solzhenitsyn, though none managed to offer anything comparable to his work.
俄罗斯媒体变得自轻自贱。几乎无人愿意对本国历史进行系统研究。俄罗斯最深刻、最有影响的导演朵金回忆道：”第一次通过地下刊物读到《古拉格群岛》时，我们想，这本书一旦出版，一切将永远改变。”此后，匪夷所思的事情发生了：该书虽获出版，反响却极为冷清。俄罗斯自由主义者对索尔仁尼琴不屑一顾，但这些不屑者没有一部著作能与索翁比肩。
Hard times for intellectuals
艰难时刻
The country which had bloodlessly freed itself of communist ideology and had ended the cold war was experiencing a collective inferiority complex. The end of the Soviet Union did not produce anything resembling the artistic energy created by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 or the years that followed. Russian writers failed to fill a linguistic vacuum left by several decades of the devaluation of serious language. The country still lacks the words to describe the scale of events that have taken place over the past 20 years.
共产主义意识形态平静地终结、冷战也和平结束，整个俄罗斯却生发出一种自卑情结。苏联的解体并未带来艺术的发展，1917年布尔什维克革命及其以后的那种繁荣局面并未出现。严肃文学经历了数十年的低落，造成的语言文学的真空却没有作家能够填充。这个国度在过去二十年间发生了翻天覆地的变化，却没有作家能用合适的文字对之进行记录。
Ideological and economic collapse deprived Russia’s intelligentsia of status, money and exclusivity. The very concept began to fall apart. “Capitalism was alien to the intelligentsia. Intelligentsia is a function of monarchy-normal bourgeois societies do not have it,” says Sergei Kapitsa, a respected scientist. It was no surprise that most of Russia’s intelligentsia did not recognise Yeltsin as one of “theirs”. For many scientists, Yeltsin’s were the “lost years”.
意识形态和经济的垮塌使得俄罗斯知识界丧失了昔日的地位、金钱及特权。”知识界”一词逐渐失去昔日的含义。”知识界同资本主义毫无瓜葛，他们是政权的一个职能–资本主义社会没有同样的阶层。”著名科学家卡皮查如此表示。这就不难解释为何俄罗斯知识界大多不承认叶利钦是他们其中一员。对于许多科学家来说，叶利钦属于那个”逝去的年代”。
This may help to explain why a large part of Russia’s scientific and artistic elite welcomed Mr Putin with open arms. Solzhenitsyn himself refused to receive an award from Yeltsin-whom he saw as a man who had humiliated Russia-but accepted one from Mr Putin, seeing in him a symbol of national resurgence (although he found many aspects of Putin’s Russia unpalatable).
这可能也是俄罗斯科学及艺术界人士欢迎普京执政的原因。索尔仁尼琴拒绝接受叶利钦颁发的奖项，他认为叶利钦使俄罗斯受辱。但索翁却不介意从普京手中接受奖项，认为他是国家复兴的象征（此后他发现普京治下的俄罗斯同样不尽如人意）。
The Putin years have split the Russian intelligentsia. Dissidents and other sharp critics still exist in Russia today, but they have diverged from the country’s cultural establishment, which does not see Mr Putin as alien to their interests. It is not just financial handouts that have made him attractive-although they have helped. The centralisation of the state with an added measure of nationalism has created a new sense of the return of status plus the flattery of the state’s attention.
普京任内，俄罗斯知识阶层发生分裂。如今，俄国内仍有政治异见者和尖刻的批评家，但他们已不再是主流文化机构的一分子。这些文化机构认为普京的统治于自身的利益无碍。这其中固然有经济利益的因素，但却并非唯一原因。随着俄罗斯的集权化以及民族主义的上升，这些机构体会到自身地位的回归，感觉重又成为国家关注的对象。
Mr Putin’s unexpected visits to Moscow theatres and impromptu remarks on productions leave artistic directors, who once symbolised the intelligentsia, mesmerised. When a famous scientist received a medal from Mr Putin’s hands he was astonished by how down-to-earth the former president was.
普京对莫斯科市内剧院的突然造访，以及他对于作品的即席评价，使那些昔日身为知识界代表的艺术家们如痴如醉。当一位著名科学家从普京手中接受奖章时，他为这位前总统的平易近人而深深感动。
The Kremlin pays due attention to science and culture these days. Although it bashes non-governmental organisations, it has created a public chamber of approved and loyal members of the intelligentsia, which includes scientists, artists and lawyers. One of the first public appearances of Dmitry Medvedev as Russia’s newly elected president was as a trustee of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.
如今，克里姆林宫对于科学和艺术给予了应有的关注。尽管政府打压非政府组织，但却建立了一个公共机构，吸收少数忠于政府的知识分子加入，其中包括科学界、艺术界及法律界人士。俄罗斯新任总统梅德维杰夫最早在公共场合露面，就是作为普希金艺术馆的理事出席活动。
The sense of success and inclusion is harder to resist than the wrath of the state. Carrots are more corrupting than sticks. This phenomenon is powerfully described in Vasily Grossman’s novel “Life and Fate” (1960). One of its central characters is Viktor, a talented physicist who stoically defends his science in the face of likely arrest, but becomes weak and submissive when Stalin calls him to wish him success. “Viktor had found the strength to renounce life itself-but now he seemed unable to refuse candies and cookies.”
较之以往政府的压制，如今的成功感和回归感更难于抵御。胡萝卜比大棒更令人心醉。瓦西里•格罗斯曼在1960年创作的小说《生活与命运》对此种现象进行了深入描写。其中的主角之一，曾坦然面对牢狱之灾，勇敢捍卫科学的维克多，在被斯大林召见后，变得软弱而顺从。”维克多曾拥有放弃生命的勇气，如今却不敌小恩小惠。”
The adaptation of “Life and Fate” for the stage was put on recently by Mr Dodin in the Gulag town of Norilsk. When the powerful production came to Moscow it was played in a richly decorated new theatre built by a famous Russian actor who had signed a letter defending the shambolic and shameful trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil magnate who fell foul of the Kremlin. Unlike Mr Grossman’s character, few people in the audience had experienced the burning shame of Viktor’s choice. The moral qualities of the Soviet intelligentsia have always been exaggerated, says Mr Fortov. He says that scientists and artists happily informed on each other even when nobody demanded it. “They did so of their own volition.” By the same token, nobody had made Mr Fortov sign the letter about Mr Khodorkovsky’s trial or hang Mr Putin’s portrait on his wall.
该小说近来由朵金搬上舞台，最初的演出地点正是在昔日的古拉格小镇诺里尔斯克。这部出色的改编作品在莫斯科一座富丽堂皇的新剧院上演。剧院经理是一位著名的演员，曾联署一封公开信，这封信旨在为对米哈伊•霍多尔科夫斯基的审判张目。这位石油大亨招惹了克里姆林宫，对他的审判也是程序混乱，实为法律之耻。同格罗斯曼笔下的人物不同，剧院的观众无人能体会到维克多选择所带来的深切的耻辱感。弗托夫认为，苏联知识界的道德层次一直被夸大。他说，科学和艺术界人士乐于相互告发，即便是无人要求。”他们全然出于自愿。”同样，也无人要求弗托夫本人联署那封要求审判霍多尔科夫斯基的公开信，无人要求他将普京的画像挂在自家墙上。
Russia still produces brave individuals, independent and conscientious enough to speak the truth to the state. But they remain individual voices. The murder of Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken Russian journalist, raised a few sighs and lamentations-but not street protests. Her funeral, which produced a massive outpouring of sentiment in Europe, was a muted and depressing affair in Moscow. It did not bring journalists together, but exposed the gap between those who serve the state and those who serve the public. Mr Putin callously said at the time that Politkovskaya’s work had minimal impact in Russia. Worse still, he was right. The country was almost deaf to her voice.
俄罗斯依然不乏独立而有良知的知识分子，面对政府，他们以螳臂当车之勇捍卫正义。但这只是微弱的零星声音。以直言闻名的记者安娜•波利特科夫斯卡娅被谋杀，只引来几声叹息和几滴眼泪，却没有引发街头抗议。她的葬礼在欧洲各地引起巨大的情感共鸣，但在莫斯科却显得冷清而尴尬。这场葬礼并没有团结记者，反而暴露了立言为官和为民两种记者之间的鸿沟。普京冷淡的表示，波利特科夫斯卡娅的作品对于俄罗斯影响甚微。可悲的是，他所说的的确是现实。对她的声音，这个国家选择了沉默。
See no evil, speak no evil
不闻不问
Russia today is much freer than it was for most of the Soviet era. However undemocratic it may be, it is not a totalitarian state. The room for honest speaking is far greater than Russian intellectuals make use of. As Marietta Chudakova, a historian of Russian literature and courageous public figure, puts it, “Nobody has been commanded to lie down-and everyone is already on the ground.” The media is suffocated by self-censorship more than by the Kremlin’s pressure. Nikolai Svanidze, a Russian journalist who works for a state TV channel, admits: “There is no person who tells [me] what you can and what you can’t do. It is in the air. If you know what is permitted and what is not, you’re in the right place. If you don’t, you are not.”
相比苏联时代，今日俄罗斯要自由许多。无论有多么不民主，它却并不是一个集权国家。俄罗斯知识分子并未利用诚实立言的自由。玛丽塔•楚达科娃，这位俄国文学史学家，一位充满勇气的公众人物，如此哀叹：”没有人命令他们躺下-大家早已躺在地上。”媒体的自我限制比政府审查更甚。国家电视台记者尼可莱•斯瓦尼泽承认：”其实并没有人告诉（我们）哪些可以做，哪些不可以。并没有什么具体限制。但如果你知道哪些内容可以通过，你就合适这份工作。如果不知道，最好还是另谋高就。”
Yet, as Russia struggles with corruption and abuse of state power, the need for a spiky intelligentsia is greater than ever. As Sergei Bulgakov wrote in 1909, “Russia cannot renew itself without renewing, among other things, its intelligentsia”.
如今，俄罗斯正同腐败和滥用公权力作斗争。她比以往更需要一个有所作为的知识分子阶层。正如布尔加科夫在1909年所说的：”欲重振俄国，必先重振其知识分子”。
译者：houyhnhnm http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13361&pid=83744&page=1&extra=page%3D1#pid83744
social force 一定要翻译为“反对力量”么？