Sunday, February 28, 2010

• Item by Leon A. Weinstein

When I was fifteen, I was really smart. I read philosophers and was able to argue with them, in my own head of course. The reason I was so smart (not anymore I must confess) was that when in early childhood my grandfather recognized my desire for learning, he separated his five thousand book collection into two parts, and told me that the small part was for me to read, and the other one, where most of books without pictures went was not yet for me.  He even locked the book shelves with those books that were not for me but kind of showed me where the key was.

Do you know how sweet the forbidden fruit is? I began to devour the “allowed” part of his collection but my eyes and thoughts were on the other shelves. I have no idea if my grandfather meant to arouse my curiosity or he really wanted to supervise my reading and release books to me portion by portion. He didn’t tell me because when I was six and a half years old he died in the KGB headquarters where he was “invited” to sign a bogus letter accusing his colleagues of spying against the motherland. He refused and as the KGD officer told my mom, “your dad died of a heart attack.“ He died and his memory is with me forever. He was the most important person in my life, and his influence is with me even now, when I myself already am a grandfather.

I ventured into the forbidden shelves and quickly went through all adults’ fiction, including very picturesque Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, Emile Zola, Balzac and Faulkner. Then I went through two hundred books about International law. My grandfather was an attorney. Then into a couple of dozens of well illustrated books about human anatomy, medical theory and practice… reflecting my grandmother’s professional interests. Then finally I got to the philosophers, starting with Greeks and continuing to Nietzsche. The only philosophers my grandfather didn’t have in his library were Marx, Lenin, Stalin and all other adepts of socialism and communism. He passionately hated them.

On my sixteenth birthday I was asked to say a toast and not thinking long, I said that I would like to add something to the writings of a Jewish philosopher Lucius Seneca who lived in Rome at the time of Christ. Seneca proclaimed that there are three tests that human being can be subjected to during their lives: poverty, richness and fame. I said at my birthday party that there is one more test, called “perspective” or “opportunity.“ Yes, in Russia of my childhood, we said toasts and drank wine together with our parents even at an age earlier then sixteen.

This “opportunity” or “prospective” proved to be so powerful that it in my opinion it destroyed the evil empire and threatened the whole world, the empire I lived in and didn’t even dream to escape from. I know many theories about what pushed the USSR over the edge, but those theories were created by the outside people. I am sure all those powers and influences worked at the same time and this is what finally made this socialist colossus to collapse. I however want to add something that only the insider is able to witness.

During all my life we knew that whatever you do, the Soviet Union will not let you go. The only way to emigrate was to escape during either tourist or professional visit, but in this case your family would suffer. Your cousins and sisters-in-law would lose their jobs, their children would be thrown from colleges or not allowed to enter; others might be banned from visiting other countries forever. The KGB didn’t let anyone who didn’t have potential hostages go abroad.

Then in 1972 the Soviet Union had food shortages and came for the rescue to the United States. The congress under tremendous pressure from Jewish activists demanded the Soviets allow reunification of some Jewish families with their relatives in Israel. The Russian(USSR) government agreed, some fifty thousand Jews, Pollacks and Germans left and the hell started. If before this we knew that it is impossible to leave the hated socialist regime, suddenly there was an opportunity… a possibility to get out and live normal life. First there were hundreds, then thousand and then tens of thousands of families who went to KGB to fill the emigration papers. Those people were thrown into jails, and into nut houses, they lost their jobs, they were proclaimed the enemies of the state. Nothing helped. The people now knew that there is an opportunity to escape and they were relentlessly coming back again and again and demanded to be free. Thousands of people began to listen to American and European radio stations, hundreds of thousands began to study English and Hebrew, children were taught the history of Israel by their parents and grandparents. People stopped being mortally afraid because they saw that there was a possibility, an opportunity, a narrow prospective to escape. They were telling each other – even if the Commies will ruin my life, I might be able to take my children out of this hell.

We all wanted to go to the West. It was forbidden and it was like a magnet. We thought that everything on the other side was just opposite from the Soviet Socialist regime. We hated and despised everything associated with it and loved capitalism of our dreams. And in 1972 we suddenly realized that if we would push again and again, we would be able to get out and live in the paradise. The realization that we had an opportunity to change our lives was what changed us from the scared crowd to determined individuals.

I emigrated in the beginning of 1974, went to Israel, spent about eleven years there, and came to the US to stage a couple of theater projects in the Jewish Museum of New York and The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. I fell in love with the country, with people, with opportunities and after visiting the other coast decided to stay.

When my friends who also emigrated from the USSR get together we according to our old tradition toast birthdays, weddings and holidays. At our age many already do it with juice and mineral water instead of wine and vodka, but we hold our glasses up and say praises about our new homeland. I do not remember even a single gathering where one of us wouldn’t say “Let’s drink for America, this great country that helped us to become free and allowed us to build honest and good life for ourselves and our children! Viva America!“ We felt proud to be Americans. We still are, but we stopped toasting it.

The change happened gradually, and it coincided with the raise of Barack Obama to power and “rule”. The first couple of months everything was the same, and then bit by bit we begun to be ashamed of the course our beloved country was taking. We felt bad when our President standing near the Berlin Wall that we helped to destroy asked Germans to forgive us for the actions taken by the United States of America. We felt strange watching him doing low bow to the King of Saudi Arabia. We shivered when he made a tour of the world asking (begging) them to forgive us for destroying their economies, ecologies and pushing them to poverty and hunger. We were terrified by him accepting an anti-American book from Hugo Chavez. We were astonished when he accepted the Nobel prize being nominated only one week after his inauguration, knowing who else was nominated and didn’t receive the prize because of him. We were silent when he said that Israeli settlers can’t add rooms to their houses, when he proclaimed that America will help the entire world in order to redeem the terrible deeds it did to the world, when he decided to hand trillions of unearned dollars to his socialist buddies, including ACORN, trade unions and various pet projects of Democrat senators and congressman. Those were monies his gang borrowed and divided but it was us who are obligated to return them with interest. He handed this obligation to all of us, our children and grandchildren. He did the same what the Soviet Socialist gang was doing – taking from us and giving to whom they wanted to. They called it “re-distribution of wealth” and were very proud of it. They also called it “equality.“ A large part of what they took from us they re-distributed to themselves.

Now when my friends are gathering together, we talk about “what America did wrong?“ Why this happened? Why so few people saw that Obama is a typical socialist and that he is a danger to our way of life? There are several kinds of socialists that vary by the degree of their ambitions, but in essence all of them want to take from you what you have or make and do something with it that wouldn’t meet your approval. In my humble opinion when you take something from a person you first shall ask if he agrees to that. If not, if one group takes something from another without their agreement, it is called robbery. Socialism is a society where a group of managers (government) can take from you something that in capitalism they would never be able to take from you without committing a crime. When Obama said he wants to fundamentally change America and that now finally the real equality comes to this country, it was supposed to be enough to make voters stand on their heals and bar him from ever entering any race, including a race for a Parent-Teacher Association in an elementary school. But American voters assumed that Obama loves this country like all previous presidents did. The country assumed that he is a patriot of this country and means no harm. In fact, Obama loves an idea of the socialist “equal” country (or the world) and is a patriot of this utopian concept that never worked in any place in the world. The only place it did work is the imagination of those well intended people who readily became tyrants when their subjects refused to follow them to the sweet and wonderful world those socialists try to lead them to.

We need to understand why America brought to power a person who is opposing to our way of life, who wants to apologize for what we are, who wants us fundamentally changed, who wants us to become someone else, who wants to make this best country in the world into something marginal and utopian. We need to understand it and make sure it never happens again. 

Leon A. Weinstein
http://LeonWeinstein.com/

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