Hart on Peace With the Soviets

It’s official: The Cold War is over. One was dubious when the event was first announced by the West Germans. After all, these are the same good people who brought us two world wars, have been hosting a rather numerous, apparently effective, coterie of East Bloc spies in the highest reaches of their government, and have a not inconsiderable special interest in cutting a separate deal with Moscow for trade and eventual German reunification. But, when Hart says the Cold War is over, it’s over! He was there! in Moscow! last month! He saw it happening!

Well might he chide the doubters, the timid, the Cold War addicts. But we must be patient with such people. They are disadvantaged by having some knowledge of Russian history. First, they probably think that there have been not just two, but several Russian “revolutions.” There was Peter the Great in the late 1600s who virtually grabbed the Russians by the scruff of their collective necks and dragged them kicking and screaming into the modern world. There was the abolition of serfdom in 1861. There was more than one serious go at parliamentary government under the czars. And, of course, there was the 1917 revolution, then Lenin’s New Economic Policy, then Stalin’s purges, now Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika .

And, the Cold Warriors are probably confused by the fact that all of these “revolutions,” arguably even that of 1917, have two characteristics in common: They come from the top, and real power always rests on control, or allegiance, of the apparatus of state security.

Lacking Hart’s high-definition vision of the future, these confused souls probably fear that what we’re seeing in the Soviet Union these days may well turn out to be another change in form rather than substance.

RAY P. COLT

El Cajon