Time Will Tell – Folha de S. Paulo, September 2, 1973
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
In the same week that, upon becoming Secretary of State, Kissinger received Nixon’s endorsement of his policy of rapprochement with the Kremlin, Sakharov’s cry and grave warning reached the public worldwide. The great Russian physicist’s cry expresses more than one man’s pain. It conveys all the tears that communist tyranny has accumulated behind the Iron Curtain. Millions of people are crying out to the West through the voice of a qualified representative.
What does “The West” mean? It refers to the free nations, more numerous in Europe and the Americas than elsewhere. It refers to the peoples who make up those nations and the individuals who make up those peoples. It refers to you, my female and male readers. It refers to me.
In other words, the West’s collective responsibility for this lament translates into personal responsibility for each of us. No one can sleep peacefully while enjoying their prestige, riches, and delights, indifferent to the request for support and the warning that Sakharov’s voice has brought us.
Such indifference would subject us to the reproach Our Lord Jesus Christ, present in every child of Russia and the captive nations, makes deep on our consciences, and to censure from Him with immensely greater severity on Judgment Day.
Yes, those of our brothers suffering from all the needs of body and soul are Christians, and a Christian is another Jesus Christ: “Christianus alter Christus.”
If we do not attend to these Christians, the Lord will say to us:
“I was hungry, and you did not give me any food.”
“I was thirsty, but you did not give me anything to drink.
“I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me.
“I was naked, and you did not clothe me.
“I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me” (Mt 25:42-43).
* * *
Sakharov rightly said that Russia is a huge prison with two distinct zones of prison intensity, so to speak. There are regular prisons, where the ferocity of the Soviet State is exercised to the full. And then there is the immense prison periphery, comprising the countless population of those who work for the State, in jobs assigned by the State, with salaries set by the State, at hours fixed by the State, and to whom everything is forbidden by this anti-nation State. They are even forbidden to form legitimate and stable families, to save for the future of their loved ones, and to worship God in peace.
That this tyranny produces hunger is eloquently stated in a recent news item. It reports that wheat stocks are insufficient to feed the free world’s population for two reasons: a small decline in production caused by bad weather and an immense deficit in these reserves caused by supplies to Russia.
In other words, this prison subsists on universal charity, and everyone in it goes hungry. Everyone… except, of course, the privileged prison guards!
* * *
What is Sakharov asking of the West? His is the most astonishing request in history. He asks us not to be foolish and to refuse to support rapprochement with the communist world. This rapprochement keeps in power the despots who make Russia unhappy today and will make us miserable tomorrow.
The scientist’s reasoning is as simple and crystal clear as possible. We will keep the Kremlin’s satraps in power by showering them with prestige and riches. In return, they promise to fulfill international agreements, which we expect will bring peace.
But Sakharov observes that this peace rests entirely on the value of the word given by the communist signers. How trustworthy, he asks, is the word of a government that has turned its country into a prison and its people into slaves?
In other words, how can we trust that a government that lacks moral sense in its internal affairs will have it in foreign relations?
* * *
Obviously, communists use the wealth we place in their hands to launch a major ideological, psychological, and ultimately military offensive in an effort to conquer the West.
If Kissinger and his cohort do not radically change their orientation, the fire we dared not extinguish in our neighbor’s house will burn our own homes and, ultimately, our flesh: a deserved punishment for complacency, improvidence, and unspeakable indifference.
This is how Providence will punish us at the hands of those we favor today.
* * *
Of course, Sakharov is a communist and, therefore, an atheist. There is no mention of Providence in his words.
However, this does not constitute the slightest impediment to God’s intervening in history—poor Sakharov! Nor does it prevent the unfolding of earthly events, which the scientist exposed and predicted with such moving force, from being an authentic punishment from God.
Thus, an atheist ended up saying (who knows with what ulterior motives) what we would have liked to hear from the lips of men of God.
But while almost all men of God remain silent about these great truths and even applaud Kissinger’s policy, God can announce to the world, through the voice of an atheist, the punishment awaiting us if we do not change our ways.
* * *
Without denying the providential reach of Sakharov’s lament and warning, one question remains: what role does the physicist play in this situation? As an atheist, has he simply prophesied as Balaam’s mule once did? Or is there an ulterior motive behind his “prophecy” to serve communism? Will the message of the well-known communist serve some theatrical coup in the politics of the good allies in the Kremlin and the White House, in a way not yet foreseeable to the public?
