 And Bill Buckley in his book had a tremendous influence on Frank Shoderhoff and did set the tone for ISI over the years. And for that reason, I believe that his book God and Man and Yell is probably one of his best books. Well, Bill doesn't need any introduction, but I'm going to introduce him anyway. William F. Buckley Jr. Mr. Riley, ladies and gentlemen, you've had a very long day on the theme of recovery. And no doubt before too long you will think most anxiously about recovering your sleep. It has been for us today something on the order of a great symposium with actors, many of them with lines and thoughts delivered as striking as Plato's. They are in any event among the few key people on whom so many of us depend for guidance. And what brings them here today is the 35th anniversary of a small institute whose paternal figure, as has been remarked, was my old friend Frank Shoderhoff, but whose animating force for most of this period, never mind how he attempts to obscure it, has been our guest of honor, Victor Milione. I've told the story before, but I think it's worth repeating. Frank Shoderhoff published, as previously remarked, about 40 years ago a pamphlet which he called a 50-year plan. He calculated that at least a half century would be needed to displace the dominant shibboleths of socialism. That pamphlet was greeted so enthusiastically that he set out to organize a society. Organizing anything was alien to the vaguely anarchical spirit of Frank Shoderhoff, so he told me one day that I would be the president of what he called the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. It was my habit in those days and after to do anything Frank asked. And so for a while I was president of ISI. Then one day I got a note from him, a note that sticks easily to the memory. He said, Dear Bill, you're fired. I've decided a Jew will do better as president of ISI, so I've appointed myself Love Frank. And he reigned for a very little while because he fell ill and dispirited, but with help from Providence he gave the organization a fresh president, not Jewish, to be sure, which may be why ISI has always broke. But so are we all always broke with the possible exception of Ed Fulner, who renounced the vows of poverty some years ago. And in a quiet way Victor set out to be of service to a half century's young men and women. He didn't make it through the 50 years, which is why the resourceful, witty, learned and imperious Bob Raleigh is here. The original idea was that by the year 2001, a Tataras 50 year plan would be consummated. Sometimes it seems hardly possible, but the human mind can transform discouraging data. Thus the last time I visited with Malcolm Mugridge, and he spoke of the prevalence of the anti-life movement, he suddenly stopped in his melancholy, turned to me and said, But, do you realize, Bill, there is a bright side to it. I calculate that at this rate, by the year 2020, there won't be any Swedes left. You have heard the Gerhard Niemeyer, my mentor and friend Charles Kessler, my brilliant co-editor, the learned Ralph McInerney, whose conceit is that serious men can also write thrillers. The great sage of Castle Russell Kirk, the talented and thoughtful sculptor Reid Armstrong, whose sculptures adorn my house, and Constantine Mengie is the scholarly witness to the ultimate satelization by the Soviet Union of the bureaucracy of the Western world. And in just about six minutes, you will hear from a heroic figure, who, unlike most of us who have suffered only vicariously from the torment of the century, has had direct experience with the monster, but who, like Whitaker Chambers, has not returned from hell with empty hands. In reflecting on the theme of recovery, I thought to point to the recovery of a faculty conspicuous for its torpor. It is, of course, true that there is much to be discouraged by, and the day's speakers have reminded us of this, but true also that we have only to pick up this morning's newspaper. Riots threatened and thwarted in Algeria starvation in Ethiopia and the Sudan. The high possibility of the reinvasion of Estonia, a purge announced in Yugoslavia, a threat of military government in Armenia, the eternal insecurity of life in Russia and in China, to know that as the British voyage has set over 100 years ago, the land here is bright. Almost so realistically bright by contrast are plagued, yes, by vicissitude, but, nevertheless, the republic for which we stand, as the school children of Massachusetts are not encouraged to say. We need, I think, to cultivate the faculty for gratitude. When I was 13 years old, I was shrap-round here and there, along with two sisters of about the same age, about the greater environs of London, my music teacher, whom I loved and still do, was by my side when I went to the counter of a little souvenir shop in Stratford on Avon and paid out three or four shillings for Shakespearean's hundreds I had picked up. An elderly lady took my money, returned me some change, and then withdrew from the display case a tiny one-quarter inch addition of Romeo and Juliet and smiling gave it to me a gift. Whereupon I took the sixpence she had just before given me in change and deposited in her hand a reciprocal gift once outside. I received a stern rebuke from my teacher. I had done an offensive thing, she told me. A gift is a gift I must learn. She went on to accept gifts. They are profaned by any attempt at automatic reciprocity. Many years later I read in a biography of Abraham Lincoln about an episode that had briefly convulsed the receiving line at the White House. A lady in that line, after taking the president's hand in formal greeting, thrust forward with her left hand a huge bundle of long-stemmed roses depositing them in effect all over Mr. Lincoln. The president and the receiving line were immobilized. Abraham Lincoln smiled and said after the briefest pause, are these really for me? Yes, his guest replied beaming. In that case the president said, I can think of nothing that would give me more pleasure than to present them to you. The flowers were returned, there were smiles all around. The lady took back her roses and the line moved on. That is an unusual perhaps a singular exception to my music teacher's injunction against the social sin of reciprocal gifts. Few people in public life or private have managed such extemporaneous grace. Many years went by and then only a fortnight ago I received on my trusty electronic MCI a message from a friend, a computer expert. He said that the retrieval system I had yearned for, one which would permit me to locate individual book titles in my library via my computer, had been completed. He had worked on it in the interstices of his busy schedule for over a month. It is yours, his message read as a belated Christmas present impetuously. I flashed back on my computer screen that I insisted he send me a bill for professional services. One minute later my mind traveled back and I was again a little boy at a souvenir shop at Stratford embarrassing a kindly woman who had attempted an act of generosity. There and then I shed the grown-up equivalent of tears at my awkwardness. But as I reflect on it, there is a distinction. The gift automatically repaid in roughly equivalent tender is corrupted. It ceases to be a gift and the philanthropic impulse is traduced. The unrequited gift in Burke's phrase is one of the unbought graces of life. Any effort to repay vulgarizes the offering and one risks repaying a kindness with an act of aggression. But a country or a civilization that gives us such gift as we dispose of cannot be repaid in kind. There is no way in which we can give to the United States a present of a bill of rights in exchange for its having given us a bill of rights. Our offense, the near-universal offense remarked by Ortega Garcett as the fingerprint of the masses in revolt is that of the westerner, rich or poor, learned or ignorant to accept without any thought of any debt incurred the patrimony we all enjoy, those of us who live in the free world, the numbing, benumbing thought that we owe nothing to Plato and Aristotle, nothing to the prophets who wrote the Bible, nothing to the generations who fought for freedoms activated in the bill of rights. We are basket cases of ingratitude, so many of us. We cannot hope to repay in kind what Socrates gave us, but to live lives without any sense of obligation to those who made possible lives as tolerable as our own within the frame of the human predicament God imposed on us, a lack of gratitude to our parents who suffered to raise us, to our teachers who labored to teach us, to the scientists who prolonged the lives of our children and parents when disease tracked them down as spiritually atrophying. We cannot repay the gift of the Beatitudes with their eternal searing meaning, nor the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. But our ongoing failure to recognize that we owe a huge debt, which can be requited only by gratitude, defined here as an appreciation of the best that we have, and a determined effort to protect and cherish it, marks us as the masses in revolt, in revolt against our benefactors, our civilization against God himself. It is for this reason that we have a special joy in giving gratitude for 35 years' work under the resolute and inspiring guidance of one man, of an institute that seeks to keep alive the monuments of the past and to do them honor and to keep fresh in the memory what they have done for us. To fail to experience gratitude when walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, when listening to the music of Bach and Beethoven, when exercising our freedoms to speak or to give or to withhold our assent, is more than to profane spontaneous generosity. It is to decline to express however clumsily, to feel however coarsely our gratitude for the fruits of genius, for generosity human and divine, for the great wellsprings of human talent and concern that gave us Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, our parents, our friends, Victor Milione and yes, the old lady in Stratford. We need a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and mostly dead. For high moments of our way of life or their gifts to us, we must remember them in our thoughts and in our prayers and in our deeds. Thank you very much, Mr. Barclay. Vic complained that my introduction of him was too short. All right. No, I just have one brief story. When Vic took over ISI after Frank Choderoff passed away, Frank Choderoff, as many of you know, was a pretty hard line libertarian. And when Vic Milione became president of ISI, he took it in what is known as a more traditionalist direction. So at a meeting, I believe it was of the Philadelphia Society, Vic, a leading libertarian, perhaps Murray Rothbard, rose up and said, Vic, if Frank Choderoff were alive today and saw the direction in which you have taken ISI, he'd turn over in his grave. So Vic, having a deep respect for the libertarian philosophy, got up and said, Murray, when Frank Choderoff was alive, he ran this organization the way he wanted to. Now that I'm president, I'm going to run it the way I want to and sat back down. QED, the refutation of a particular radical strain of libertarianism. Vic, I'll try to carry on in that fine tradition if without the splendid eloquence of our first president, Phil Buckley, who gave really the short-form introduction of our next speaker, Vladimir Bukovsky. He has come from hell, not empty-handed. I have had the privilege of knowing Vladimir for a few years. I've never told him this because we have since become friends. But when I first met him, I was absolutely delighted that I was so overwhelmed with work that I couldn't be nervous. And the reason I would have been nervous is that I had followed his career from 1968-69 to the point at which I met him when I was serving in the Reagan administration. And in the late 60s, if you remember, it was a less-than-happy time for this country. I was serving at the Army at this time when I saw this particular program, and of course there were no heroes left. The streets of Washington were being trashed. And I happened to see a news report that was so unusual, I took notes, and I took down the name Vladimir Bukovsky. And from ever since that point, I began tracing his career whenever his name was mentioned in the newspaper. Because the first time I heard of Vladimir Bukovsky, when he was still, well, let us say, an even younger man in his early 30s, he had spent roughly half his life in the belly of the beast. Half of his life had been in the Gulag Archipelago. And he had been let out for a short recess. And during this short recess, he grabbed a Western newsman and took him to a secluded part of a park in Moscow and told him, set up your camera, I'm going to start speaking. And this was what was recorded, and this was what was shown on Western television because this Western newsman, one of the rare of that breed, succeeded in seeing the importance of this and also getting it out of the Soviet Union. And Vladimir said, if I may roughly paraphrase from what I very clearly remember at that moment, said, I'm out for the moment. I will be arrested again, as he was. And I am not sure that after my next experience in prison, I will any longer have the use of my reason because of the application of sulfazine and other drugs shot into the veins of the recalcitrant to alter them mentally and psychologically. And so Vladimir Bukovsky said, I would like to use this opportunity to tell you the truth while I still have the full capacity of my mental powers. And he began describing the true nature of the Soviet Union. And I watched transfixed and said to myself, where are the heroes? Are there no heroes? Here is a hero, a man of extraordinary moral strength and courage and stamina. And so, as I mentioned, I continued to follow his career, which he later documented in his book to build a castle. My life as a dissenter. And thank God after some 14 years in the gulag, he was released in an exchange for the head of the Chilean Communist Party. On a lighter side, I asked Vladimir how he enjoys his present situation because he's living in England. And he said, well, there's a good side and a bad side. I said, I know, tell me about the bad side. He said, well, you know, I am used to privation and England is a spick. There are no guests from England here this evening. Oh dear. Mr. Buckley, what do I do now? I will modify the quote and say that he said it is a somewhat uncomfortable country in terms of amenities. And so, therefore, he found himself very comfortably ensconced in Cambridge. So without further ado, I present Vladimir Bukovsky. Well, thank you, Bob. I still flatter myself that I'm in full capacity of mental abilities after all these speeches and dinner. So I'm delighted to have this opportunity to address the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, such first anniversary, particularly because it is dedicated to the subject of renewal, of recovery we experienced in recent years. My friends know that I always grumble about the shortcomings of the West in general and of the United States in particular, about wishful thinking and short-sightedness, lack of political will and of leadership. But, of course, I know that the things were much worse 10, 15 years ago and that current state of affairs is a great improvement. In this sense, the West reminds me of an old beggar from a popular Russian joke who was walking down the street one rainy day, wearing only one shoe but singing this happiness. Well, of course, people were agitated, they were shouting at him, you're crazy, look, you have lost one shoe. Oh, no, replied an old man cheerfully, I've just found one. I remember, for example, when I was just expelled from the Soviet Union 12 years ago, only Maoists and Trotskyites in Europe were not afraid of being anti-Soviet. Shortly after my expulsion, I was invited to speak at a dinner organized by a fringe group of the British Conservative Party at that time in a position where, among other speakers, was scheduled the leader of that group, Margaret Satcher. And my God, I was vehemently attacked in the British press for associating myself with a lunatic right-wing fringe. Today, as you know, the Satcherism is the mainstream political thinking in England, if not in the whole world. Of course, I remember the time when practically every Western government would openly negotiate with terrorists and give in to their demands, quite unashamedly paying ransom to the international gangsters. Some still do, but at least they are compelled to do it in secret, and whenever it comes into public eye, it becomes a scandal. Only in the last few years, we have seen the remarkable signs of the moral recovery of the West, such as liberation of Grenada, such as growing support for freedom fighters in Afghanistan or in Nicaragua. We have seen the return of a true meaning to the world of solidarity, and, of course, we can definitely say that Europe is recovering from its post-war illness, and the United States is recovering from its post-Vietnam war syndrome as well. But let's think of it. It did not happen on its own. And I believe many in this audience tonight have contributed heavily into this recovery. I remember, and we just discussed it with Bob during this dinner, how we tried to get together a petition of Europeans supporting the drive, supporting or appealing to the United States Congress to support Nicaraguan contras. And Bob did know that in Europe it costs us dearly we had to drag everyone to do that. Families fell apart. Friendships fell apart. And at one point I felt that we wouldn't make it unless Bob guarantees me that the United States president would receive them. And Bob couldn't guarantee that unless he knew who would be coming. So we stuck with that for a while, and then I had to tell to Bob that unless he guarantees that, the whole thing will fall through. It was a miracle he managed to get that. And probably 30 years later he will describe it in his memoirs how he managed. But we pulled it through. And believe me, this renewal we are talking about tonight did not come on its own accord. It was made by people like Bob. It was made by the small groups like yours. By people like Bill Buckley who dedicated all his life to that renewal. But nowhere this recovery was as obvious as in the Soviet Union today. One might say it became the most anti-communist country on earth. When 25 years ago we have started our movement there, we were just a handful of youngsters and most of us were immediately talking to lunatic assailants for demanding glossiness which at that time was regarded as completely crazy idea by now became an official policy of the Soviet Union. Official Soviet press repeats now almost word for word what we used to say for 25 years and what would be branded as anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda just a few years ago. The very word communism practically disappeared from their official language. Instead they prefer to speak about socialism which they claim is synonymous with the market economy. Recently a leading Soviet economist has attended an international conference in Spain and had a tremendous quarrel with his left-wing European colleagues because he supported privatization of the state-owned industries conducted by the British government. As a result of this this faithful son of the Communist Party was publicly called a reactionary and in replying to that the western left like what is depressingly out of date. Well you can say that again. In fact the things went so far that as I've been recently informed Lenin suddenly disappeared from his tomb. So the KGB team duly searched the whole surroundings and somehow managed to find in between the pillows a small note going to Zurich to start all over again. But this is only an official side of the Soviet life. Unofficial developments went much further. There are thousands of unofficial associations, movements, groups, publications some of which are openly anti-communist like Democratic Union which proclaimed itself an opposition party. Just before November 7th the traditional Soviet celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution this party distributed thousands of leaflets across the country with an appeal not to celebrate it any longer. It says despite loud speeches about perestroika and glassness democratization and restoration of historical truth we still celebrate every year an anniversary of anti-popular October coup d'etat. It is a high time to stop and ask ourselves what do we celebrate? A creation of a dictatorship which led to destruction of many millions and not only during Stalin period but right away from those days in October. The Red Terror, the Civil War were natural consequences of the Bolshevik user-patient of power crushing of the popular uprisings in Tumbov and Kronstadt creation of a concentration camp in Solovky, hard labor on the North Sea Canal and there are hardly good causes for jubilation. In the general secretary's speech once again contrary to historic truth common sense it is repeated a praise to our achievements indeed we achieved a lot. We have created an empire inspiring disgust and fear of all nations an empire which can only produce weapons instead of consumer goods we can neither feed nor close ourselves and this is not a small group of conspirators it is a party an organization with branches in every industrial city in the country and with the following of many thousands above all what they write in this leaflet is not just their opinion but an opinion of millions even in the tiny Siberian village of Komsomolsky in the remote Timansky region the local youth came forward with a poster which declares we struggle for human rights and democracy we are not slaves of the communist party in Estonia even the local communist authorities decided not to have the usual October revolution parade this year while in Armenia a parallel rally called by Nagorno-Karabakh committee at the same day gathered several times bigger crowd than the official meeting marking the Bolshevik revolution revival of national feelings among different nations of the Soviet Union is truly remarkable I remember at one point at one point sharing a prison cell with a young Lithuanian who got three years for raising Lithuanian national flag on the day of national independence this used to be a routine event each year in every Baltic Republic groups of young people would raise their national flags got caught and sentenced to three years each just a month ago Lithuanian national flag was officially raised in the central square of the capital city Vilnius while a crowd of several hundred thousands solemnly observed a minute of silence in memory of victims of communism I am sure most of you are familiar with the similar events in Estonia moreover almost in each of the Soviet republics a national democratic party is created now the representatives from Armenia, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia Moldova and from the Crimeanian tortoise have met in Riga at the end of September and made a joint statement among other things it says considering our top priority to be a change of the totalitarian political system in the Soviet Union we will struggle to that end by all possible means an important part among which can be played by the struggle for a democratic for a truly democratic electoral system we will struggle for introduction in the Soviet Union of genuine freedom of speech instead of a decreed glossiness we will resist any attempt to separate our movements and to crush us one by one only as a united front of all oppressed nations can we achieve our goals we appeal to all other nations national democratic movements of all other nations in the Soviet Union to join us and to become united under a slogan which has always united the oppressed nations of the world for your freedom and ours those are not empty words millions are behind them well my friends the way things are going I might entertain you in Moscow by the year of 2000 when you will celebrate 47th I believe anniversary of the intercollegiate studies institute unfortunately these developments became very much distorted in the west somehow they were ascribed to the goodwill of the current Soviet leadership particularly that of comrade Gorbachev who became credited with the intentions of introducing a true democracy in the Soviet Union this assessment is as ridiculous as to suggest that Jimmy Carter's intentions was to see Ronald Reagan taking his place in the White House all Gorbachev wanted was to improve Soviet economy by giving the people slightly more initiative and a broader participation in the task of building socialism a steady decline of Soviet economy has finally brought the country to bankruptcy making it impossible for the Soviet Union to maintain its superpower status to maintain its empire and to continue military competition with the west he simply had no choice but he also hoped that when the people have slightly more freedom they to paraphrase Mark Twain's famous saying would have enough common sense not to use it he hoped that fear generated by 70 years of repressions will prevent the people from demanding real democracy and he was wrong in short, we do not owe any gratitude to comrade Gorbachev for he did not introduce his glossiness in Perestroika as a favor to us the west should not hasten to rescue its bankrupt enemy should not eliminate the need for painful internal reforms by providing economic assistance to the Soviet Union and its client states or by reducing the pressure on the military competition let us remember, such assistance will be a death toll for millions of Armenians and Lithuanians Georgians and Estonians for all democratic forces in the Soviet Union unfortunately this seems to be the limit of the moral recovery of the west current western infatuation with Gorbachev is quite ridiculous I have read statements in the western press which really made me either to laugh or to be scared one newspaper in Britain recently described the regime under Gorbachev as Gorbachev's imperfect democracy and I thought well it's probably as accurate as to say that George Schulz is the chief secretary of state simply put simply put the west describes to Gorbachev every positive aspect in the new development while all negative aspects are squarely blamed on some mysterious conservatives in the Kremlin for example he gets credit for releasing some 300 political prisoners while the fact that many hundreds still remain imprisoned never affects his reputation because this is interpreted as a limit of his power but if this were the case and he was too weak to release even a handful of prisoners he must be irrelevant as just a figurehead why then we are so eager to negotiate with him shouldn't we better find those mysterious conservatives and talk to them directly on the other hand if he is strongly in control why do we have to help him it seems to be the universal craving right now why do we have to pay for glossiness in Perestroika if he seems to believe in it current rate of Soviet boring has reached a staggering figure of several hundred million dollars a month and as if this was not enough European banks have just made another Christmas gift of 14 billion to the Kremlin furthermore there are persistent talks of creating a new Marshall Plan for Moscow Marshall Plan for what for building socialist pluralism promised by Gorbachev for helping him to maintain Cuba and Nicaragua Vietnam and Angola unfortunately after living nearly 12 years in the west I am only too aware that it is futile to try to find any logic in the western policy toward the Soviet Union simply current crisis the Soviet system has once again revived old hopes fears and illusions which long ago became in the west a substitute for a sober analysis on the one hand we are overwhelmed by those eager to and I quote handle the Soviet crisis and to encourage reforms by providing economic aid to Moscow on the other hand we are urged to use the crisis as unique opportunity for relations to stop the arms race and to live happily ever after needless to say neither school of thinkers can offer a single series argument or a fact a convincing analysis or plausible concept of the Soviet system to justify the recipe nor do they try to because ill hidden behind the optimistic facades there is always a plane fear an image of a mortally wounded beast with its back to wall irrational and murderous out of desperation is so powerful that it tends to paralyze our minds and to obliterate our memory we tend to forget that its wounds are self inflicted its desperation continues for at least 40 years and above all that is always drew its horns in previously when I was pushed to the wall ridiculous as it may seem this figment of our imagination still dominates our thoughts discussions and decisions yes my friends let us not deceive ourselves those billions of dollars paid ostensibly for glossiness and perestroika those are still ransom money I am afraid it is a bit early to celebrate our renewal or our recovery just at the moment when millions of Russians and Ukrainians Armenians and Lysvenians are prepared to fight for democracy overcoming their 70 year old fears the west is paying to our common enemies it is not really difficult to understand even so for someone completely unfamiliar with the Soviet system that Lysvenian national flag was finally raised in Vilnius not because of a nice new leadership in Kremlin because of thousands of those young men who were ready to go to jail for that flag in the same way glossiness became possible because thousands of people all these years were prepared to risk their lives for one word of truth freedom cannot be granted and never was it can only be acquired so as sacrifice and struggle it can be earned but it cannot be bought and if we want our recovery as human beings to become complete we must help the people who struggle for freedom and not the oppressors who promised us peace