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PARTISAN REVIEW
him open his eyes, to raise his level of consciousness,
to
make him under–
stand in what way Soviet reality is intelligible and necessary, desirable and
pleasant. However, dissenters are subjected to psychiatric treatment
more frequently than anybody else . Does not this mean that it is not
possible, to convince someone in rational terms, that his opposition is
unfounded? Does it not mean that the only way that Soviet reality can
be made acceptable to those who don ' t like it is by authoritarian methods
-through the use of drugs that affect hormones and neurons. The para–
dox is a revealing one: Soviet reality is only pleasant under the effects of
Thorazine. And
if
only tranquilizers can make it acceptable, then perhaps
there is a real cause for anxiety. Haven't the Soviet leaders renounced the
rationality of their revolution, worrying only about maintaining docility?
The punitive techniques employed in the Soviet Union reveal this renun–
ciation of all that is basic to a socialist project.
Int:
But there has been a certain amount of change in the Soviet Union.
There is less repression now. In Stalin's time, everyone was terrified; one
day you were the head of a factory, the next day you found yourself in a
prison camp . Now, a certain element can act with impunity. If you are
an academician, you no longer go to prison. Not only is Sakharov still free ,
but out of a total of 600 Soviet academicians, only seventy signed the
denunciation of him. This means that the others felt free to refuse to
sign. Twenty years ago this would have been unthinkable .
Foucault:
I agree that the reign of terror has abated somewhat. However,
terror is not the apogee of discipline, but rather its failure . Under Stalin,
the head of the NKVD himself could be executed as he left a cabinet
meeting. (In fact , no head of the NKVD ever died of natural causes.)
Change and upheaval were inherent in the system itself. Fear is circular:
those who unleash terror inevitably become its victims. But once the
ministers, police officials, academicians, and other party leaders become
entrenched and no longer fear for themselves, discipline in the ranks
below them will function effectively without even the slightest risk of
upheaval .
I would like to return to the issue of punishment in a more general
sense. The questions of what to punish and how to punish have been
debated for a long time. Now, however, we are beginning to ask ourselves
some strange new questions. "Is punishment necessary?" "What do we
mean by punishment?" "Why is there a connection-until now taken
for granted-between crime and punishment?" The idea that crime must
be punished is so familiar, so necessary to us, and yet, there is something
somewhere that makes us doubt. Consider the cowardly relief of judge, jury,
