WRITERS IN EXILE
37
social conditions that will allow for the idea of pluralism and political
activity. Perhaps ten or twenty years from now people will ridicule
the human rights activists for not having set forth a political goal
sooner, but the groundwork for the setting forth of political goals was
in fact laid by the human rights movement . Connected with this lack
of understanding by our own people is the fact that we are perceived
strangely in the West, where people live in an atmosphere of political
disputes, where they don't have to create the requisite conditions for
such disputes. This reminds me of the story of how one American
was enraptured with the lawn surrounding an English castle, so he
said to the gardener, "I'll give you a lot of money if you'll come to my
house in America and make me such a lawn, such soft grass around
my house ." And the gardener answered, "You don't have to spend so
much money, just cut your grass every month for three hundred
years, and you'll have such a lawn. " In the West you already have
this soft grass , this pluralistic atmosphere (we musn't confuse plural–
ism with democracy), in which you can argue political issues and en–
gage in political battles. In Russia this doesn't exist.
The West's lack of understanding us is expressed in a rather
comical way. A lot of political groups consider us theirs because we
criticized the government, just as they criticize their government
here. And the Right sometimes considers us theirs because we criti–
cize Communism. This morning a nice lady said she couldn't under–
stand why we don't organize a peace movement in the Soviet Union .
She thinks we live with the same problems. But our problems are en–
tirely different. H ere the women fight for liberalization and for the
right not to have to do housework and stay at home with the children.
But in Russia , women would gladly fight for the right to stay at
home with the children. Forgive me for these intimate details, but
when feminists in the United States burned their bras in public, the
women of the Soviet Union joked, "Why burn them? They should
send them to us!" These are all minor examples, but thousands of
such examples could be cited; And, sometimes, listening to West–
erners argue about their problems, I think of a certain Jewish joke,
where the teacher asks a grade school pupil the sum of five and
three. He answers, "I wish I had your problems."
I am far from attempting to belittle Western problems. There
are a lot of them here and they are very serious, and in many respects
the fate of civilization depends upon their solution . But many Rus–
sian problems are simply at another stage of discussion . From a cer-
