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naivete that I don ' t think should be a model fo r intell ec tuals. Would
you comment on that?
Hans Magnus Enzensberger:
T o the first qu es tion, o f course, the
answe r is yes. W e have hea rd quite a lo t abo ut the freeze hypothesis, but
let us no t fo rge t that the regimes themselves were rath er good in engen–
dering waves and waves o f co ll ected hatred. Th e anti-Zi o nist campaigns
in Poland , fo r exampl e, in 1968 and 1969, drove o ut almost all the re–
maining J ewish populati o n whi ch had survived th e Ho locaust. As for the
anti-Semiti c ove rto nes o f latter-day Stalinism - I remind you of the
Doc to r's Plo t sho rtl y be fo re Stalin 's dea th . H ate campaigns of this sort
were started w henever it suited the politi cal regime. Wh en it didn't suit
them , hate campaigns were fo rbidden . It was part o f th e politi cs of
Communism to solve confli cts by fo rbiddin g th em. The moment the lid
was o ff, all th ese confli cts came to the surface.
N asty as all these co nfli cts are, espec iall y fo r th e people concerned,
there is no o ther way to dea l w ith th em except to put th em on the
table. Th e politi cal beast is like that. W e have to face a peri od where
these things will have to be dea lt with , and in the case of Yugoslavia, this
is happening befo re o ur eyes in the most bloody way. Let us hope that in
o ther cases, they may be dealt with step by step , thro ugh a process of
compromise and nego ti ati o n . Th ere is a w ho le menu of possibilities of
how to do so w ith out going as far as civil war. O ne sho uld perhaps en–
courage the systemati c study o f min o rity problems w hi ch have been
so lved in o th er ways. The Swedes in Finland , th e Dani sh minority in
Germany, the Ge rman mino rity in D enmark , and the case of the South–
ern Ty ro ls in Italy provide interesting models. Countri es which now
have problems w ith min o riti es o ught to take no ti ce.
Richard Pipes:
Yo u are appl yin g a very severe test to Sakharov. You
have to co nsider th at we are talkin g abo ut an o utstandingly crea tive
theo reti cal physicist in hi s twenti es and ea rly thirti es. If you are familiar
w ith such indi viduals in this country , yo u know that they li ve in a world
o f th eir own , to tally detac hed from anything mundane, including poli–
ti cs . It isn ' t that Sakh aro v suppo rted Stalinism , whi ch would leave a
blac k mark on his record ; he was just obli vious to it. T hen , whi ch is to
his ho no r, once he began to discove r w hat th e system really was like, he
took the courageous lin e that cost him a grea t dea l and inspired others.
Tatyana Tolstaya:
I wa nted to comment o n th e questi on asked
abo ut wh ether Sakh arov was no t as grea t as he wo uld have been if he
had at o ne time been completely idealisti c as a Communist and then
