Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century : Gorbachev and Ikeda on Buddhism and Communism

Ikeda: You and I are specialists in different fields-you in politics, I in Buddhism. In this dialogue, since our goal is to investigate the best ways for human beings to think and act, we must necessarily range far and wide over a spectrum of topics far exceeding our individual specialties. I hope the differences in our backgrounds and primary areas of experience and knowledge will intensify the interest of what we have to say. Most important of all, we must put what we have seen, done, and thought to good use for the sake of the youth of this new century. Your appearance in the political arena in the 1980s was truly fateful for world history. Perestroika, of which you were the father, led to the end of the Cold War, the democratization of East Europe, and the downfall of the totalitarian communist regime in Russia. These events were sudden and totally unexpected. They changed the face of civilization and the fates of nations, ethnic groups, and individual human beings. They enriched humanity by the unique transformation of a communist totalitarian system into a democratic society. Thinking about Perestroika today, when the historical scale of the transformations you initiated is making itself clearly felt, I often wonder how it all became possible. What personal qualities enabled you to undertake global democratic reforms? What would have happened to Russia-and to the world community-if, in 1985, you had not become general secretary of the Central Committee of the USSR? In a speech you delivered at Soka University in April 1993, you partly answered these questions by saying, "The fate of each of us is inscrutable. We create our own lives. Nonetheless, each of us does have a destiny." When did you recognize your own fate and your historical mission? What do life, politics, fate, and history mean to you? Did you feel the influence of fate on your activities? What helped you overcome the apparently insuperable? Gorbachev: My destiny was formed by my experience, by the things I lived through. It arose from a sense of responsibility. Indeed, for me, destiny and mission are synonymous with a sense of responsibility. All my actions were permeated by the belief that ethical democracy was possible in the former Soviet Union. But democracy is incompatible with violence against individuals. Democracy devoid of morality is unacceptable. True democracy is impossible under conditions in which tanks fire on defenseless people and a whole nation is gripped by fear. My generation-called the Sixty-somethings-strove almost instinctively for freedom and did everything possible to accelerate liberation from the Stalinist heritage. For me the Stalinist purges were no mere hearsay. My own grandfather was thrown into prison in 1937, and everyone in our village avoided us. Even neighbors ostracized us. I cast no blame on them. In those days, no one knew whose turn would come next. But the memories remain deep in my heart. Many of us children of the Stalinist epoch were ignorant of the subtleties of liberalism. Still, we were highly zealous worshippers of freedom in everything, large and small. We strove for what we lacked: freedom of speech, discussion, and information. We dreamed of being able to determine our own fates. Sooner or later, the Soviet people had to take account of their past, tell the truth about their sufferings, and pull the country together. This was their awakening to liberty. I am glad my like-thinkers and I-and not somebody else-were given the chance to break our country's standstill and begin democratic reforms. ## Ikeda: The reforms were dramatic and might have been cataclysmic. But, as if by miracle, one of the greatest events of the 20th century took place with comparative tranquility and without the horrors that accompanied the collapse of Yugoslavia. Everyone agrees that the presence of Mikhail S. Gorbachev played a major part in minimizing the difficulties. Historians of the future will endorse Václav Havel's comment that Gorbachev assumed his post a typical bureaucrat and left it a true democrat. One of your close associates, Alexander S. Tsipko, evaluates your political activities in his Proshchanie s Kommunizmom [Breaking with Communism]: No matter how paradoxical it seems at first glance, the fate of democracy in Russia depends much more on Gorbachev than on Yeltsin. I am not speaking of the current moment, but of democracy as a moral value, as a guideline for political development . . . As a personality and a human being, Gorbachev is connected with his reforms and with the future of democratic reforms in Russia. He stands at the source of our post-communist history. (Alexander S. Tsipko, Komyunizumu tono Ketsubetsu [Proshchanie s Kommunizmom], trans. Tsuneko Mochizuki [Tokyo: Simul Press, 1993], p.311) Gorbachev: The soul of Bolshevism was leftist extremism. Though an a-political artist, the great Russian opera singer Feodor Chaliapin accurately describes it in Maska i dusha [Mask and Soul], his memoirs: In that combination of stupidity and cruelty-Sodom and Nebuchadnezzar-that is the Soviet regime, I see something fundamentally Russian. This is our native monstrosity in all its aspects, forms, and degrees . . . The trouble was that our Russian builders simply could not lower themselves to think about ordinary human beings in terms of a sensible, human-scale architectural plan. Instead, they absolutely had to raise a tower to the skies-a Tower of Babel. They could not be satisfied with the ordinary, healthy, bold stride with which a man walks to work and home again. They had to dash into the future with seven-league steps. 'Let's break with the past!' And all at once it becomes necessary to sweep away the whole world, leaving not a trace behind. And most important-all our Russian smart guys surprisingly know all about everything. They know how to turn a hunchback cobbler into a glorious, god-like Apollo. They know how to train a rabbit to light matches. They know what the rabbit needs to be happy. And they know what it will take to make the rabbit's offspring happy in two hundred years. (F. I. Shaliapin, Maska i dusha: moi sorok let na teatrakh [Moscow: V/O "Soiuzteatr" STD SSSR, 1991], p.222) Actually, although they did not and could not know these things, their conviction that they did caused immense suffering. Ikeda: And, once again, as has often happened in Russia, the peasantry suffered most cruelly. With your own peasant background, you fully understand their misery in, for instance, the agricultural collectivization of 1932. To the horror of the whole world, Bolshevik politicians created artificial famines that cost the lives of millions of peasants in the Ukraine, one of the great European grain-producing zones. Gorbachev: Very true. The destruction of the peasants and their morality can be called one of the greatest evils perpetrated by the Bolsheviks. ## Ikeda: In contrast to this Bolshevik mindset, by its nature Buddhism is not a teaching that an exalted being condescends to teach a lower being. It is based on ideas of equality, compassion, and symbiosis, according to which human beings are honest with each other and strive together for perfection. My own teacher Josei Toda, who had unique social talents and was second president of Soka Gakkai, revealed this to me. In Buddhist philosophy, the highest being is a Buddha, who has attained inexhaustible wisdom, compassion, perspicacity, and the will to overcome difficulties. This being is, however, no deification capable of CHANCE, WILL, OR FATE? CHANCE, WILL, OR FATE? "Mikhail Gorbachev and Daisaku Ikeda are contemporaries raised in different cultures: Gorbachev is a statesman whose origins are the Marx-inspired world of communism while Ikeda is Buddhist inspired by the thirteenth century Japanese sage, Nichiren. Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century emerged from a series of conversations between these two men. Together they explore their experiences of life amidst the turmoil of the twentieth century and together they search for a common ethical basis for future development. They conclude that values are born of culture and that peace, progress and social justice can only be achieved through sincere communication and cultural exchange. As the new century begins, they have sought to turn the spotlight on the challenges which face humanity. The book is a call for dialogue in pursuit of values that bridge culture and time."--Bloomsbury Publishing India's role in global politics draws increasing attention from the international community. Unprecedented economic growth, rising fundamentalism in national politics and the knife-edge of nuclear-fuelled tension with an unstable Islamic government in Pakistan are all bound up in Indian claims to geopolitical ascendance. At the same time, Central Asia has re-emerged as a site of international contestation or a 'new Great Game', with Russia, China and the US vying over security and energy interests in a politically unstable region. In this fresh and penetrating analysis of India's foreign policy, particularly on Central Asia, Emilian Kavalski illuminates India's international ambitions and capabilities, and its complex dynamics with great powers USA, China and Russia. India and Central Asia provides a timely and much-needed assessment of the foreign policy of a rising power. "Mikhail Gorbachev and Daisaku Ikeda are contemporaries raised in different cultures: Gorbachev is a statesman whose origins are the Marx-inspired world of Communism, while Ikeda is a Buddhist inspired by the thirteenth century Japanese sage, Nichiren. Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century emerged from a series of conversations between these two men. Together they explore their experiences of life amidst the turmoil of the twentieth century and together they search for a common ethical basis for future development. They conclude that values are born of culture and that peace, progress and social justice can only be achieved through sincere communication and cultural exchange. As the new century begins, they have sought to turn the spotlight on the challenges which face humanity. The book is a call for dialogue in pursuit of values that bridge culture and time."--Jacket Cover Contents Preface 1. Chance, Will, or Fate? 2. Perestroika and Freedom 3. Humanity, Faith and Religion 4. Roots 5. A New Civilisation Postscript: From a New Philosophy to a New Politics Postscript: The Crisis of Human Dignity Glossary Index