Un genio, quando esce dal seminato, ha la nostra stessa possibilità di dire idiozie (l’intelligenza è tremendamente specifica). L’unica differenza è che lui le dirà, noi forse no.
L’essere inetti in tutti i campi ci rende umili (e silenziosi). L’essere geni anche solo in una materia ci rende sgradevolmente vociferanti.
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Il libro che ha scritto Neven Sesardic è sorprendente perché di solito quando pensiamo al genio che spara “stronzate” pensiamo a figure folkloristiche come Noam Chomsky o Dario Fo. Qui invece si punta al bersaglio grosso, alla “vacca sacra” del nostro immaginario.
Il libro si intitola When Reason Goes on Holiday: Philosophers in Politics e si focalizza sull’irrazionalità dei grandi filosofi quando la “buttano” in politica.
Albert Einstein non è a rigore un filosofo ma la sua teoria della relatività è un fenomenale contributo sia alla scienza che alla filosofia. Anche per questo molti lo trattano da filosofo. Per esempio, la prestigiosa Library of Living Philosophers lo etichetta scienziato-filosofo.
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Einstein in America supportò attivamente la corsa alla presidenza Henry Wallace, ben conoscendo la sua visione pro-sovietica.
Bisogna dire che spesso Einstein fu critico con l’ URSS ma molto più spesso tentò di giustificare o evitò di condannare: aveva un debole per Lenin.
Al quinto anniversario della sua morte, spese per i dittatore queste ammirate parole…
… “In Lenin I admire a man who has thrown all his energy into making social justice real, at the sacrifice of his own person. I do not consider his method practicable. But one thing is sure: Men like him are the guardians and reformers of the conscience of mankind” (quoted in Grundmann 2005, 253)…
Cosa obiettava al regime? Di essere poco pratico. La parola usata fu “zweckmässig”, ovvero “poco adatto allo scopo”.
Nessuna condanna morale o dei metodi usati di per sé.
Di solito quando uno sa che un politico ha sterminato migliaia di innocenti non si limita a obiettare la scarsa praticità del metodo.
D’altronde, come veniva definito Lenin?…
… guardian and reformer of the conscience of mankind…
Forse non è chiaro che Einstein all’epoca aveva facile accesso a fonti attendibili che documentavano le atrocità di massa compiute dal dittatore.
Ecco una prima fonte…
… In 1924 a book titled The Red Terror in Russia, 1918–1923 appeared in Berlin (in German). The author, Sergei Melgunov, was sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks in 1919 and later, after his sentence was commuted to imprisonment, was forced into exile. The book contains a wealth of information about proclamations and actions of the Soviet government under Lenin…
Ecco una testimonianza ufficiale molto diffusa all’epoca di Martin Latsis, funzionario della Cheka…
… We are eradicating bourgeoisy as a class. Do not seek evidence during the investigation that the accused acted or spoke against [the] soviet government. The first question that you must ask would be—what class do you belong to, what is your background, upbringing, education or trade. These questions must seal the fate of the accused (Melgunov 1924, 45; emphasis added)…
Il capitolo 6 titolava “Bloody Statistics” e documentava gli orrori del regime nel dettaglio anno per anno.
Come concludere su questo punto? Che il giudizio di Einstein era un’idiozia difficilmente giustificabile…
… I am not suggesting that Einstein had to take Melgunov’s accusations at face value. My point is, rather, that in light of such and many other similar troubling reports about the Bolsheviks, a reasonable person should have been at the very least reluctant to call Lenin a “guardian…
Einstein, d’altronde, conosceva bene il peso delle sue parole sul pubblico. Non dico che fosse il papa ma quasi.
C’è poi un’altra fonte, il libro pubblicato a New York “Letters from Russian Prisons”…
… letters from many of those who had spent years under horrible conditions in labor camps just because they had expressed disagreement with the politics of the Soviet government (Berkman 1925)….
Il deludente e minimizzante commento di Einstein…
… If you study these accounts as a reader in a peaceful, well-regulated system of government, don’t imagine that those around you are different and better than those who conduct a regime of terror in Russia. Shudder to view this tragedy of human history where one murders out of fear that one will be murdered. It is the best, the most altruistic who are tortured and killed because their political influence is feared—but not just in Russia. All serious men owe a debt of gratitude to the editor of these documents. He will help to reverse this dreadful fate. After the publication of these documents the rulers of Russia will have to change their methods if they wish to continue their effort to gain moral credibility with civilized nations. They will lose all sympathy if they cannot show through a great and courageous act of liberation that they do not need to rely on bloody terror to lend support to their political ideals (in Rowe & Schulmann 2013, 412–13; emphasis added)…
Naturalmente Einstein condannava i campi ma non era disposto a vedere le ragioni di chi ad essi si ribellava. Il succo della sua reazione: “è sempre andata così”…
… “Don’t imagine that those around you are different and better than those who conduct a regime of terror in Russia!”…
Einstein optò per normalizzare il terrore e minimizzare l’indignazione delle vittime… Più tardi, però, non avrebbe normalizzato il terrore Nazi.
La sua litania era: “non succede solo in Russia…”.
Einsten sembrava preoccupato di una cosa: “i russi perderanno le simpatie degli osservatori se continuano con il loro terrore”. Tuttavia, a giudicare da queste parole non rischiavano di perdere le sue.
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Ma Einstein ebbe un debole anche per Stalin e per i suoi processi sommari, lo si evince, per esempio, dalla corrispondenza con Max Born…
… By the way, there are increasing signs that the Russian trials are not faked, but that there is a plot among those who look upon Stalin as a stupid reactionary who has betrayed the ideas of the revolution. Though we find it difficult to imagine this kind of internal thing, those who know Russia best are all more or less of the same opinion. I was firmly convinced to begin with that it was a case of a dictator’s despotic acts, based on lies and deception, but this was a delusion (quoted in Born 1971, 126)…
Einstein fu dapprima colpito dai processi dichiarandosi disposto a condannarli ma poi fece marcia indietro. Perché? Quale evidenza lo fece recedere? D’altronde, anche in questo caso, aveva facile accesso a molte fonti credibili.
L’opinione di Tony Judt: a quell’epoca bisognava essere proprio ottusi per non capire…
… “the steady stream of absurd admissions of guilt . . . convinced only the most nakedly servile of Communist intellectuals” (Judt 1992, 102)…
Nel 1931 Einstein la combinò ancora più grossa usando la sua influenza per supportare in occidente l’idea di giustizia staliniana.
Dapprima si unì ad un gruppo di intellettuali in una campagna contro alcune persecuzioni staliniane, poi cambiò clamorosamente idea. Questa la sua giustificazione…
… I gave my signature at the time after some hesitation because I trusted in the competency and honesty of the persons who had approached me about this signature, and also because I considered it psychologically impossible that people bearing the full responsibility for implementing technical tasks of utmost importance could purposefully harm the cause they are supposed to be serving. Today I regret most profoundly that I gave this signature, because I have since lost confidence in the correctness of my views at that time. I was not sufficiently aware then that under the special conditions of the Soviet Union things were possible that are totally unthinkable to me under conditions familiar to me (Grundmann 2005, 254)…
Una spiegazione senza senso. Ce n’é abbastanza per sospettare che siano intervenute cause esterne e misteriose. Nessuna evidenza concreta viene presentata per il dietrofront.
Il caso specifico in oggetto era quello di 48 scienziati massacrati…
… In the past September of 1930, there was an ominous rumbling across the land: forty-eight people—“wreckers in the food supply chain”—were sentenced to be shot. “Responses from workers” appeared in the newspapers: “Wreckers must be wiped from the face of the earth!” The front page of Izvestia proclaimed: “Crush the serpent beneath your heel!” and the proletariat demanded that the OGPU [the early name for the security and political police of the Soviet Union] be awarded the Order of Lenin (Solzhenitsyn 2011, 68)…
Uno scampato - Vladimir Tchernavin – scrisse più tardi un libro denso di particolari. Disse anche che il dietrofront di Einstein facilitò la macabra operazione.
Ma per quanto tempo Einstein mantenne questo atteggiamento ambiguo?
Risposta: per almeno sei anni.
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Isaac Don Levine era amico stretto e interlocutore privilegiato di Einstein. Dopo l’assassinio nel 1934 di Sergei Kirov nelle purghe chiese allo scienziato di unirsi ad un protesta contro Stalin. Motivazioni del diniego…
… Einstein explained he could not join the protest because, in his opinion, its only probable effect would be in countries that were not friendly to Russia. Then he added: “Under the circumstances I regret your action and suggest you abandon it altogether.”…
Non solo Einstein si tirò fuori ma cercò di dissuadere l’amico dall’agire in tal senso.
Il fatto è che Einstein credeva in Stalin…
… “Consider further that the Russians have proved that their only aim is really the improvement of the lot of the Russian people, and that they can in this regard already show important achievements” (quoted in Levine 1973, 172)…
La dolorosa risposta di Levine prima di rompere la decennale amicizia…
… “I was grieved to read your statement that the only aim of the Soviet rulers is the improvement of the people’s condition. How can one reconcile that belief with the fact that in 1933 from three to five million peasants were deliberately starved to death by the Stalin regime?” (ibid., 173)…
Nel 1948, di questi stessi fatti, Einstein dibatté pubblicamente con Sidney Hook.
Tornò di nuovo sui “grandi meriti” dei sovietici…
… I am not blind to the serious weaknesses of the Russian system of government and I would not like to live under such government. But it has, on the other side, great merits and it is difficult to decide whether it would have been possible for the Russians to survive by following softer methods (quoted in Hook 1987, 471)…
Per un esperto come Hook fu facile “inchiodarlo” alle sue idiozie…
… Precisely what methods have you in mind? I am puzzled on what evidence anyone can assert that cultural purges and terror in astronomy, biology, art, music, literature, the social sciences, helped the Russians to survive, or how the millions of victims in concentration camps of the Soviet Union, not to speak of the wholesale executions, contributed in any way to the Russian victory over Hitler…
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Einstein non era un comunista, come mai prese parte attivamente a molte iniziative organizzate dagli “infiltrati”, per esempio la Peace Conference tenutasi nel 1949 a New York?
La Waldorf Peace Conference recava chiaramente il segno di un coinvolgimento del partito Comunista Sovietico.
Era uno sforzo della propaganda per presentare l’ URSS come la più grande forza di pace nel mondo. I prestigiosi partecipanti erano considerati degli “utili idioti”. ma qui Einstein era in buona compagnia: Rudolph Carnap, Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Charlie Chaplin, Linus Pauling, Leonard Bernstein…
Il Ministero USA per la sicurezza disse a chiare lettere e ufficialmente che la conferenza era manipolata…
… “none of the cultural leaders of Eastern Europe would be free to express any view other than that dictated by the political authorities in Moscow.”…
Esemplare fu il discorso del compositore Dmitri Shostakovich: lo lesse un interprete con il musicista seduto al suo fianco che “appariva nervoso e in difficoltà”. Nel discorso si affrontavano alcune critiche indirizzate al Maestro dal Comitato Centrale. Eccone un passaggio…
… “The criticism brings me much good. It helps me bring my music forward.” About Stravinsky, whose work had been condemned in the Soviet Union, Shostakovich concurred with the Party’s opinion, saying “Stravinsky betrayed his native land and severed himself from his people by joining the camp of reactionary modern musicians.”…
Shostakovich aveva fatto di tutto per disertare l’incontro (certificati medici, raccomandazioni…). Un giorno gli fu detto che avrebbe ricevuto una telefonata importante. Il telefono squillò, gli venne passato Stalin in persona che “con molta cortesia” gli chiese di partecipare assicurandosi che la linea non fosse disturbata e avesse compreso bene l’invito appena ricevuto.
Einstein, quella telefonata, non la ricevette di sicuro.
Anche il commediografo Arthur Miller partecipò. Ecco come il biografo Morris Dickstein sottolinea la patente idiozia di quella scelta…
… It was one thing . . . to be a radical in the 1930s. [But] to remain a fellow traveller throughout the 1940s, culminating in the notorious Stalinist-inspired Waldorf peace conference in New York in 1949, long after the crimes, purges, and repressions of Stalin had been exposed to the world, demanded a special kind of obtuseness (Dickstein 2009)….
D’altronde, lo stesso Einstein realizzò la cosa più tardi, anche se si guardò bene dal riconoscerlo pubblicamente…
… In answer to your cable I must frankly confess that, in view of my experience with the first congress of this kind in Wroclaw last August, and from what I have observed concerning the recent congress in New York, I have the strong impression that this kind of procedure does not really serve the cause of international understanding. The reason is simply that it is more or less a Soviet enterprise and everything is managed accordingly (in Rowe & Schulmann 2013, 481–82; emphasis added)…
Forse al ripensamento contribuì un articolo di Life uscito nel frattempo…
… Life magazine published a long article headlined “Red Visitors Cause Rumpus” that ridiculed the naïveté of those who supported the conference…
Ma come fu possibile per Einstein farsi irretire così ingenuamente in questa ragnatela? Un’ipotesi…
… an obvious suggestion would be that they, and possibly many others, had been wooed by acquaintances with moderate-sounding views who insisted that their politics were primarily progressive, resolutely anti-fascist and peace-oriented, and who carefully avoided any directly Soviet-style, crude rhetoric that could upset the people they were trying to recruit…
Nelle confessioni di Louis Budenz – una spia infiltrata – si parla di “operazione controllo remoto”. In cosa consisteva?…
… The relationships with [Thomas] Mann and Einstein were established by what the Communists called “remote control,” while I was still part of the Red leadership. The chain of communication with Mann ran through associates of his daughter Erika; while with Einstein, means of reaching him were set up at Princeton. In both instances, these men were persuaded to their pro-Communist stands by playing upon their hatred of Nazism. This I know from what I heard said in Politburo meetings. No more striking illustration could be found of the way well-known men and women of unquestionable integrity are deceived and exploited by the Communists (Budenz 1950, 211)…
Un “utile idiota” controllato a distanza come un pupazzo, questa la spiegazione più misericordiosa di certe sparate di Einstein. Questo anche se alcune connessioni del Nostro restano piuttosto inquietanti…
… Frederick S. Litten describes the case of Hilaire Noulens, an official of the Communist International (Comintern), who was arrested in China… Einstein repeatedly intervened on Noulens’s behalf, and even sent telegrams to three U.S. senators… it is unlikely Einstein did not know Noulens… why did he intervene, given that the man was a Soviet agent working on behalf of Stalin?…
Altro evento che getta ombre su Einstein…
… An additional fact that might have justifiably raised suspicions about Einstein’s involvement is that the address he used in correspondence about the case was c/o Internationale Arbeiter Hilfe (Workers International Relief), an organization founded under the auspices of the Comintern by the notorious Communist propagandist Willi Münzenberg…
La conclusione di Litten sul caso: Einstein fu qualcosa di più che un “utile idiota”…
… Litten concludes: “I believe that, temporibus illis, Einstein had laid himself open to the possibility of being used as a relay by the Comintern and Soviet intelligence, although I don’t know to what extent he had been aware of it” (ibid.)…
Ognuno giudichi da sé.
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Si minimizzava quanto avveniva in URSS per “massimizzare” quanto avveniva negli USA, un Paese praticamente prossimo alla nazificazione.
Einstein sul fascismo a stelle e strisce…
… “We have come a long way toward the establishment of a Fascist regime. The similarity of general conditions here [in the United States] to those in the Germany of 1932 is quite obvious” (letter to W. Stern, January 14, 1954, quoted in Isaacson 2007, 533). “The separation [between Jews and Gentiles] is even more pronounced [in America] than it ever was anywhere in Western Europe, including Germany” (letter to Hans Mühsam, March 24, 1948, Einstein Archives 38-371; emphasis added)…
Si unisce al delizioso coretto la voce di Kurt Gödel…
… The political situation developed wonderfully here during the holidays, and you only hear of defense of the homeland, compulsory military service, increase of taxes, increase of prices, etc. I think, even in the blackest (or brownest) Hitler Germany, things were not that bad (letter to his mother, January 8, 1951, quoted in Dawson 1997, 191; emphasis added)…
Stiamo parlando del massimo logico di quei tempi e forse di tutti i tempi. Un Genio non la G maiuscola. Ma anche un vero e proprio “idiota”.
Uno dice: colpa della testa nelle nuvole. L’altro aggiunge: poco tempo da dedicare alle faccende politiche.
No! No!
La politica era interesse primario per Kurt (e anche per Albert)…
… “For the last two months I have been so much occupied with politics, that I had almost no time for anything else” (quoted in Wang 1990, 118)… “Gödel reads Lenin and Trotsky, is for planned society and socialism, and interested in the mechanism of influences in society, e.g., that of finance capital on politics” (ibid., 91)…
L’erezione del Muro di Berlino entusiasmò Kurt, anche se in lui permaneva una preoccupazione: tutte quelle fughe di civili. Come impedirle?…
… “The wall that was erected in Berlin, this is really a culmination. But the Russians are probably right that spies and saboteurs were coming there from the West” (Gödel 2002, 203)…
Per Kurt, Hitler e de Gaulle pari sono…
… “Why do you ask me whether I like de Gaulle? His foreign policy has a lot of similarity with Hitler”…
John Kennedy era visto come un filo-nazista…
… With regard to the new president [Kennedy], one sees quite clearly already where his politics is leading: war in Vietnam, war in Cuba, the belligerent Nazis or fascists (in the form of “anticommunist” organizations) beginning to bloom, more rearmament, less press freedom, no negotiations with Khrushchev, etc. (April 30, 1961, quoted in Wang 1996, 53; emphasis added)…
L’ anti-comunista, per quanto soft, era equiparato in scioltezza a “belligerent Nazis or fascists.”.
E parliamo del Kurt che nel 1935 s’iscrisse al fascistissimo Fronte Patriottico!
Dice: lo fece per lavorare. Non proprio, a quel tempo aveva già formulato il teorema dell’incompletezza e aveva richieste d assunzione da tutte le università del mondo.
Nel 1938 – dopo l’ Anschluss - la moglie di Kurt entrò nel partito Nazista. A proposito di Anschluss, sul punto Kurt osservò un rigoroso silenzio…
… Of Gödel’s letter to [American mathematician Oswald] Veblen only a burnt fragment has survived; it is dated 26 March [1938], just thirteen days after Hitler’s Anschluß [309]. It would be interesting to know what, if anything, Gödel had to say about that event, or what immediate effect it had on his life or work, but, incredibly, there is no mention of the Nazi takeover in any of Gödel’s correspondence (ibid., 127)…
Quando il fisico Hans Thirring chiese a Kurt in partenza per l’America di avvisare Einstein che i Nazi stavano costruendo l’atomica, lui si guardò bene dal farlo.
Dagli USA Kurt cercò sempre di rientrare in patria. Ma perché? la nazificazione della società procedeva ovunque spedita! Eppure Kurt scriveva a tutti (chiudendo con l’ “Heil Hitler!” di prammatica) sollecitando il suo rientro.
Forse la domanda giusta è: perché scappò? Perché rischiava di essere arruolato dopo un inattesissimo esame medico che lo aveva dichiarato “idoneo”.
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Come concludere, dopo aver assistito a questo mesto spettacolo di idiozia mista a codardia? Forse così…
… Now it is easy to understand that reasonable people could find some aspects of American politics in the late forties and early fifties worrying or deserving condemnation. Many would especially single out the methods of Senator Joseph McCarthy in his clumsy and counterproductive attempts to deal with the dangers of Communist infiltration. But to suggest that things in America were at that time worse than in the “blackest (or brownest) Hitler Germany” or that the separation of Jews and non-Jews was “even more pronounced” in America than in the Third Reich—this borders on insanity. No, this actually crosses the border. And yet these opinions come from two of the greatest minds of the twentieth century…
