HOW CAN YOU GIVE A LIBERTY PRIZE TO A GUY WHO OPPOSED LIBERATING EASTERN EUROPE?:

American Scholar Awarded 2011 Liberty Prize (Russia Beyond the Headlines, 10/07/11)

Stephen Cohen, Professor of Russian Studies and History at New York University, has been awarded the Liberty Prize 2011 for his contribution to developing cultural ties between the US and Russia.

Nevermind that given his druthers there would be no Russia?, RONALD REAGAN: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (Dinesh D'Souza)

In 1982, the learned Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The Soviet Union is not now, nor will it be during the next decade, in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability." This view was seconded that same year by historian and eminence grise Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who observed that "those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse [are] wishful thinkers" who are only "kidding themselves."

John Kenneth Galbraith, the distinguished Harvard economist, wrote in 1984: "That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene.... One sees it in the appearance of well-being of the people on the streets.... and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops.... Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower."

Equally imaginative was the assessment of Paul Samuelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Nobel laureate in economics, writing in the 1985 edition of his widely used textbook: "What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth.... The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth."

James Reston, the renowned columnist of the New York Times, in June 1985 revealed his capacity for sophisticated evenhandedness when he dismissed the possibility of the collapse of communism on the grounds that Soviet problems were no different from those of the United States: "It's clear that the ideologies of Communism, socialism and capitalism are all in trouble."

But the genius award undoubtedly goes to Lester Thurow, economist and well-known author, who, as late as 1989, wrote, "Can economic command significantly ... accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. Today it is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."

Wise men tend to be impatient with dummies, and thus we can understand the tone of indignation with which Strobe Talbott, a senior correspondent at Time and later an official in the Clinton State Department, faulted officials in the Reagan administration for espousing "the early fifties goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," an objective he considered misguided and unrealistic. "Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end," Talbott scoffed, adding that if the Soviet economy was in a crisis of any kind, "it is a permanent, institutionalized crisis with which the U.S.S.R. has learned to live."

Equally scornful was Sovietologist Stephen Cohen of Princeton University, who wrote in 1983: "All evidence indicates that the Reagan administration has abandoned both containment and détente for a very different objective: destroying the Soviet Union as a world power and possibly even its Communist system."

Finally, a wise man gets something right. But then he spoils it by condemning Reagan for pursuing a wrongheaded and suicidal objective, one that revealed that the president was suffering from "a potentially fatal form of Sovietophobia ... a pathological rather than a healthy response to the Soviet Union."

Posted by oj at October 8, 2011 7:09 AM
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