Sometimes Secrecy Is Necessary

Before the 1917 revolution in Russia and for a while after it, no one paid attention to the meaning of the words involved, though the meanings of words are decisive — in thinking and its conclusions — incarnated in the words of the language of a given nation.

Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, praised Obama's stand on gay rights during her visit to the U.S. (AP Photo)

In Russian, someone employed to work at an enterprise is called a “worker,” a “rabochiy.” But the Russian word “rab” means “slave,” and hence “rabskiy” means “servile,” “thoughtless,” “purely imitative.”

As a Russian poet of genius said when he was exiled for his freethinking poems:

Farewell ye, the unwashed Russia,
A country of slaves and of the owners of slaves.
Farewell ye, the blue uniforms
And those who obey them.

Perhaps, behind the Caucasian mountains
I can hide from your watch,
From your all-seeing eyes,
And from your all-hearing ears.

I was born in 1928 in Russia, which had become “Soviet” in 1917. My father was a Russian writer, and my mother was Jewish, who brought herself up spiritually on great Russian literature. Professionally, she was a medical doctor, a neurologist.

My ideal was a free West, such as still exists in Britain, for example, and I learned to speak English. In Russia, I believed I had been living in a country-size prison, and I was later flattered to be taken for a native English speaker.

It was quite an accomplishment, considering the fact that I had never been abroad, since Stalin’s Russia was a closed country, isolated from the rest of the world, and only Stalin’s death in 1953 promised a breath of fresh air.

Scientists in the free countries in every field of endeavor, and especially in the field of military research, are performing a noble task of inventing new technologies, new ways to defend their endangered freedom.

Their victory depends upon their unique talent and ingenuity to be able to anticipate any form of possible attacks on our free countries. Naturally, all of us living in freedom depend on their unique talent and should nurture and appreciate it by ensuring that they have everything they need for their work and are not tempted by better conditions for their research offered them by those who want to destroy us.

Those who invented firearms could hardly imagine today’s airplanes dropping bombs!

Then there came the atom bomb. And now we live in the age of the Internet and cyberweapons. A number of nations have — or are seeking — to acquire such weapons, and there are concerns that terrorist groups of individuals may acquire the technologies and expertise to use these destructive weapons.

Luckily, mankind has not yet witnessed a cyber war, which does not mean it may never happen.

Dictatorships may not be creative, but they make up for it by aggressively acquiring technologies by whatever means it takes — like spies stealing technological secrets from free countries, and the United State in particular.

The American mass media claims there is too much secrecy around American military research, and they are looking for leaks to report, not realizing that by doing so they inflict potentially heavy damage to the country’s defense.

Stealing talent from free countries is not something new. Stalin, for example, enticed famous nuclear scientists from the West to work for him when he needed to expand his nuclear research.

Stalin created a submicroscopic secret world in which they could work. Every wish of theirs was immediately granted — a fairytale island in Stalin’s otherwise destitute, savage country to satisfy their every whim. They worked in absolute secrecy, and under no circumstances were they allowed to leave the country — even to attend international scientific conferences.

President Obama has already turned to the likes of then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev — and ostensibly Vladimir Putin — for help in his re-election campaign. More recently his administration granted a visa to Raul Castro’s daughter, who reciprocated by praising the president's stand on gay rights.

The future of the world is still obscure. In 1949, there appeared a country which the communist criminal Mao named the “People’s Republic of China” (PRC). It not only threatens the free world, but has at its disposal 1.3 billion warriors ready to follow their owners’ orders.

Beware not of the horrors of the past, but of the unknown horrors of the future.

Lev Navrozov is a journalist, author, and columnist who is a winner of the Albert Einstein Prize for outstanding intellectual achievements. He can be reached at levnavrozov@gmail.com. Read more reports from Lev — Click Here Now.