A Matter of Principle

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s “A Matter of Principle,” reproduced in my own English translation here, is a powerful statement from a Russian political prisoner of the moral obligation to resist tyranny.[1] It was published in August 2013 in The New Times, and read aloud in Moscow last week as part of the Andrei Sakharov Memorial Center’s “Readings in solidarity with Mikhail Khodarkovsky.” It deserves the widest possible audience.

“A Matter of Principle”

By Nadezhda Tolikonnikova

And it is also necessary to risk the heavens,

Perhaps recklessly.

Perhaps this time they will not crucify us

And then say: disintegration.

Be solitary, like the finger! …

As the whip to the bull

Is the cross to eternal gods.

Joseph Brodsky[2]

Today the art of sacrifice has been devalued. We are losing the ability to admire the art in others and to foster it in ourselves.  And for good reason. Everything meaningful in the history of humanity was born because someone was willing to sacrifice herself – for the sake of ideas, for the sake of a cause, for the sake of another. Great art, great political ideas, great religion, and ultimately great love emerge in that moment when someone is found who is not afraid to sacrifice himself.

The historical success of the Christian world view is instructive in its insistence that it is not enough to sacrifice lambs, doves, calves, or any property; you must sacrifice yourself. You would do well to contemplate the great anti-Oedipal, anti-Philistine pathos of the famous passage: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).  This passage speaks of the possibility of victory in the great ideological confrontation that is being carried out on a historic scale among competing world views and covenants. And the next time you refuse to publicly defend your principles (say, by participating in a demonstration, though of course the list of ways to defend your beliefs and rights is not limited to participating in one demonstration) by saying that “I might get fired from my job,”  “I have children to think of,” “We're off to the cottage,” imagine that you have made this reply to Jesus Christ. And just think whether you are so far separated ideologically from Vladimir Putin, who is willing to destroy Article 31 of the Russian Constitution[3], if only to clear the way for those who are rushing to the cottage, into the warm arms of the de-ideologized, depoliticized Oedipal triangle. “The world will fail should I drink tea? I say ‘let it fail,’ so I always drink tea” (so says the underground paradoxist Dostoevsky, and everyone else for whom domestic comfort is more important than meaning and truth, and who still does not understand the pleasure that comes from the comfort of thought).

Every time you stand by your principles you take a certain risk. In general, the only trustworthy indicators to demonstrate that you have principles, and not just conformist internalized imitations of them, will be the flicks to the nose and the cuffs to the head that fate will suddenly begin to deal you. Life experiences, as they tell us in the prison colonies, will “strengthen you.” But that’s normal, it’s even good, because it’s a sign that they are reading what you’ve written, that your statements were admissible.

In the early 1920s the young Socialist Revolutionary Katya Olitskaia understood this mechanism perfectly and complained that she was, perhaps, unworthy of imprisonment because not every politician has earned this honor. It would appear that she was employing logic born of the logic of the one who once said: “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you” (Luke 6:22). Negative reactions will always go hand in hand with genuine principles. If for principles you just pat people on the head and kiss them on the forehead – these are not principles, but a mask of conformity. If you post comments on Navalny’s “Putin-the-Bandit” blog, this is not adherence to principles, but a display of socially approved behavior (in our society). Go to a meeting of the [All Russian People’s Front] and say the same things there![4] Why not? The Apostle Paul also was not greeted with kindness when he preached, for he was regularly attacked with sticks and stones. And when Siddhartha Gautama left his parents’ palace to become the Buddha, did they not say of him that he simply didn’t know when he had a good thing? Why didn’t he stay where he was? He had everything, and changing his own life would not change anything else.

Life would be a little better if people really adhered to Kant’s categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal moral principle.”[5] Kant emphasizes that this is a categorical and not a hypothetical imperative. A hypothetical imperative is based on a certain condition: “if …, then…,” i.e., “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you don’t want to be lied to, then don’t lie. A hypothetical imperative is based on a particular interest, and because of that it is too pragmatic. If you don’t want to be lied to, then don’t lie. But what if I were a cheat, say, and a robber, so that telling a lie was so useful to me that I was prepared to accept the consequences arising from the fact that I had lied?

Political changes come about where there exists a critical mass of people of principle. Only such people will be able to formulate and defend an alternative dominant value system. This is precisely because the argument “why should I attend a demonstration when nothing will change” is self-deceptive. Each person who decides to become principled is priceless. And being principled by resisting injustice and falsehood in the little things will lead to being principled in the most important things. “Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.” This is Gandhi.   

My path and my choice are to sacrifice my life to make it clear that another world is possible. One in which creativity, a passion for understanding, moral and intellectual exploration are the only possible hegemons. I simply refuse to live according to the rules and values of the bureaucratic police machine that has seized our country. This brings me great pleasure. And freedom. The machine responds with anger and takes revenge on those who refuse to follow its perverted logic out of fear. Maybe others will follow the example of the sparrow from Chukovsky’s tales and, instead of trembling before the cockroach, simply eat it?

Power does not belong to those who control the post offices and paddy wagons, but to those who are free from fear.

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[1] Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is one of the two members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot sentenced to two years in a penal colony in March 2012 for their “Punk Prayer” of protest against Vladimir Putin. After her September 2013 hunger strike to protest prison conditions, Tolikonnikova was transferred from her Mordovian prison to a new prison colony in Siberia. She is isolated from friends, family, and her lawyer, and apparently has begun another hunger strike. There are widespread fears for her health and safety.

[2] From “Poem with an Epigraph” (1958). To the best of my knowledge there is no published English translation of this poem, so I have provided this crude translation.

[3] Article 31 guarantees the right to peaceful protest.

[4] The All-Russian Peoples’ Front is Vladimir Putin’s political party.

[5] This is a literal translation from the Russian. Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative is more accurately translated as “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals).