1 Lloyd-Jones-Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum, frr. 351, 352. 4-5.
I Jeremiah 3 i: 29-34; Ezekiel i 8: 20, 14: i 2-20, 33: 1-20; Psalms 40, 50, 51.
1 Francis Macdonald Cornford, Before and After Socrates (Cambridge, 1932), p. i°9.
George H. Sabine, A History of Political Thought, 4th ed. (Fort Worth etc., Г973Х p. 131
ibid.
2 M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 1941), p. 1095-
1 Reprinted above, pp. 166-217.
i
The story of which I am going to tell is about the murder of Uritsky, Minister of Justice of Soviet Russia in the year i919.
Already in the year i 9 i 8 the people in Russia, and its capital Petrograd especially, were very depressed by the Bolsheviks, who terrorised the people to the utmost. One of the most noble families in Petrograd was the family of the Ivanovs. It consisted of Andrew Ivanov, an old man aged sixty-four, his son Peter, a handsome and brave young man, and an old servant named Vasily. Although very depressed, they had a cosy little home in which peace and friendships reigned undisturbed, until a sudden shock came about to destroy their well-earned happiness.
It was a bright cold winter morning. The sun appeared as a little red disc on the clear sky. All nature seemed to be enjoying itself, lapped by the bright rays of the sun. A sudden knock at the door was heard and the next moment an officer and two soldiers entered the Ivanovs' little hall.
'Is Andrew Ivanov living here?' asked the officer curtly.
'I am Andrew Ivanov, and am at your service,' answered the old man quietly.
'Take him away,' ordered the officer, signing to his soldiers. 'This man is guilty before the law for hiding some diamonds in his house. Search the house instantly and if you find any precious stones you will give them to me.'1
Peter, who looked at the scene with bewilderment and anger, suddenly dealt the officer a blow that sent him on to the floor, while himself, quick as a lightning, jumped out of the window and soon was out of sight. The soldiers followed the example of their commander, who rose from the ground and went for Peter. But the blow over his head made him fall over the first stone that lay in his
1 Once when the Berlins' flat in Petrograd was searched the maid successfully hid the family jewels in the snow on the balcony.
New College, Oxford 13 February 1951
Dear George,
I have ill rewarded your wonderful letter by leaving it so long unanswered. I received it towards the end of term here when I was genuinely worn out by teaching and examining, and scarcely capable of taking anything in, but even then it moved me profoundly. I took it off with me to Italy and read it and re-read it, and kept putting off the day on which I would write an answer worthy of it, but no such day ever came. I began many letters but each seemed trivial, and what the Russians call 'suetlivo'i - full of hurrying sentences, scattered and moving in all directions at once, inappropriate either to the theme or to your words about it; but I cannot bear (if only because of the feelings which your letter excited in me) to say nothing merely because I am not sure how much I have to say. So you must forgive me if what I write is chaotic, not merely in form but in substance, and does little justice to your thesis. I shall simply go on and hope for the best, and beg you to pardon me if I am wasting your time.
I must begin by saying that you have put in words something which I believe not only to be the centre of the subject but something which, perhaps because of a certain reluctance to face the fundamental moral issue on which everything turns, I failed to say; but once forced to face it, I realise both that it is craven to sail round it as I have done, and moreover that it is, in fact, what I myself believe, and deeply believe, to be true; and more than this: that upon one's attitude to this issue which you have put very
1 'In a fussy or bustling manner.' (All notes to this letter are editorial.)
1 Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, book 5, chapter 4: vol. 1, p. 287, in the Penguin Classics edition, trans. David Magarshack (Harmondsworth, 1958): 'too high a price has been placed on harmony. We cannot afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket of admission.'
II
Another source of avoidable conflict is stereotypes. Tribes hate neighbouring tribes by whom they feel threatened, then rationalize their fears by representing them as wicked or inferior, or absurd or despicable in some way. Yet these stereotypes alter sometimes quite rapidly: Take the i 9th century alone: In, say, 1 840 the French are thought of as swashbuckling, gallant, immoral, militarized, men with curly moustachios, dangerous to women, likely to invade England in revenge for Waterloo; the Germans are beer drinking, rather ludicrous provincials, musical, full of misty metaphysics, harmless but somewhat absurd. By i 87 i the Germans are Uhlans storming through France incited by the terrible Bismarck - terrifying Prussian militarists filled with national pride etc. France is a poor, crushed, civilized land, in need of protection from all good men, lest its art literature are crushed underheel by the terrible invaders.
The Russians in the 1 9th century are crushed serfs, + darkly
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