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Show Me the Man, and I’ll Show You the Crime
The deepest mystery of the Great Purge remains, in my mind, the eagerness of the victims to confess. What prompted these men to say these things?
“I Kamenev, together with Zinoviev and Trotsky, organised and guided this conspiracy. My motives? I had become convinced that the party’s – Stalin’s policy – was successful and victorious. We, the opposition, had banked on a split in the party, but this hope proved groundless. We could no longer count on any serious domestic difficulties to allow us to overthrow Stalin’s leadership. We were actuated by boundless hatred and by lust of power.”
Gudrun Persson accounts thus for the phenomenon:
There is no doubt that torture was used to force confessions. Though by no means uncommon earlier, torture only became an approved method of examination during the investigations leading up to the first Moscow trial. On 29 July, 1936, an official, albeit secret, document was drawn up, sanctioning the use of “all means” to extract confessions. Krestinsky’s submission was clearly the result of a night of brutal torture. Naturally, psychological torture in the form of threats to relatives and the arrest of family members also played their part in the confessions.
But, important though it was, torture was not the whole explanation. Many of the accused were hardened revolutionaries. Prosecuted and punished by the Czar’s courts, they were themselves advocates of hard methods. Here lies an important part of the explanation: ideological loyalty. …
Bukharin’s statement is interesting in that he denied every particular criminal act he was accused of, among them the charge that he conspired to murder Lenin. Nevertheless he pleaded guilty to the charges:
I plead guilty to being one of the outstanding leaders of this ‘Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites.’ Consequently, I plead guilty to what directly follows from this, the sum total of crimes committed by this counter-revolutionary organization, irrespective of whether or not I knew of, whether or not I took direct part, in any particular act.
In his last plea, he explained:
For three months I refused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Because while in prison I made a revaluation of my entire past. For when you ask yourself: ”If you must die, what are you dying for?” — an absolutely black vacuity suddenly rises before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to die for, if one wanted to die unrepented. And, on the contrary, everything positive that glistens in the Soviet Union acquires new dimensions in a man’s mind. This in the end disarmed me completely and led me to bend my knees before the Party and the country.
Torture, yes; ideology, too. But there is something else. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was Stalin’s chief of the Soviet secret police apparatus, the NKVD. It was Beria, infamously, who said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” By this I suspect he meant that every man, in his soul, feels guilty. And indeed every man is guilty, or certainly, every man who has been touched by Christian doctrine — even in its most perverted and heretical forms, of which, surely, communism is one — believes it so.
I was thinking of this while reading the story of the downfall of Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy:
Geoff Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley who admitted to violating the university’s sexual harassment policies has decided to resign. …
Marcy, a world-famous exoplanet astronomer and chair of the university’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence apartment, groped, kissed, touched, and massaged at least four students, according to a university report obtained by Buzzfeed late last week. Despite the report’s findings and an admission of guilt from Marcy, the university opted not to discipline him. Instead, the university said it would have zero-tolerance for any future transgressions.
Note: Never did his accusers file a criminal claim. Indeed, it would not seem that he committed anything like a crime:
One of the women, known as Complainant 3, studied astronomy as a graduate student. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want her involvement in the matter to affect her current job.
According to her account to Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, she was at a post-colloquium dinner with her graduate department at the University of Hawaii when Marcy placed his hand on her leg, slid his hand up her thigh, and grabbed her crotch.
She didn’t register an official complaint until eight years later, by which time she’d left astronomy — in part, she said, because of the sexual harassment she and other female astronomers experienced.
We know nothing else about this incident with Complainant 3. Marcy claims that the accusation is “totally absurd” and “plainly false,” and that he “would never touch the knee of someone I didn’t know.” Well, maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t; I’m inclined to think that if there’s this much smoke, Marcy’s probably creepy and grabby; and if he didn’t grab her knee, he probably grabbed someone’s. So he’s grabby. Women have a range of tools for dealing with grabby guys, ranging from the cold stare of disapprobation to “I don’t date married men,” to “Get your hands off of me or I’ll break them.”
It sounds as if a maladroit astronomer may have had a few too many drinks at a boondoggle conference in Hawaii and made a crude pass at one of his grad students, does it not? Inappropriate, yes, and vulgar, but hardly a terrifying sexual assault. The normal remedy is to say, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Knock it off.” A sharp slap across his face, perhaps, if his hand truly strayed above her knee. It hardly sounds like grounds for abandoning your professional aspirations entirely and reposing in silent, quivering trauma for eight years before filing a complaint.
The other charges? Massages and kisses, not rape. Distasteful, yes, given that he’s married. But beyond the pale of normal human experience? What exoplanet are these astronomers living on?
Complainant 4, by the way, was not herself harassed. She saw Marcy getting “inappropriately touchy” with an undergraduate during the American Astronomical Society’s 2010 meeting. (We have no idea what the undergraduate in question thought about this.) The mere sight of this “inappropriate touchiness” caused her so much distress that years later, she anonymously dropped a dime on him. And no one’s spoken to Complainant 1, so we have no idea of what she’s complaining.
But the strangest part of this story is Marcy’s public confession:
“Through deep and lengthy consultations, I have reflected carefully on my actions as well as issues of gender inequality, power, and privilege in our society?”
Why did he humiliate himself like this? Surely he must have known, like Zinoviev, that the ritual of confession would be followed by the ritual of liquidation?
“I would like to repeat that I am fully and utterly guilty. I am guilty of having been the organiser, second only to Trotsky, of that block whose chosen task was the killing of Stalin. I was the principal organiser of Kirov’s assassination. The party saw where we were going, and warned us. Stalin warned us scores of times but we did not heed his warnings. We entered into an alliance with Trotsky.”
It’s genuinely a mystery to me. Why not say, To hell with you? You may kill me, but you will not make me grovel?
What followed was predictable. Anyone who wished to join in denouncing Marcy was invited to do so:
The denunciations poured forth from every corner of the world. “What Geoffrey Marcy did was abominable,” wrote UC Berkeley biologist and hysteric Michael Eisen:
… despicable, predatory, destructive and all too typical. … How on Earth can this be true? Does the university not realize they are giving other people in a position of power a license to engage in harassment and abusive behavior? Do they think that the threat of having to say “oops, I won’t do that again” is going to stop anyone? Do they think anyone is going to file complaints about sexual harassment or abuse and go through what everyone described as an awful, awful process, so that their abuser will get a faint slap on the wrist? Do they care at all?… isn’t the fact that this kind of [thing] keeps happening over and over evidence that education is not enough? There HAVE to be consequences – serious consequences – for abusing positions of power.
I fully agree that there should be consequences — serious consequences – for “abusing positions of power.” But when I consider that phrase, I’m put in mind of something like this, not of an awkward astronomer offering a grown woman a backrub.
Last week, Marcy resigned. Only weeks before, he had been rumored to be in the running for the Nobel Prize. He left behind his reputation, his career, nearly $900,000 in grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation, a million-dollar grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, and a $100-million dollar private research effort to find civilizations beyond the earth. The project had been expected to generate as much data in a day as previous SETI projects had in a year.
It’s still not enough. “Defeating sexual harassment,” writes fellow astronomer John Asher Johnson,
goes well beyond expunging people like Marcy from our ranks. It will require a fundamental restructuring of the way we do business, and a reeducation of our field—all of us …
Off to the re-education camps with all of you.
The mob then turned on The New York Times. The newspaper’s crime? Interviewing Marcy’s wife and reporting what she said:
Dr. Marcy’s wife, Susan Kegley, a pesticide researcher, said she supported him, pointing out that he had cooperated fully with the investigation and apologized.
She defended her husband, writing in an email, “Others may interpret Geoff’s empathy and interest as a come-on. I can’t change their perspectives, but I think it is worth all of us examining how quickly one is judged and condemned without knowing all of the facts.”
“The punishment Geoff is receiving here in the court of hysterical public opinion is far out of proportion to what he did and has taken responsibility for in his apology,” Dr. Kegley wrote.
This prompted 276 astronomers and physicists to send a letter of protest:
Re “Astronomer Apologizes for Behavior”, October 11: By emphasizing Geoff Marcy’s apology and his wife’s opinions, this article champions the voice of a sexual predator and minimizes the continued trauma of his targets. Overbye’s piece repeatedly sympathizes with Marcy, portraying him as a misunderstood, empathetic educator who was “condemned without knowing the facts” and given punishment “in the court of hysterical public opinion”. Furthermore, given Overbye’s long history of sourcing Marcy, the piece lacks the objectivity it deserves.
We do know the facts of this case. Berkeley undertook a formal investigation and found Marcy guilty of repeated sexual harassment of students spanning almost a decade. Marcy abused his position of power, betrayed his responsibilities as an educator, and caused profound damage. By overlooking the gravity of Marcy’s predatory behavior, this article discourages women from speaking out and undermines the safety of students.
This story deserves national coverage because it demonstrates an extreme yet persistent problem on college campuses. However, sympathy and support should be given to the survivors, not the perpetrator.
The survivors? Of an unwanted back rub? Since when are women profoundly damaged because a man they didn’t fancy tried to kiss them? You’d think he ravished Tess of the d’Urbervilles. They know the facts of this case? How? From a series of anonymous tipsters, a trial conducted in secret by a body with no legal authorization to conduct a trial, and an article in Buzzfeed?
But The New York Times wasted no time; public editor Margaret Sullivan went straight for the ritual confession:
I also agree with the critics that Mr. Marcy’s wife’s commentary was out of place in this news article; as readers have noted, she’s hardly a credible source here. That was particularly objectionable because Mr. Marcy’s response and his wife’s defense were given priority over the voices of female scientists and even over quotations describing the university’s censure. Meanwhile, the victims’ experiences were given shorter shrift.
In other words, for a number of reasons, the focus in this initial article was off. If The Times continues reporting on the larger topic (a worthy one), there should be no further emphasis on the “troubles” of harassers.
I’m left as baffled by this as I am by the accounts of the Moscow Trials.
Why do they confess?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW_2YUo_UC4
Published in Education, General, Science & Technology
I am not.
When an apology is filled with buzzwords and reads like it was pasted in from the Grievance Studies final exam, it’s a grovel. Apologies are personal, and do not stress how much one has learned. Nobody is buying his smokescreen.
Disturbing, yes, but not on the order of the Kamenev quote at the beginning of the OP.
I’ll play.
Kamenev was tortured. We all can understand how extreme physical pain can change one’s priorities.
But this dweeb? Nothing more than social shaming.
It is disturbing when we see how weak people can be.
Agree that apologies are personal. Agree that buzzwords are a red flag.
But, personally, I’ve learned a lot in recent years, in ways that make me embarrassed about past behavior that I thought perfectly okay at the time. So, my personal apologies often do included an “I’ve learned something” element.
A lot of men operate under the lying notion that unwanted sexual advances are harmless, when they’re not. A lot of them are oblivious to the power differential issue, until they’re faced with their victims and the real consequences. And then, if they’re decent men, they learn something.
I wish we had a way to reward the real learning. As it stands, it seems like the only concrete alternatives are to
1) Deny you did anything wrong and discredit the victims, i.e. dig in on boorishness and narcissism.
2) Admit you did something wrong and be destroyed.
To me, a genuine apology manifests character strength, not weakness.
I hate fake apologies and I hate refusals to apologize, when apologies are in order. And wherever there’s wrongdoing, apologies are in order.
They should just be proportionate to the actual wrong, as should be the punishment.
Katie – I agree that real apologies are good.
But I disagree about the minefield of sexual advances. Women often welcome sexual advances, of course. They just don’t welcome them from people to whom they are not already attracted.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f76_1323277426
That same power differential is often quite attractive to women – who usually seek men who are older, richer, smarter, taller… isn’t that all about power differentials?
And above all, his children were threatened with execution. His confession (perhaps) saved his younger son, although his wife and elder son were shot.
Which makes Kamenev understandable. The astronomer? Not so much.
If this boor just had to step out on his wife, some social and moral hygiene would have helped. He brought this on himself. That doesn’t make “this” pretty or worthy. “This” is still a disaster.
If it’s any consolation, like Winston Smith, he was ruined from the get-go. Society used to catch up with a good percentage of cads and louts by administering a beating. Now it does so through a crucifiction of paperwork.
He loves Big Sister.
I agree with you that some women lust after power and enslave themselves to the powerful. Some women (and men) exploit their sexual attractiveness to gain career advantages.
I think that’s wrong too.
Here’s a question for you, iWe:
Do you see an ethical difference between a rude sexual advance from a peer and a rude sexual advance from a superior on the job?
Do you see a difference between a rude sexual advance from someone who is capable of physically overpowering you, and one from someone who isn’t?
I do.
I think those differences should matter in the adjudication of wrongs, just I as think the presence of “malice” and “forethought” matter in sentencing for crimes.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with using whatever tools one has. Women use their beauty – and that is fine, though we all know that such tactics can yield double-edged results.
The difficulty here is “rude”.
For as long as there have been secretaries, men have slept with them and/or married them. I do not think it is wrong (though my personal preference is always toward stronger women).
“Flirtation” is hard to get right (or so I hear). The lines are extremely hard to discern. Two people very rarely perceive the same event the same way – especially a flirtative event.
I am not sure.
Say that a man and a women get a bit close. Who invaded whose personal space? What did they mean when they did it? Is it possible that the hint of interest might spark a response that otherwise might not have been there?
A complete minefield.
Orthodox Judaism deals with this by forbidding even casual contact between unrelated men and women, with a host of rules about even being in a room together. The lines are crisp. But there is a cost in terms of social comfort.
Then we disagree. I don’t think women should use their sexual power over men any more than men should use their physical power over women to get what they want on the job.
Professional ethics, like ethics generally, is all about self-restraint.
In my line of work (and, I think, in most lines of work), one’s physical presence and charisma are very, very important. Confidence is contagious – and so is fear.
What is the difference between a strong man who knows his own mind and what he wants to achieve and how – and a bully? There but for the grace of G-d….
A successful woman almost always looks good, carries herself well, dresses well, and may even smell nice.
Men notice.
Is she using sexual power? Of course.
I found his letter a bit strange – how could anyone not know they were being offensive or inappropriate- it’s not the dark ages. Many distinguished and successful people have fallen when the truth came out – sometimes only by bits and pieces in the beginning. Maybe there was more to it to come out unless he resigned. Definitely think of Clinton, and Bill Cosby, Gen. Petraus.
I agree with Katievs on several things – 1. There should be penalties that fit the crime, and this is extreme if that’s all there was. 2. In this age of instant messaging, someone’s reputation/career/future can be needlessly ruined because of the rush to judgement and for that reason, precautions should be taken to protect the innocent until actually proven guilty. The left keeps redefining the moral compass (with tremendous hypocrisy) – black lives matter instead of all lives matter, destroy the baker for refusing to bake a cake for gay wedding, forcing clergy in military to refrain from being too faith-specific, etc.
I disagree with the statement that a perverted form of Christian doctrine led to communism, as I understand it – there was nothing Christian there – because Hitler thought himself a Christian? Evil led to communism, just like there is nothing even remotely holy about Muslim extremism. Communism produced monsters.
I don’t see a weak man here, but a shamed one. Patraeus and Clinton are still standing. Can he appeal? I believe he will still do great things.
Women should have these tools. And since not all youngsters have the inborn social skills to develop these tools on their own through social interaction, young women (especially clueless, nerdy young women) should be taught these tools. These days, they often aren’t.
In fairness, the complainant said “she’d left astronomy… because of the sexual harassment she and other female astronomers experienced.” She may have simply got fed up with the derpy behavior of a lot of astro guys – behavior she was perhaps too derpy herself to fend off adroitly. She could have quite sensibly decided that she didn’t find studying astronomy attractive enough to be worth the social awkwardness.
That said, that the law recognizes statutes of limitations at all is evidence that we recognize the right to complain about more minor transgressions decays over time. These women could have filed complaints back then, but apparently didn’t. Even if concern for their own or their mentor’s reputation left them unwilling to press charges, they could have filed an incident report shortly after the events happened. I know, having done that myself, not wanting to ruin a man’s reputation over what might have been one exceptional lapse in his judgment.
The confluence of headlines in this morning is depressing. From Oblomov’s post about the Russian obsession with vodka, this posting about the left’s obsession with show trials over real justice, to this from Gallup that shows 58% support full national legalization of marijuana… America has decided that is ready to fully embrace totalitarianism as long as it can do so in the haze of smoke. We will crawl into the THC the way the Russians drowned their realities in alcohol.
Claire,
A very good question you ask. Perhaps those who participated in the process were so deeply ingrained in the ideology that when the ideology turned on them they couldn’t divorce themselves from it. Thus they participated in their own demise.
Perhaps it depends on which side of the telescope (microscope) you are on.
Regards,
Jim
Mr. Jeremy Irons really is fit for this kind of role. There is a kind of old world sickness in having become too wise-
I was glad to see this film referenced. Thanks.
It is not the abuse that is the issue it is who the abuser is. Roman Polanski gets a pass from the Hollywood community as did Bill Clinton.
There is an architecture professor at the University of Arizona, a female who submitted work she claimed as her own when in fact it was student’s work. I believe it happened more than once. She was punished by being granted tenure. The university administration has warned professors and students that they are not discuss or comment on the decision to grant her tenure or her plagiarism.
One more thing – and this applies to men and women – unless you have a lot of money and can afford to lose endorsements like Trump, if others are funding your projects, you have to meet their standards. Most companies pour money into projects not only to see results, but do so with their own reputations on the line. As far as having anxiety and depression after such a devastating situation, I would hope so – it’s called remorse. Everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Steve Jobs suffered from it after difficult periods, but returned even greater afterward. Many have lost millions for not only bad behavior, but just even saying something that was inappropriate to some. Tiger Woods comes to mind, but returned after a period – seems it is common in the sports world. I’m sure within the scientific community, he will be once again embraced with funds to follow. It sounds like he needed to step away for now.
Look at the abuse during the crash of 2008. How were banks, insurance companies, stock brokers, mortgage lenders, etc. punished for selling confusing bundled risky assets, weird things called derivatives that no one knew what they were comprised of, making risky loans, etc. punished for nearly causing the demise of our financial system? They were rewarded with bailouts – few were prosecuted. Sometimes it’s not about money, but sometimes it is all about money.
I wonder what % of the American population would even have any idea what Claire is talking about when she refers to “the Great Purge.”
For those who don’t I would suggest they read The Great Terror by the late Robert Conquest.
Americans’ astounding ignorance of history, past, present, & future, is one of their better qualities. Time was when American ignorance was the joke of Europe–only outmatched by accusations of hypocrisy, because of the astounding arrogance of American statements on morality & justice. Time came when the European powers brought hell on earth in their own homes. Those who are ignorant of history are blessed.
Front Seat Cat: #48 “I disagree with the statement that a perverted form of Christian doctrine led to communism, as I understand it – there was nothing Christian there – because Hitler thought himself a Christian? Evil led to communism, just like there is nothing even remotely holy about Muslim extremism. Communism produced monsters.”
In the remote sense Hitler was nominally a Catholic, and I who am Catholic, am saying so. However what Hitler wrought was not communism but National Socialism, with its harkening back to racial stereotypes.
If you want communism, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, Castro are the names you might want to specify.
Communism was the attempt to create heaven on earth. A just society where everyone cared for everyone, and the state tried to ensure that everyone cared for everyone.
On the way to that location original sin and its outworking made an appearance, and literally over a hundred million people were consumed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and others of their ilk. A religion lacking a deity proved to be a religion of death rather than of life. It turns out that, good intentions not withstanding, perfection is beyond our reach without divine intervention.
The truth is irrelevant to the tactics of combating the process that led to this mans down fall. Which is what Clinton taught us. If some one accuses you of something bad, you should not just try to prove your self innocent, it is to make the case about something else. Did I murder my wife and her girlfriend? Or, is the LAPD racist? Did this guy grope a girl or is the University a bunch of Nazis? Given that this process is purely discretionary making it an all out fight makes it harder to conduct it. The University gains nothing from this if at the end of it people think they are just as bad as the groper professor they hired. Being shameless is the only defense against these shame driven processes.
The university should have conducted its investigation and fired him and that is it. No statements. Who gives a fig if he is sorry?