[转帖] [Book] [2011.12.03] Soviet Union: Russia’s imperial agony 俄罗斯帝国之痛

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http://www.ecolion.cn/thread-61482-1-1.html
The collapse of the Soviet Union
苏联的崩溃

Russia’s imperial agony
俄罗斯帝国之痛


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The cost of the Soviet collapse has been huge and ongoing
苏联解体的代价巨大而持久

Dec 3rd 2011 | from the print edition

Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story.
<后帝国：一个欧亚大国的衰落>
By Dmitri Trenin. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; 270 pages;

8 Pieces of Empire: A 20-Year journey Through the Soviet Collapse.
<帝国的碎片：见证苏联解体的20年历程>
By Lawrence Scott Sheets. Crown; 313 pages;

“THE dying process has begun”, wrote Alexander Kugel, a journalist and
theatre critic, a few months after the bloody Bolshevik revolution of 1917.
“Everything that we see now is just part of the agony. Bolshevism is the
death of Russia. And a body the size of Russia cannot die in one hour. It
groans.” The agony lasted over 70 years. On December 25th 1991 Mikhail
Gorbachev, on television, relinquished his duties as the last president
of the USSR. The hammer and sickle flag was lowered from the Kremlin without
fanfare. The empire expired with a sigh.

“死亡的过程已经开始了，”记者兼戏剧评论家亚历山大.库格尔在血腥的布尔什维
克革命后几个月写道：“我们现在所看到的一切只是部分的痛苦。布尔什维克是俄
罗斯的死神，但俄罗斯这样巨大的躯体，不可能在一小时内死亡，她会继续呻吟。”
诚然，痛苦延续了70多年。1991年12月25日，米哈伊尔.戈尔巴乔夫在电视上宣布放
弃作为苏联最后一任总统的权力。镰刀斧头旗黯然地在克里姆林宫降下，帝国在一
声叹息中消失了。

There was almost no blood on the streets of Moscow that year; the only deaths
were those of three young men killed on the night of the failed coup in
August 1991. (Today almost no one in Russia remembers their names or celebrates
their sacrifice.) The disintegration of the Soviet empire was “relatively
peaceful and orderly”, as Dmitri Trenin writes in a sober and analytical
book, “Post-Imperium”. It could certainly have been worse, but the collapse
unleashed civil and ethnic wars on the periphery─in the Caucasus, Moldova
and the most deadly one, Tajikistan. Estimates vary, but about 200,000 people are
believed to have died in the post-Soviet conflicts.

那一年，在莫斯科的街道上几乎没有流血，只有三个年轻人在1991年8月那个流产的
政变之夜被杀害(今天俄国几乎没有人记得他们的名字或者缅怀他们的牺牲精神)。
正像德米特里.特里宁在一本清醒的`富有分析性的书<后帝国>中写道，苏联的解体
过程是“相对平静和有序的”。虽然苏联的解体在俄国是相对平静的，但在它的周边
一些国家却发生了内战和族裔战争，如高加索、摩尔德瓦，以及更血腥的塔吉克斯坦。
人们的估计数字不尽相同，但据信有大约20万人死于后苏联的流血冲突中。

“8 Pieces of Empire” by Lawrence Scott Sheets, an American reporter who
spent 20 years covering the post-Soviet conflagrations for Reuters and National
Public Radio, is a powerful reminder of how relative the words “peaceful
and orderly” really were. His book takes the reader inside some of these
wars, which were largely ignored by a world preoccupied with the reunification
of Germany and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Different in genre and
scope, both books are nonetheless shaped by personal experience.

<帝国的碎片>的作者劳伦.斯斯考特.史义兹是一位美国记者，在过去二十年的时间里，
他一直为路透社和全国公共广播电台采写后苏联的灾难新闻。他的书有力地揭示了
“相对平静和有序”的说法中“相对”一词的真正含意。通过这本书，他把读者带
进了几个前苏维埃共和国的内战之中。这些内战当时没有引起世界上的注意，因为
那时东西德合并、南斯拉夫分解等消息是人们关注的重心。两本书的风格和取材有
所不同，但都凝结了个人的实际经历。

Mr Trenin, who heads the Carnegie Moscow Centre, served the empire as a
military officer in East Germany. Mr Sheets, who now works for the International
Crisis Group in South Caucasus, went to the Soviet Union to study Russian
in 1987 and returned shortly before Mr Gorbachev’s final presidential speech,
hoping to become a foreign correspondent. His book is an invaluable eyewitness
account of the traumas of the Soviet collapse told through the lives of
those who were caught up in it and often buried under it. The book is written
with a disarming honesty, sympathy and humility.

特里宁先生是卡内基莫斯科研究中心主任，曾是苏军驻东德的军官。史义兹先生目前
在南高加索为国际危机组织工作，他于1987年去苏联学习俄语，在戈尔巴乔夫的辞
职讲话前不久回国，希望成为一名国际记者。他的书提供了宝贵的关于苏联解体灾
难的第一手资料，这些资料基于很多亲身经历甚至死于那场灾难的人的真实故事。
这本书充满坦率、同情和谦虚态度。

The “pieces” in the title refers not only to geography but to people who
were scattered: a Bulgakov-loving, rebellious racketeer in Leningrad; a
Russian officer left behind at a forlorn border post between Armenia and
Turkey, guarding a foreign frontier with another foreign state and trying
to flog snake venom to passing journalists; an ageing former Soviet foreign
minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, who helped to end the cold war but failed
to prevent a hot one from starting in his native Georgia, which he came
to rule in the 1990s.

书名中的“碎片”不仅指地理上的四分五裂，而且也指人民的形形色色。例如，列宁
格勒一个崇拜布尔加科夫、桀傲不驯的奸商；亚美尼亚和土耳其边界上一个与世隔
绝的检查站里的俄国军官，守卫着别的国家与另一个别的国家的边界，向过往记者
兜售蛇药；年迈的前苏联外长、九十年代格鲁吉亚的总统艾德瓦德.谢瓦尔德纳泽，
他帮助世界结束了冷战，却无法阻止在他的家乡格鲁吉亚发生热战。

Stalin’s birthplace, the “wine-and-song-filled Georgia”, was one of the
first to descend into anarchy. In 1992 two gangsters (both with artistic
backgrounds) pushed out a crazy nationalist president (himself a former
writer) and roamed into an autonomous Abkhazia on the pretext of having
to guard passenger trains with tanks. Soon, a nasty ethnic war consumed
this former Soviet playground. It was a “war that nobody started”, as
a Georgian put it at the time. It lacked a plan, strategy, front line or
regular armies, but it had plenty of vandalism and ethnic hatred.

斯大林的出生地、“美酒和歌声之乡格鲁吉亚”是首先陷入混乱的
前苏联加盟共和国. 之一。1992年，两个具有艺术家背景的歹徒推翻了
当时狂热的民族主义总统(也曾是个作家)，以旅客列车需坦克保护为藉
口大举攻入自治的阿布哈兹。很快，一场残酷的族裔战争在这个前苏联
的领地展开。这场战争是一场“无人发起的战争”，一个格鲁吉亚人这
样说，没有计划、没有战略、没有战线、也没有正规军，但是但却造
成了大量的破坏和深度的民族仇恨.

The tragic absurdity of the war comes alive in the detail. A bunch of armed
men calling themselves “knights” and “guards” downed chacha (moonshine)
while they waited in the sweltering heat for a pilot to fly them and their
tethered lamb to Abkhazia. “Sweaty with gregariousness, they act like they’
re going to a party,” writes Mr Sheets. “Or a funeral pyre for the empire.”
A few weeks later he flew back from Abkhazia on another rickety plane,
this time overloaded with zinc coffins and lucky refugees jammed in the
toilet.

那场战争悲剧的荒谬在书中得到详细的描述。一群自称为“骑士”和“卫兵”的武装
人员，在闷热的月夜露宿，等待飞行员把他们和他们牵着的羊羔带到阿布哈兹去，
史义兹先生写道：“他们沉浸在群体狂欢的气氛中，似乎正要去参加派对或是帝国
的火葬仪式”。几个星期之后，当他乘坐另一架破烂飞机从阿布哈兹返回时，机上
超负荷地满载着金属片棺材，厕所里挤着幸运的难民.

Russia’s intervention in 1993 resulted in Georgia’s defeat. But the wounds
left by the wars never healed, in part because they continued to be prodded
by all sides. They were reopened in 2008, when Russia attacked NATO-aspiring
Georgia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The consequences of Russia’s own
two wars with Chechnya, north of the Caucasus Mountains, have also been
grievous. Mr Sheets ends his book with a description of one of the most
horrific episodes of those wars: the school siege in Beslan in 2004, when
more than 1,000 people, mostly children, were taken hostage by terrorists.
In the worst Soviet tradition, the state lied about the number of hostages
and the terrorists’ demands. After two days government forces stormed the
school, using tanks and flame-throwers. Mr Sheets met hostages emerging
from the inferno, wounded, filthy and in shock. A wailing teenage boy tried
to call his dead sister on Mr Sheets’s mobile phone.

俄国在1993年的干预使格鲁吉亚战败，但战争的创伤从来没有愈合，部分原因是双方
仍然不断地刺激那些伤口。战争在2008年重新爆发，这次俄国在南奥塞梯和阿布哈
兹向北约支持的格鲁吉亚发动了进攻。俄国自己在高家索山脉北侧的车臣进行的两
场战争，也是非常严酷的。史义兹在书的末尾描述了这些战争中最为恐怖的一幕：
2004年发生在巴斯兰的占领学校事件。当时恐怖分子劫持了一千多人，其中大部分
是儿童。按照苏联的恶劣传统，政府掩盖了人质的数字和恐怖分子的条件。在两天
的对峙之后，政府军用坦克和燃烧弹冲击了学校。史义兹先生会见了很多从火海中
逃生出来的人质，他们带着伤，满身肮脏，极度惊吓。一个痛苦的十几岁男孩试图
用史义兹的手机给他已死的姐姐打电话。

“Feeling at best an interloper and at worst a tragedy speculator, I put
my equipment away,” he says. Writing for nearly 20 years about people being
killed “is a bit like exposing oneself to radiation”; both mind and body
are affected. Today Mr Sheets works to prevent more conflicts. It is in
this capacity that he warns darkly in the last paragraph of the book that
the Russian empire could easily fragment still further.

“我的工作往好里说，是挖掘人所不知的秘密；往坏里说，是悲剧的旁观者。所以我
最终决定放弃了那份工作。”他说，20年不停地采写人们死亡的新闻，“就像是不
停地接受原子辐射一样”，身心都受到很大影响。现在，史义兹先生的工作是防止
更多的人类冲突发生。正是以这个角色，他在书中最后一段警告说俄罗斯帝国可能
很容易地进一步分解。

This might seem odd when so many are worried about Russia’s neo-imperialist
rhetoric. Yet as Mr Trenin convincingly argues, Russia is not a neo-imperialist
state, but a post-imperialist one that lacks both vision and appeal, and
the economic and human resources for any expansion. With a shrinking population,
that accounts for only 2% of the human race, and a declining share of former
Soviet trade, “the Russian empire is over, never to return.” Mr Trenin
sees Russia’s policy as pragmatic and responsive, perhaps transferring
his own sensibility onto the government. But he remains honest in his analysis.
The current system which is based, he says, on economic growth without
development, capitalism without democracy and great-power policies without
international appeal, is unsustainable. Russia’s main threat is not to
the outside world, but to itself.

他的说法与很多人担心俄国所发出的新帝国主义言辞有些不大吻合。但是史义兹先生
很有说服力地争辩道，俄国并不是一个新帝国主义国家，而是一个后帝国主义国家。
它缺乏远见和良好形象，缺乏扩张所需要的经济和人力资源。它的人口正在减少，
不到世界人口的2%。贸易份额也比前苏联时期下降。“俄罗斯帝国已经终结，已经
一去不返了。”史义兹先生认为俄国的政策是被动的和实用主义的，这可能只是他
的个人感觉。但是他的分析自始至终是诚恳的。他说，现在俄国制度的基础是：没
有发展的经济增长；没有民主的资本主义；没有国际魅力的强国政策。这是难以持
久的。俄国的威胁不是来自外部，而是来自它自己。