{"id":230,"date":"2022-01-25T09:38:08","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T17:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/?p=230"},"modified":"2022-01-25T10:47:25","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T18:47:25","slug":"long-followup-letter-about-the-soviet-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/2022\/01\/25\/long-followup-letter-about-the-soviet-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Long followup letter about the Soviet university"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

In early 1960, Peter (age 20, and back in Seattle attending UW after having flunked out of Caltech) wrote to his parents about his interest in Friendship University<\/a>, a then-new Soviet university. His father (George) apparently replied to that letter, but I don\u2019t have any record of that response. But Peter then replied to the reply with a ten-page letter laying out a lot of things about his beliefs and worldview. The first five pages appear to be detailed arguments against points that George had made; the rest of the letter includes sections titled \u201cPartial List of Lies I have Been Told\u201d and \u201cList of very Enlightening Books.\u201d And in this post, I\u2019m finally posting the full text of that second letter.<\/p>\r\n

The reason that I have copies of these letters is that George turned them over to the FBI, who then spent the next decade-plus watching Peter. And when I requested Peter\u2019s FBI file<\/a> in 2012, it included a copy of each of those letters.<\/p>\r\n

Kathleen transcribed the first one for me, and I posted it in 2016<\/a>. At the time, I promised to transcribe and post the longer second letter, but didn\u2019t get around to it until now.<\/p>\r\n

(Thanks to Kathleen for having scanned this second letter, which made it a lot easier to get into publishable shape when I finally sat down to work on it.)<\/p>\r\n

This letter was handwritten, but the FBI also created a typewritten copy, which is what made the scanning feasible. So I started with the scanned text of the typewritten copy, and then corrected it based on the handwritten version. Which among other things had the salutary effect of letting me restore a couple of redactions, because the FBI redacted a couple of items in the handwritten copy that they neglected to redact in the typewritten version.<\/p>\r\n

Btw, this letter also includes my all-time favorite redaction: Someone at the FBI felt that it was necessary to redact the phrase Pascal\u2019s Wager<\/i>. Twice.<\/p>\r\n

As usual: in the below, the word [REDACTED]<\/i> is a standin for the blank white redaction boxes the FBI used.<\/p>\r\n

\u2026Oh, one more bit of interesting context: there\u2019s no mention of it here, but two years earlier, in 1958, Peter had met William Hamilton Martin, who later in 1960 would defect to the USSR along with Bernon F. Mitchell<\/a>. But that defection was still several months in the future when Peter wrote this letter.<\/p>\r\n

Content warnings: references to Japanese American internment (without acknowledgment that the imprisoned people were Americans); use of an outdated and uncomfortable term for Japanese people; strong praise of the early US without acknowledgment of what it did to Native Americans or enslaved people; mention of violently racist US events and organizations; mention of parents incarcerating their offspring; references to nuclear war and bombs and Hiroshima; praise in passing for Ezra Pound and Nietszche; criticism of various aspects of Christianity and religion; etc.<\/p>\r\n

I\u2019ve added occasional links by way of annotation.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Hi \u2014<\/p>\r\n

I debated long whether or no to write this letter, wondering whether it was worth the effort \u2014 finally decided you might be shade more understanding than hurt, so am writing it. Preliminaries \u2014 good typing job, pa \u2014 glad mom quit Record \u2014 hope school-work is going all right for all five of you.<\/p>\r\n

Now. 1st<\/u><\/sup>. I sincerely and deeply appreciate your allowing me free rein in everything, since it is your legal right to even incarcerate me in your home until I am 21, & you could make things so rough, and you are refraining. Thank you.<\/p>\r\n

Then: all of the following pages are exactly (or at least no more than) my own<\/u> feelings on the several topics, that is, the following material is not any kind of \u201cParty line\u201d that I have swallowed. So:<\/p>\r\n

1. You advocate taking the test but refusing to consider actually going. What possible reason for taking test then? I have better uses for time.<\/p>\r\n

2. So some turncoats who have been brainwashed in all ways break down, believe the glorious promises of an utopian society that they are fed, find that the reality of proletariat existence in C.C.C.P. does not measure up to the conception they had built up. So I am not a turncoat, the two countries are not at war, bludgeon-dungeon type brainwashing of American citizens isn\u2019t fashionable, I am not a proletarian, and I have no grandiose illusions of Russia as a prototype Erewhon<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

3. Glamor of travel is not overpowering me. I have hitch-hiked 10,000 miles, travel is no novelty; it is sheer drudgery and for the most part, to be endured as requisite for getting one\u2019s body to the destination one has set.<\/p>\r\n

4. You say, \u201cwhy not England, France, Spain, Norway, or you-name-it instead of Russia.\u201d I say, \u201cWHY<\/u> England?\u201d, \u201cWHY<\/u> France?\u201d, \u201cWHY<\/u> Spain?\u201d, \u201cWHY<\/u> Norway?\u201d To be sure, I intend to spend perhaps several years of my life in Europe, particularly France; but I do not hear offers of five years\u2019 free excellent<\/u> training in mathematics coming from France, or... or you-name-it.<\/p>\r\n

5. You are, I believe, sincerely, honestly, understandably, but utterly wrong in your opinion that C.C.C.P. & U.S.A. will war. You see, nobody wins the next war. Not only are there no spoils, no vanquished peoples, no history books to be re-written; there are no victors: no survivors. None. Even were a \u201cgood old-fashioned\u201d type war conducted, one side would maybe use a \u201ctactical A-weapon\u201d here, to which enemy responds with primitive-type Hiroshima bomb, causing retaliation in form of H-bomb, calling for re-imbursement by cobalt-sheathed H-bomb. During the, say, 36 hours left before the atmosphere knocks everybody off, we might toy with bacteriological warfare, they with a nerve gas, we again with a \u201cdeath-ray\u201d (prototypes of latter two gimmicks actually now extant) but I won\u2019t urge the point, everybody\u2019s dead by now anyway. Or maybe they would instead give the whole scene up for a bad job and spend those last few hours getting acquainted over a glass of kvass<\/a>. It\u2019s too late by then anyway. IT\u2019S NOT TOO LATE NOW.<\/p>\r\n

6. I stand resolved against conscription. I will not submit to this absurd scheme, and will not be asked to, since usually research mathematicians are classified as necessary to the defense effort.<\/p>\r\n

7. You intimate that the Russian Army would, in case of war, put a gun (figurative or literal) in my hands and ask me to please help fight the dirty capitalist pig warmonger imperialists residing in USA. This suggestion is so absurd I won\u2019t comment on it other than to refer reader back to 5, and to the example cited of the Japanese D.P.\u2019s in America during W.W. II<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

8. If I don\u2019t have the official baptism blessing of State department, I can\u2019t even leave country<\/u>, much less enter Russia<\/u>, much less be trailed as subversive by thud-and-blunder type FBI McCarran-act<\/a>-wielding special agent in trench coat. As for responsible job \u2014 I DON\u2019T WANT ONE. ALL\u2019S I WANT IS ENOUGH CALORIES EVERY DAY TO FIND A RACK AT NIGHT, AND PLENTY BOOKS TO READ AND PAPER TO WRITE ON DURING DAY.<\/p>\r\n

If U.S. is stupid enough (I wouldn\u2019t really doubt it: you might be right) to refuse to employ a skilled worker who learned his trade in the country most advanced in that trade in the world, well, there are other, more rational countries.<\/p>\r\n

9. The thousands of D. P. Nipponese you mention are better example than I could have thought up offhand of why I do not prize my U.S. citizenship.*<\/a> I have a theory that if one island in a small lake gives big prizes to rock-n-roll singers, and the other islands give big prizes to scientists, then all the rock-n-roll singers on the islands will gravitate to the one island, and all its scientists will sort of disperse over the other islands. Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and a great many other people have thought along the same lines. I DO NOT PRIZE MY U.S. CITIZENSHIP.<\/p>\r\n

10. I find no recognisable merit whatsoever in your self-defence--avenues-of-escape analogy. I don\u2019t think that it is an analogy. Furthermore, if it were<\/u>, I refuse to accept the major premise \u2014 leaving open these avenues. First, I am not engaged in any kind<\/u> of boxing-match (taken in any figurative sense you want) with anyone. Secondly, I think that the conservative principle of always leaving loopholes to back out is one of the (myriad) things which has put the world in the mess it is in now. The sticking out of irretrievable necks is one of the few ways the culture of humankind has progressed the tiny distance it has. E.g, Dostoievsky. E.g. Cervantes; E.g, Fulton (\u2019s Folly<\/a><\/u>). Eg...... e.g..... e.g. endlessly.<\/p>\r\n

11. \u201cA sturdy oak dining-room table is certainly a fine thing to eat from, and for some people, it is the best. But couldn\u2019t you eat from the floor Instead? It Is oak, too, and the food would taste as good.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

No, I don\u2019t want to study in Russian language somewhere else.<\/p>\r\n

12. I have read Hale\u2019s novel, \u201cMan Without a Country<\/a>\u201d and remember it as absurd, rather asinine, chauvinistically inclined, and maudlin. Patriotism as it has come to be known (My country, right or wrong, but...) is very ugly, breeding slavish blind complacent-content vegetative foeti, completely uncritical of their country and hence unaware of and non-counteracting the evils that exist in the country. I subscribe to no political system, adhere to no party or country: I want to be a citizen of the world, a believer in the simplest (and yet presently most abused) human rights, an upholder of human dignity. The maintenance of familial, tribal, or national culture, on the other hand, is an extremely fine thing. For instance, I went to see a troupe of Ukrainian dancers, mandolinists, and folk-singers tonight: their cultural heritage was really wonderful to see. I only wish that I could have grown up speaking Norwegian and English at home, and had a richer bank of Anglo-Celtic culture.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

*<\/a> That is, this is a good example of the gross crudities, the abysmal stupidities, the atrocious injustices which have been and are being perpetrated by USA.)<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

13. I think that at one time (Jefferson, Adams, et al.), the U.S. was a great country, vibrant and young and sensitive, with all promise of becoming a stronghold of true freedom. MEN lived here. Unfortunately, U.S.A. became soured, poisoned somehow. An immense ugly festering chancre came into existence and is still spreading. I like the United States, I like its music, I like its literature, I like its forests and wheat-fields, and seashores, and foods, and good people. I think mongrels usually turn out better in most respects than inbred-for-generations pedigreeds. However, I loathe its corruption, its bureaucracy, its cheap petty chiselers, its Little Rock<\/a>s & Ku Klux Klans, and McCarran Acts, and medieval county Jails, and [REDACTED], and reactionary Republicans who want to foist their by-standing-still Red-Queen<\/a> type retrogression on whole country, and D.A.R.\u2019s and bourgeousie morality and Easter-bunnies-Santae-Clausi yearly nod-to-God mockeries of all that is good in man. For some strange unfathomable reason, 1 want to try to correct some of these situations. I know, this is the beginning of a phase, ain\u2019t he cute in his first faint blush of youthful radicalism, and all that. You may be right. I hope<\/u> and implore<\/u> my glands that this is not so. I think that I have, whether my instructors (in loosest sense) were aware of fact or not, been fed a pack of wild fantastic lies from infancy on widest plethora of subjects: religion, politics, morality, sex, economics, history, ............ you name it. I am only now beginning to feel in any definitive sense intellectually and emotionally free of these lies. Some are hidden very deep and will take a long time to root out. Society did a good job on me.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

14. This completing my polemic on the advice given me, I should like to state that I realize perhaps more than you think your thoughts while and after reading this, and that my sincerest hope is that somebody who reads this can empathize with me and join me in my newly-begun efforts, (Such as \u2014 don\u2019t buy at Woolworth\u2019s<\/a>), and that I fully realize that a huge and aching wound is perhaps[? word partly obscured \u2014Jed] opened when a father, a veteran, hears such \u201csubversive\u201d words as these coming from the pen of his eldest son, and probably erects a great structure of mea culpa self-immolation-castigation for \u201cmaking mistakes\u201d on the firstborn, since there hain\u2019t any such thing as a \u201cpractice\u201d baby. I can but hope not, and if so, if you will listen hard enough to me, my salt-lashes carry their own balm.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

So. sigh. Neat anecdote \u2014 which you mustn\u2019t take seriously. [REDACTED] invited me to Easter dinner, and I went. [REDACTED] who had theretofore more-or-less concealed the fact of [REDACTED] incarceration (because he had gone out with her quite a few times) from her mother, was persuaded by me to cop out and tell her mother about his little escapade. So she did. So [REDACTED] who really likes and admires me, came forth with, \u201cWHY DON\u2019T YOU<\/u> MARRY [REDACTED] PETE, AND YOU CAN BOTH LIVE HERE FREE AND I WILL SUBSIDIZE THE WHOLE THING!\u201d which was in the manner of after-dinner repartee-raillery[? word partly obscured \u2014Jed] but which had definite serious undercurrents. So I was in the same style (avec undertones) all for it, but [REDACTED], I explained, wouldn\u2019t go for it. Now, at any rate. (End of anecdote)<\/p>\r\n

Am dropping my modern poetry class 25 April \u2014 can\u2019t STAND it any more. Too bad, \u2019cause it\u2019s a 5-hour class, and will cost $5 to drop, but if I stayed in, would get a D or E in there, besides which the tension produced would likely drag down my other grades. Ah well.<\/p>\r\n

So: hoping you will bear in mind point 14,<\/p>\r\n

I\u2019ll sign off here, having really explored<\/p>\r\n

Prolick City in this letter. (Original joke)<\/p>\r\n

[x] Sincerely, [x] Love,<\/p>\r\n

Pete<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Partial List of Lies I have Been Told<\/p>\r\n

1. A benevolent omnipotent God exists.<\/p>\r\n

Refutation: Evils exist in the world. Either God cannot prevent these or He will not. If He cannot, He is not omnipotent. If he will not, he is not benevolent, but a malevolent monster. Or, if these evils only seem evil to our limited scope or are only means to good ends, then either God cannot use better means or he will not, giving rise to the same contradiction.<\/p>\r\n

2. An omniscient God exists, and humans have free will.<\/p>\r\n

Refutation: If God already knows exactly what I\u2019m going to do one minute from now, I cannot in any nontrivial sense be said to have free will. If I do have really \u201cfree will\u201d then God cannot possibly know what I am about to do.<\/p>\r\n

<\/p>\r\n

3. If Christianity is correct, then I win eternal happiness by believing its tenets. If it is not, then I lose nothing anyway by believing it.<\/p>\r\n

Refutation: [REDACTED] [The redacted phrase here and below is presumably \u201cPascal\u2019s Wager\u201d \u2014Jed], as this insidious argument is called, is refuted by hypothesis of a rational God who put Christianity on Earth as a test \u2014 whoever had insight & rationality enough to see the various flaws in Christian dogma (which unfortunately cannot be patched up by Theosophy) (2 of which are explained above)--whoever was rational enough to see these would go to this rational God\u2019s \u201cheaven\u201d but whoever was so irrational he blindly limited his consciousness to the straight line of faith in Christian dogma instead of letting mind range over the whole figurative plans would be condemned: thus a person could definitely lose [REDACTED]<\/p>\r\n

4. Christianity worships life.<\/p>\r\n

Refutation: Man first worshipped the sun. As he came to understand its regularity, he turned to, say, the moon. Understanding of its monthly cycles led away from its being worshipped. Similarly animal worship, pantheism, \u2026, all more or less fell away with increased understanding. Religion is humility before ignorance. Thus it is that nearly all religions extant, Oriental & occidental, presently worship death, the only thing not really understood by men now. Incidentally, it is not<\/u> true that all peoples have a religion.<\/p>\r\n

5. and on and on and on.<\/p>\r\n

.<\/p>\r\n

.<\/p>\r\n

.<\/p>\r\n

George Washington did not chop down a cherry tree; he was a real rou\u00e9 and had several illegitimate children; Christianity does not say anything like what Christ was saying, any more than the situation in Russia remotely reflects what Marx was saying; sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, \u2026, \u2026, none are \u201cevil\u201d per se--only the misuse of them: et ad nauseum.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

List of very Enlightening Books, with which I for the main part concur.<\/p>\r\n

*1. \u201cWhy I am not a Christian\u201d \u2014 Bertrand Russell<\/p>\r\n

2. A Free Man\u2019s Worship<\/u> \u2014 in \u201cLogic & Mysticism\u201d, Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

*3. \u201cMarriage & Morals\u201d \u2014 Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

4. \u201cDoors of Perception\u201d \u2014 Aldous Huxley<\/p>\r\n

*5. \u201cMyth of Sisyphus\u201d \u2014 Albert Camus<\/p>\r\n

6. \u201cThus Spake Zarathustra\u201d \u2014 F. Nietszche<\/p>\r\n

*7. \u201cNotes from Underground\u201d \u2014 Dostoievsky<\/p>\r\n

8. \u201cThe Stranger\u201d \u2014 Camus<\/p>\r\n

*9. \u201cThe Plague\u201d \u2014 Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

10. \u201cCaligula\u201d \u2014 Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

11. \u201cThe Fall\u201d \u2014 Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

12. \u201cThe Immoralist\u201d \u2014 Andr\u00e9 Gide<\/p>\r\n

13. \u201cThe Counterfeiters\u201d \u2014 Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

14. \u201cLafcadio\u2019s Adventures\u201d \u2014 Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

15. \u201cStrait is the Gate\u201d \u2014 Ibid. (is intensely interesting, poignant, sensitive: but I can\u2019t agree with it)<\/p>\r\n

16. \u201cA Hero of Our Times\u201d \u2014 Lermontov<\/p>\r\n

*17. \u201cAnti-D\u00fchring\u201d \u2014 F. Engels<\/p>\r\n

18. \u201cBarbary Shore\u201d \u2014 Norman Mailer<\/p>\r\n

19. \u201cThe White Negro\u201d \u2014 Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

20. \u201cGeneration of Vipers\u201d \u2014 Wylie (perhaps a bit over-verbose, but still valid)<\/p>\r\n

21. \u201cMan & Superman\u201d \u2014 G.B. Shaw<\/p>\r\n

*22. \u201cAndrocles & the Lion\u201d \u2014 Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

* especially enlightening, lucid, instructive.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Met [REDACTED] at the picket-line Saturday who has been in just about every county jail in the nation--protesting income-tax, atomic tests, segregation, \u2026; he is a \u201cCatholic anarchist\u201d.<\/p>\r\n

Lest everything in this whole letter seem narrow and dogmatic in its liberalism, let me state that I have a vitally healthy disrespect for absolutes, that every conclusion herein expressed is a generalization and as such is acknowledged to have exceptions and points of discontinuity, that I maintain as completely open a mind as possible, in the spirit of scientific method, and that I am always willing to completely change any point of view, given sufficient evidence. I am intolerant only of intolerance, there existing no absolute truth, no absolute morality, no absolute good.<\/p>\r\n

Well, really have to stop this time \u2014 must correct papers. Sorry to impose on your time to extent of 9 ½ pages, but it is good to get some of my beliefs down on paper sometimes, and also, I remember mother saying one time \u2014 (she will probably change her mind after reading this) that I hurt my parents more by remaining silent than by anything I can say. So\u00a0\u2014<\/p>\r\n

Auf Wiedersehen for now\u00a0\u2014<\/p>\r\n

Pete<\/p>\r\n

Would appreciate if you could answer questions in 1st<\/u><\/sup> letter \u2026<\/p>\r\n

(I bet this is one of the longest letters any parents have ever gotten from away-at-college offspring) hi-hi<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\u2026Side note about that signoff: This is the only time I\u2019ve ever encountered the phrase hi-hi<\/i> from Peter. It\u2019s a phrase that I sometimes use in greeting, but I\u2019m pretty sure that I picked it up in college; I don\u2019t think I ever heard Peter say it.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peters-books","category-peters-interests"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":70,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}