FOREWORD
It is a rare and welcome phenomenon when someone renowned in some sphere of science or art crosses into the arena of social struggle and dares to speak out on matters of peace and justice. One thinks of Albert Einstein, incomparable in his field, becoming a vocal advocate of peace. Or Bertrand Russell, world-famous philosopher, drafting, along with Einstein, a “Manifesto” against war. Or Noam Chomsky, pioneering linguist, turning his intelligence toward the most trenchant criticism of militarism and war.
Dr. Bernard Lown is a distinguished member of that small circle, having first attained international prominence as a cardiologist and then becoming a founder of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. In the pages that follow, he recounts his journey, and an exciting one it is, in which the trajectory of his own life intersects with the most dangerous years of the nuclear age.
When IPPNW was founded in 1981, the “Doomsday Clock” of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which showed how close we were to nuclear war, was set at seven minutes to midnight. In a discouraging editorial, the editors of the Bulletin described the Soviet Union and the United States as “nucleoholics,” unable to shake an addiction to nuclear weapons. The following year, with Ronald Reagan as president, the Cold War rhetoric intensified and the Doomsday Clock was set at four minutes to midnight.
By 1984, relations between the two superpowers had reached a low point, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists told its readers: “Every channel of communications has been constricted or shut down; every form of contact has been attenuated or cut off.” The Doomsday Clock was now at three minutes to midnight.
It was in this forbidding atmosphere, against great odds, that Bernard Lown and his colleagues in IPPNW struggled to create citizen-to-citizen contact between American and Soviet doctors as a way of breaking through the wall of hostility between the two nations. Central to this effort to bridge the Cold War divide by human contact was the developing relationship between Dr. Lown and the distinguished Soviet cardiologist Dr. Eugene Chazov. The story of their friendship is an unreported piece of history, in which obstacles of ideology and bureaucracy had to be overcome to create a bond in the interests of a peaceful world.
Dr. Lown and his colleagues in IPPNW, persisting in their efforts to create a Soviet-American dialogue, encountered intense hostility in the press and the public. They were accused of being “pro-Soviet,” “anti-American,” “unpatriotic”—of consorting with “the enemy.”
In defiance of this vitriol, they persisted in speaking above the heads of the political leaders in Washington, to the public at large, pointing out, with the precision of scientists, the horrific consequences of nuclear war and suggesting the absolute necessity for dialogue instead of conflict. IPPNW was acting out the spirit of democracy, in which not governments but people are sovereign.
The participation of doctors was natural. They were healers. They were guardians of life. Physicians from all over the world joined IPPNW, soon numbering 135,000 doctors in forty countries.
The public was growing more and more aware of the threat of nuclear war. The movement for a nuclear freeze grew as city councils and state legislatures responded to public opinion, and even the US House of Representatives voted in favor of a freeze on nuclear weapons. The culmination of the movement was an enormous gathering of almost a million people in the summer of 1982 in New York City.
The efforts of IPPNW were given dramatic recognition in 1985 by the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, with Bernard Lown and Eugene Chazov invited to Oslo to receive the prize. In his acceptance speech, Dr. Lown recognized the obstacles to peace but urged his listeners to “hold fast to dreams.”
He conveys in this book the excitement of the occasion, including the famous incident when a member of the audience had a heart attack and the two cardiologists, Lown and Chazov, worked together to resuscitate the man.
There were repercussions to the awarding of the prize to IPPNW. The Wall Street Journal said that the Nobel Committee had hit “a new low.” (The Journal had not reacted similarly when Henry Kissinger, one of the promoters of the war in Vietnam, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.) Dr. Lown gives us a fascinating account of the details surrounding the award.
By this time, Mikhail Gorbachev was head of the Soviet Union, and there were new possibilities on the horizon. Dr. Lown recounts a fascinating conversation with Gorbachev where, with characteristic boldness, he raised the question of the exile of the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and also pressed Gorbachev to extend the Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing. On both counts, there was success.
While the book concentrates on the critical Cold War years of the 1980s, Dr. Lown concludes with a penetrating analysis of the foreign policy of the United States today. He points to the parallels with the Cold War—”terrorism” replacing “Communism” as fear grows into hysteria, resulting in irrational violence.
This is not just a remarkable history—personal and political—but also a call to action. It is a plea to readers to speak up, to act. It tells us that history takes a turn for the better only when citizens, refusing to wait for governments, decide they must themselves join the long march toward a peaceful world.
HOWARD ZINN
Author of A People’s History of the United States