About nuclear war, religious confusions multiply. In my own parish recently, Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Virginia, was asked about the most massive military build-up in history, which far exceeds even Hitler’s. The good bishop’s reply was saccharin sweet: We should “love the Russians.” In some transcendental sense, by this logic, Bishop Sullivan may have “loved Hitler.” That would not have been enough to end the concentration camps.
Our problem today, however, is not the Russians. As the heroic Sakharov has once again shown, in the recent letter he smuggled to Foreign Affairs, the Russian people know nothing about Soviet nuclear policies, nor about Afghanistan, nor about any of the decisions made in their name. So it is not hard to love the Russians. It is not difficult, even, to wish most urgently to help them revolutionize the horrible regime, worse than Somoza’s, which diminishes them. Our problem is to constrain a tiny band of tyrants, the Fourteen Families of the Politburo and the inner circle of the army, Party, and KGB ruling cliques.
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