Six years have elapsed since then without a noticeable decline in global strife and division. PLAYBOY: You were recently threatened with expulsion from the Labor Party for urging Western representatives to attend a Moscow “peace” conference and state their views. I have taken the trouble to get translations of what they printed and found that they have been completely faithful. Almost everybody is already part of something big. PLAYBOY: Have your views changed since you returned from a trip to Russia in 1920 to write one of the earliest and sharpest criticisms of the Soviet regime? They both have abominable systems. . What I am saying is this: When two great powers disagree about anything—it doesn’t matter what—they must find a way to settle it somehow by arbitration or by negotiation, not by war or threat of war. Here the Russians have been somewhat aggressive; they are trying to secure a change in the status of West Berlin by what amounts to threats of war. I recognize that if you go outside the law you cannot complain if it is made a little awkward for you, but it ought to be possible to do so. Thirdly, I would strongly recommend an agreement on both sides not to teach that the other side is wicked. But it is not worthwhile for us to go into the question of whether Russia or America has the better system. A short chronology of the major events in Russell’s life is asfollows: 1. RUSSELL: The population problem has, in my opinion, been rather exaggerated. There are military commanders in power on both sides, and their vested interest is in exercising that power. We welcome all forces which stand on positions of peace. And he was a famously committed atheist, using his formidable rhetorical skills to prosecute that cause. There is not anything to stop it from coming to pass except our own silliness—a silliness forced upon us by an education which teaches us that our country is vastly better than any other, and that in all respects it is always in the right. If the long and stormy life of Bertrand Arthur Russell can be said to possess any unifying thread, it is an enduring attitude of passionate skepticism, a lifelong refusal to accept any truth as immutable, any law as infallible or any faith as sacred. 4. The subject of sex is so surrounded by superstitions and taboos that I approach it with trepidation. Members of the Committee of 100 went to Moscow last summer and presented their point of view very effectively indeed. PLAYBOY: So far we have been talking mainly of the issues which have preoccupied you during the last half-dozen years. At the moment of my grandfather's birth the French Revolution was just getting under way." RUSSELL: No, not at present. RUSSELL: This is a question for experts, though all experts are biased. Listen to Bertrand Russell, the English Voltaire, Beethoven’s triumphant career was a struggle against adversity, A history of globalisation in the steam age, The long, ongoing hunt for the Antichrist. You do that sort of thing with full foreknowledge of the consequences. Full credit must be given to him for this. I would suggest further that the likelihood of war could be lessened immeasurably if both sides would place a great deal more emphasis on the ghastly destructiveness of war. A continued program of economic and educational aid to underdeveloped countries, meanwhile, would be a significant means of strengthening the Western position. PLAYBOY: Do you feel now that this dream of a free and happy world was perhaps little more than the kind of utopian vision which has always inspired man in youth—and so often disenchanted him in maturity? That year has passed, and nuclear holocaust has not yet overtaken us. In fact, military people carry much more weight in the making of policy than does public opinion. What is the difference? They believe what I do not believe: that it is wicked to take part in any war, however righteous the cause. They are both wicked. It was extremely difficult to get any attention at all until we resorted to it. Lord Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970) speaking from the plinth of Nelson's Column. The same applies to Western visitors in Russia. He acted with great restraint in a crisis of the first magnitude. I should say simply to both men: “You seem anxious to destroy the world, to create vast misery and total destruction. The question I wondered about was whether they had bowdlerized what I said. "An Interview with Woodrow Wyatt, Member of Parliament and BBC Commentator" ©1962 Caedmon Records Then, of course, I was defending the rights of conscientious objectors in World War I. I do not wholly share their views, but I felt, and still feel, that one should respect their convictions. Since boyhood, my life has been devoted to two different objectives which for a long time remained separate. The first interviewee in the magazine to comment on foreign political tension was British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who was interviewed in its March 1963 issue (41-52), only a few months after the dangerous escalation during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. There was a lack of effective publicity. Playboy interviews were one platform that gave these feared enemies opportunities to explain their views to American audiences and present overt critiques of US foreign policy. If the long and stormy life of Bertrand Arthur Russell can be said to possess any unifying thread, it is an enduring attitude of passionate skepticism, a lifelong refusal to accept any truth as immutable, any law as infallible or any faith as sacred. I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social: personal, to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle, to allow moments of insight to impart wisdom in mundane times; social, to envision in imagination an attainable society in which the individual can grow freely, in which hate and greed and envy will die because there is nothing to nourish them. When they salute the flag, they salute the symbol of bloody murder. I cannot claim that what I have written, said and done about social and political problems has had any great importance. The truth is that neither is wickeder than the other. PLAYBOY: What do you believe was the effect of your own personal intervention with Khrushchev—via your much publicized cable appealing for Russian prudence in responding to the American blockade of Cuba? It is certainly worthwhile to live and act and do what one can to bring it about. When I was young, one talked to a woman in a different language than when talking to a man. After all, Roman Catholics represent only a small segment of the world’s population. RUSSELL: They have made a contribution toward informed opinion. RUSSELL: It can’t be done through the UN as it is now, because the UN does not embrace China. But I have derived great satisfaction from many of my interests—matters of the mind more than anything else. They are diabolical inventions calculated to tell lies and to deceive. They have not altered a scrap. The public won’t listen to informed opinion. But your life’s work has encompassed a multitude of causes. The veto also is an absurdity. But I could give you a minimum estimate. Subjects range from science and religion on side A, to “taboo morality” and “fanaticism” on side B. Certainly the Russians disagree with much of what I say, but I have found it just as easy—or as difficult— to get publicity for my views in the Soviet press as in the English press. Despite his Victorian upbringing, Russell’s views and legacy are remarkably contemporary. There is no time to consider. In October 1961—after a decade of mounting personal outcry against the unabating arms race—Russell warned his uneasy listeners at a ban-the-bomb rally in London’s Trafalgar Square that they would be lucky if any of them were alive in a year’s time. Then there is escalation—a little war growing into a big one. But we still need much more freedom and frankness in sexual instruction. They teach them patriotism, to salute the flag. I think it essential to teach a certain hesitancy about dogma. Aren’t such occasions always turned to their own advantage by the Communists? But the Pugwash meetings have not accomplished as much as one might have hoped. The only important matter is to find some way of compromise between them which will avoid war. In a debate broadcast by the BBC in 1948 Russell came up against Frederick Copleston, a Jesuit priest, in one of the listening public’s earliest exposures to the philosophical arguments against God. In the Playboy interview, Russell criticized both the Soviet and US governments and called for neutral third-party countries to solve the conflict and neutralize the East-West opposition.

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