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? 
RUSSELL: I still take exactly the same view. Up to the time of Stalin’s death, it was really quite horrible. Since then, I think, things have not been quite so bad—though I still don’t care for the Soviet system at all. I just don’t happen to like the American system either. The Americans tell you they stand for freedom: What they mean is that you must be quite willing to perish in order to be free in hell. In Russia, they punish you if you espouse capitalism. In America, they punish you if you espouse communism. What is the difference? But it is not worthwhile for us to go into the question of whether Russia or America has the better system. There are merits and demerits on both sides. The only important matter is to find some way of compromise between them, which will avoid war. At present, each has an entirely melodramatic conception of the other, and I think that the Russian government, in particular, encourages this view by not allowing Russian tourists to visit other countries except in small, organized groups. The same applies to Western visitors in Russia. This is a great pity. But there also seems to be some kind of fear in the West that if you get to know Communists, you will begin to admire them and finally be won over by them. Not a bit of it. There is simply no other way to achieve on each side an understanding of the real nature of the other. I would suggest—finally, in my appeal—that both Kennedy and Khrushchev consider the merits of a plan whereby the neutral nations would appoint a small, permanent body, well-informed on world affairs, which would investigate every dispute—such as Berlin, India or Cuba—and give an objective opinion on how it should be settled without favoritism to either side. Each settlement proposed, of course, would have to be, as far as possible, one that will be acceptable to the public in the countries concerned. Perhaps it could then develop into a permanent organization composed of three different groups: East, West and neutral. It seems to me that whichever side was more reasonable would win the support of the neutrals. Something of this sort has got to develop if we hope to reduce the deadly danger of war. Such a three-pronged body could be a step toward truly effective world government. But of course, that won’t be for a long time. At first, it would be merely advisory. After a century of advice, it might begin to acquire a measure of authority.

PLAYBOY: Do you consider it possible to strive for these same aims without waiting a century—by relying on the UN? 
RUSSELL: It can’t be done through the UN as it is now, because the UN does not embrace China. Its exclusion is a colossal stupidity. The veto also is an absurdity. Some nations, moreover, are very much more powerful and more populous than others—and you cannot invest a little nation with the same weight as a big nation. What you will have to do is divide the world into regions. You might, for example, have North America as one group, Europe as another, Russia as a third, China as a fourth and so on. You would have to work it out with a view to making it more or less equally balanced in population. And the various regions ought to be so constituted that their internal relations would be foremost in importance, and their relations to the outer world secondary in importance. I would leave each region complete autonomy for its own affairs. The world government would become involved only when there were contests or disputes with other regions. We shall not long survive without some such system.

PLAYBOY: On a personal level, why have you chosen to adopt a policy of civil disobedience as a means of promoting the cause of peace? 
RUSSELL: Purely to get attention. All the major organs of publicity are against us. It was extremely difficult to get any attention at all until we resorted to it. I have no views in principle, either for or against civil disobedience. It has always been practiced at different times and places. With me, it is purely a practical question of whether to do it or not, a method of propaganda.

PLAYBOY: Do you feel that the authorities have the moral right to prosecute and imprison those involved in such non-violent demonstrations for peace—as they have done to you? 
RUSSELL: I have no right to complain about being punished for breaking the law. I complain only if I am not permitted to break it. 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. If I suddenly took it into my head that I wanted to assassinate the Queen, then I should expect to be punished. You do that sort of thing with full foreknowledge of the consequences.

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. Aren’t such occasions always turned to their own advantage by the Communists? 
RUSSELL: On the contrary. Members of the Committee of 100 went to Moscow last summer and presented their point of view very effectively indeed. They got publicity both inside and outside of Russia. Many Americans have asked me why I don’t preach my ideas to the Russians as well as to the West, and the answer is that I do. 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. The question I wondered about was whether they had bowdlerized what I said. I have taken the trouble to get translations of what they printed and found that they have been completely faithful. They have not altered a scrap.

PLAYBOY: In addition to disseminating your views personally on both sides of the Iron Curtain, you were the initiator of a series of peace conferences, of which the first was held in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, between groups of scientists from East and West. What positive results do you feel have emerged from these symposia? 
RUSSELL: They have made a contribution toward informed opinion. For one thing, as a result, the test-ban negotiations came closer to success than they would otherwise have done. But the Pugwash meetings have not accomplished as much as one might have hoped. There was a lack of effective publicity. The public won’t listen to informed opinion. They want uninformed opinion.

PLAYBOY: In 1916, you were fined £100 by the Lord Mayor of London for circulating a pacifistic leaflet, which the law deemed “likely to prejudice the recruiting and discipline of His Majesty’s Forces.” Your intention, you said then, “was to procure, if possible, a change in the law, or failing that, to secure a change in administration.” Does the same intention motivate your current antiwar activities? 
RUSSELL: Yes. 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. They believe what I do not believe—that it is wicked to take part in any war, however righteous the cause. I supported the war against Hitler, and have become a pacifist today largely because of the destructiveness of nuclear warfare.

PLAYBOY: Speaking of this destructiveness in psychological terms, you have said that Kennedy, Khrushchev, Macmillan and other world leaders “are driven irrationally into policies which may effectively end human life on this planet.” If their judgment is so irrational, Lord Russell, what is the point of your attempts to dissuade them on rational grounds from precipitating war? 
RUSSELL: Even less is to be gained, I think, by the West’s continuing campaign to remake the East in its own image, and by the East’s unrelenting efforts to do the same with the West. The change—an attitude of mutual concession in an atmosphere of mutual understanding—has got to come from within each country, from within each individual. It is to this end that I persist in my appeal. When I made such an appeal to Khrushchev last October, the Cuban situation had changed the world situation very much for the worse, and I felt it necessary to make a last effort. His response was more than I could have hoped for. He showed himself willing to act cautiously in very difficult circumstances. I will continue to maintain communication with him for the purpose of facilitating a settlement.

PLAYBOY: Even if a nuclear conflict is avoided, either through disarmament or a continuing balance of power, Khrushchev has made it clear that future “peaceful coexistence” will entail a continuing nonviolent struggle on the ideological front and an intensified campaign of economic competition, which he predicts will eventually “bury” us. What posture do you feel the West should adopt in combating this threat? 
RUSSELL: Neither of these conflicting interests will be arbitrated equitably and amicably until we have a truly representative and authoritative world government. In the absence of one, it will be a tug-of-war, a question of who is stronger. A continued program of economic and educational aid to underdeveloped countries, meanwhile, would be a significant means of strengthening the Western position. It would be better, of course, if such aid were given cooperatively by both sides, but I don’t think that this is practical politics at the moment. In either case, it should be given not on cold war grounds, but simply because these people need help.

PLAYBOY: Do you share the apprehension of leading sociologists and economists concerning the implications of unchecked population growth in such overcrowded and underproductive areas as Africa, China, India and parts of Latin America? 
RUSSELL: The population problem has, in my opinion, been rather exaggerated. It can be solved by adequate birth control, and I don’t think that Catholic objections will prevent the increasingly widespread use and acceptance of contraceptives. After all, Roman Catholics represent only a small segment of the world’s population. India and China are the really big problem areas, and both are inclined to favor birth control.

PLAYBOY: Do you agree with many historians and social scientists who foresee that the next century will witness “an inexorable economic and societal evolution,” as one commentator has expressed it, “from the tradition of individual enterprise to the psychology of mass man?” 
RUSSELL: Societies comprised of small farmers, merchants and artisans will soon be anachronistic. Almost everybody is already part of something big. If we are to preserve individual liberty in this new world of huge firms and institutions, we must begin thinking in different terms from the tenets of classical liberalism. We will be able to deal with the “curse of bigness,” as Justice Brandeis called it, only by democratizing industry. I would like, for example, to see rules providing for the popular election of directors and managers in each industry. The important thing is to ensure the limitation and equitable division of power. At present economic power is too much concentrated in the hands of a few big men who control the lives of others to an undesirable degree. The Russians—in fact, socialists of all countries—make the cardinal error of believing that if you have a democratic state running industry, then it automatically follows that the industries themselves will be democratic. But to put state officials in place of capitalist officials changes nothing; they are still men, still wielding the same power. Unless state officials are made responsible to all us underlings, nothing will ever be achieved by nationalization.

PLAYBOY: So far we have been talking mainly of the issues which have preoccupied you during the last half-dozen years. But your life’s work has encompassed a multitude of causes. Which of them has mattered most to you? 
RUSSELL: Though they have mattered differently at different times, the question of international peace certainly transcends any I have ever been concerned with or any issue that previously excited me. But I have derived great satisfaction from many of my interests—matters of the mind more than anything else. Mathematical logic has been the source of perhaps my deepest intellectual gratification. It has given me very great pleasure to feel, in an important field of human knowledge, that I may have made some lasting contribution to man’s understanding of things that were once beyond his grasp, but which can now be comprehended and manipulated. I am also pleased with the aftermath of my campaign for women’s suffrage and my efforts to secure a more enlightened sexual morality and behavior. They have gone almost as well as I would have liked them to go. When I was young, one talked to a woman in a different language than when talking to a man. There was a cultivated unreality in intercourse between men and women, which I thought was very bad indeed. Today things are utterly different. Young people don’t realize how much change there has been. But we still need much more freedom and frankness in sexual instruction. Another matter to which I have always attached great importance in education is that schools ought not to teach nationalism. Every school, with hardly any exception, has as one of its objects the deception of children. They teach them patriotism, to salute the flag. But the flag is a murder symbol, and the state is a pirate ship, a gang of murderers who have come together. When they salute the flag, they salute the symbol of bloody murder. All this is perfectly clear, valid psychology.

PLAYBOY: On the occasion of your 90th birthday, Lord Russell, you said, “In old age, one becomes aware of what has, and of what has not been achieved.” Did you mean this observation to apply to the fruits of your own efforts in behalf of the various causes you’ve espoused? 
RUSSELL: Let me reply this way. Contrary to the customary pattern, I have gradually become more and more of a rebel as I have grown older. Since boyhood, my life has been devoted to two different objectives, which for a long time remained separate. It’s only in comparatively recent years that they have come together. One has been to discover whether anything could actually be known; this was a matter of philosophical inquiry. The other has been to do whatever I could to help create a happier world. I cannot claim that what I have written, said and done about social and political problems has had any great importance. It is easy to have an immense effect if you dogmatically preach a precise gospel such as communism. But I do not believe that mankind needs anything dogmatic. I think it essential to teach a certain hesitancy about dogma. Whatever you believe, you must have reservations. You must envisage the possibility that you may be wrong. I want to see individuals retain the kind of personal flexibility and initiative that they ought to have. This means that they cannot, and must not, be forced into a rigid mold. In my lifetime, freedom—which once seemed to be gaining ground—has come to be regarded as weakness. When I was young, I thought the battle for tolerance had been won. But more recently we have reverted back to the intolerance of the great religious wars. And when I was young, I set out with the belief that love—free and courageous love—could conquer the world. I perhaps thought that the road to a free and happy world would be shorter than it has turned out to be.

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? 
RUSSELL: It is something more. There is not anything to stop it from coming to pass except our own silliness—a silliness forced upon us by an education that teaches us that our country is vastly better than any other, and that in all respects it is always in the right. It would not be difficult to build a peaceful world if people really wanted it. It is certainly worthwhile to live and act and do what one can to bring it about. I haven’t changed my earlier views in that respect. I still believe exactly what I said when I was 80, when people were asking me much the same question. 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. These things I still believe. So you can see that the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.