雙語達人:1979年 歷史的轉折點

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The 1970s seem destined to be a justly forgotten decade─a time of disco, stagflation and little of the social upheaval that defined the previous decade or the epic global changes of the one that followed. But Christian Caryl sees more than malaise when he looks at the 1970s; he sees one of history's great turning points. 'With the passage of time,' Mr. Caryl writes in 'Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century,' 'the 1970s begin to appear less like a sideshow than the main event.'

1970年代似乎註定要成爲一個被人遺忘的十年──一個經濟滯脹、流行迪斯科舞的年代，沒有之前十年那麼明顯的社會動盪，也沒有之後十年史詩般的全球鉅變。然而克里斯蒂安•卡里爾(Christian Caryl)在看待1970年代時，看到的不僅僅是萎靡不振；他看到了歷史上最偉大的轉折點之一。“隨着時間的流逝，”卡里爾在《奇怪的叛道者：1979與21世紀的誕生》(Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century)一書中寫道，“1970年代開始顯得更像是一場主要賽事，而不是一次穿插表演。”

As the title of Mr. Caryl's book suggests, his focus is 1979─a year that brought Iran's Islamic revolution, the siege of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the emergence of four leaders who, he argues, changed the course of history: Margaret Thatcher, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Deng Xiaoping and Pope John Paul II.

正如卡里爾的書名所示，他關注的焦點是1979年──這一年伊朗爆發了伊斯蘭革命、美國駐德黑蘭大使館被包圍、蘇聯入侵阿富汗、另有四位改變了歷史進程的領導人嶄露頭角，他們是瑪格麗特•撒切爾(Margaret Thatcher)、伊朗宗教領袖霍梅尼(the Ayatollah Khomeini)、鄧小平和教皇約翰•保羅二世(Pope John Paul II)。

It is hard to imagine figures as different as these or a year quite as grim as 1979, but suspend your disbelief for a moment. Mr. Caryl makes a fairly compelling case that this was a year when history made a sharp turn and that each leader set in motion the seismic changes that came to shape our world today: the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of China and the emergence of radical Islam. In 1979, Mr. Caryl says, 'the twin forces of markets and religion, discounted for so long, came back with a vengeance.'

很難想象人物身份會有如此差異，也很難想象1979年會如此嚴峻，但是先把你的懷疑擱置一下吧。卡里爾提出了非常令人信服的觀點，他認爲這一年曆史來了一個急轉彎，每一位領導人都開始啓動翻天覆地的變革，形成了我們今天的世界格局：蘇聯的解體、中國的崛起以及激進伊斯蘭主義的出現。卡里爾說：“市場和宗教的雙重力量在被無視了太久之後開始絕地反擊。”

In January of that year, China's new paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, made a nine-day visit to the United States. He was not technically China's head of state (he never held that title), but President Jimmy Carter welcomed him to the White House with a state dinner. At the dinner, Deng found himself seated at a table with actress Shirley MacLaine, who had spent time in China working on a documentary extolling the virtues of Maoism during the bloody Cultural Revolution. She told Deng how wonderful it had been for her to meet a professor plowing a field on a collective farm. 'Deng looked at her scornfully . . . ,' Mr. Caryl writes. 'Professors, he told her, should be teaching university classes, not planting vegetables.'

就在那一年的一月，中國新的最高領導人鄧小平到美國進行了爲期9天的訪問。嚴格意義上說他不是中國的國家元首（他從來沒有擁有過那個頭銜），但是吉米•卡特(Jimmy Carter)總統在白宮舉辦了國宴歡迎他的到訪。在宴會上，鄧小平發現他與女演員雪莉•麥克雷恩(Shirley MacLaine)坐在同一桌。麥克雷恩曾在血腥的文化大革命期間到中國拍攝大力頌揚毛主義的紀錄片，她告訴鄧小平自己在集體農場見到種田的教授是多麼美妙的經歷。“鄧小平不以爲然地看了她一眼……，”卡里爾寫道，“他對她說，教授，應該在大學裏教書，不應該種菜。”

If Ms. MacLaine had done her homework, she would have known that Deng himself had been effectively banished during the Cultural Revolution and had come to power determined to modernize China. He wanted to affirm the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party─minus the communism. When he returned to China after his U.S visit, Deng said that he couldn't sleep for several nights as he wondered, 'How could China possibly catch up?' His answer was to unleash the market forces that were already transforming the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. His first moves were to allow private farming (result: a major increase in productivity) and to create special economic zones that would allow private business and even foreign investment.

如果麥克雷恩事前做過準備，她就會知道鄧小平自己在文革期間也曾被黜，他上臺執政後決心要使中國實現現代化。他想要肯定中國共產黨的絕對地位──淡化一點共產主義。當他結束訪美回到中國之後，鄧小平說他好幾個晚上都睡不着覺，因爲他在尋思“中國如何才能迎頭趕上？”他的答案是釋放業已改變着香港、新加坡和日本經濟的市場力量。他的第一步棋是放手發展私有農業經濟（結果：生產力得到極大提高），創立經濟特區，允許在經濟特區設立私營企業，甚至允許外商投資。

In May 1979, Chinese officials brought a group of visiting American businessmen to an undeveloped area in China near Hong Kong. The officials gestured out over the horizon to where China was planning to allow its first economic zone. 'All that the Americans could see,' Mr. Caryl writes, 'was the usual South China landscape: there were rice paddies, worked by peasants and their water buffalo.' In fact, the group was viewing a site that would become Shenzhen─today a city of more than 10 million people and home to one of the most lucrative manufacturing centers in the world.

1979年5月，中國官員帶領一隊到訪的美國商人前往距離香港不遠的一塊尚待開發的地區，官員們指着地平線，用手比劃中國計劃允許建立首個經濟區的地方。“在場的所有美國人能夠看到的，”卡里爾寫道，“這是典型的華南地貌：到處是農民和水牛耕種其間的稻田。”實際上，這羣人目睹的地方後來成了深圳──今天這座城市的人口超過了1,000萬，是世界上最賺錢的製造業中心之一。

While Deng was visiting the U.S., Margaret Thatcher was in London preparing to run for prime minister. By then, Britain's economy had slumped so badly that it had become the first developed nation to go to the International Monetary Fund for support. 'This was a humiliation of epochal proportions,' says Mr. Caryl. 'A country that had been at the heart of the Western economic and political system found itself reduced to the status of a banana republic.'

就在鄧小平訪美的時候，瑪格麗特•撒切爾正在倫敦準備競選首相。當時，英國經濟下滑之嚴重，英國成了第一個向國際貨幣基金組織(International Monetary Fund)尋求援助的發達國家。“這是一個奇恥大辱，”卡里爾說，“一個曾經是西方政治、經濟體制核心的國家發現自己淪落到香蕉共和國的地位。”

Making matters worse, in late 1978 and early 1979 the British suffered through a series of paralyzing labor strikes and high unemployment, giving the grocer's daughter an opening to campaign against Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan with the slogan, 'Labour Isn't Working.' But Thatcher was running against more than her opponent─her platform of privatization, spending cuts and self-reliance was a challenge to the views that had come to dominate both of Britain's political parties and, for that matter, most of the developed world.

雪上加霜的是，英國在1978年底和1979年初經歷了一系列讓經濟癱瘓的工人罷工以及高企的失業率。這給了這位雜貨店老闆的女兒一個機會，她打出了“工人沒有工作（工黨沒有作爲）”(Labour Isn't Working)的口號與工黨首相詹姆斯•卡拉漢(James Callaghan)競選。然而撒切爾不光是在和她的競爭對手較量──她爲私有化、削減開支和自主自立搭建的平臺對於已經主導了英國兩大政黨、其實也支配了大多數發達國家的觀點提出了挑戰。

The reigning ideology favored more government intervention into the economy and an expanding welfare state. 'The aim of the Thatcherite counterrevolution,' Mr. Caryl writes, 'was to dismantle the postwar consensus.' Thatcher's transformational moves─facing down the unions, selling off state-owned businesses─would come later, but the groundwork was laid with her first campaign as Conservative leader in 1979. Her win, Mr. Caryl argues, 'reflected a fundamental shift in British thinking.' As Labour's Peter Mandelson would say years later, 'We are all Thatcherites now.'

當時的執政理念傾向於讓政府更多地干預經濟並擴大國家福利。卡里爾寫道，“撒切爾逆革命潮流的目的是廢除戰後的共識政治。”撒切爾的轉型舉措──打壓工會、出售國有企業──會在晚一些時候推出，但是在她以保守黨領袖初次參加競選時就已經埋下了伏筆。她的獲勝，卡里爾說，“反映了英國思維的根本性轉變。”正如工黨的彼得•曼德爾森(Peter Mandelson)多年後所說：“我們現在都是撒切爾了。”

Another fundamental shift was under way elsewhere in Europe. With a puff of white smoke at the Vatican on Oct. 16, 1978, a Polish cardinal─Karol Jozef Wojtyla─was chosen as the first non-Italian pope in more than 400 years. Pope John Paul II had nothing to say on the economic theories being put into practice by Thatcher and Deng, but his June 1979 trip to his Polish homeland represented an even greater challenge to a reigning orthodoxy─specifically, the ideas underlying the Soviet empire.

歐洲另一個地方也在發生着根本性的變化。隨着一縷白煙於1978年10月16日在梵蒂岡升起，波蘭紅衣主教──卡羅爾•約瑟夫•沃伊蒂瓦(Karol Jozef Wojtyla)──成爲400多年來第一位非意大利教皇。對於撒切爾和鄧小平付諸實踐的經濟理論，教皇約翰•保羅二世沒有什麼可說的，但是1979年他的祖國波蘭之行卻是對一個在朝正統思想的更大挑戰──具體說來，就是蘇聯帝國統治下的思想。

Over the course of nine days, the pope gave 39 sermons attended by an estimated 11 million Poles. The church, not the state, organized these vast assemblies─a crucial experience that would be put to use in the Solidarity rallies that led to martial law in 1981 and, ultimately, to the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989.

在九天的訪問行程中，教皇主持了39場佈道，參加佈道的波蘭人估計達1,100萬。組織這些大型集會的是教堂而非政府──這是一次十分重要的經驗，團結工會(Solidarity) 後來運用這些經驗舉行集會，導致波蘭1981年實施軍事戒嚴，並最終在1989年導致東歐集團的瓦解。

The pope's message was a religious one, of course, but it was also a rebuke to Marxist doctrine. 'Dear brothers and sisters,' the pope said in one sermon, 'do not let yourselves be seduced by the temptation to think that man can fully find himself by denying God, erasing prayer from his life and remaining only a worker, deluding himself that what he produces can on its own fill the needs of the human heart.' As Mr. Caryl points out: 'Never before had a Communist Party in the Soviet bloc endured such a direct public challenge to its ideological and informational hegemony.'

教皇傳達的自然是宗教訊息，但它也是對馬克思主義學說的譴責。“親愛的兄弟姐妹，”教皇在一次佈道中說，“不要讓自己受人蠱惑，認爲否定上帝、在生活中消滅禱告、只做一名勞動者人就可以充分發現自我，讓自己誤以爲自己製造的東西可以自動滿足人類內心的需求。”就像卡里爾指出的：“在蘇聯集團裏從來沒有哪個共產黨容忍過對其意識形態和信息霸權這樣直接公開的挑戰。”

In January 1979, a very different revolution was taking part in Iran. The rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Republic of Iran not only deposed a corrupt American ally─the shah─but also represented the end of the leftist parties in Iran. The ayotallah and his followers had little use for godless Marxism, and the Soviet Union was as much an enemy for the ayotollah's followers as the U.S. A young Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was among the radical students who urged, without success, a siege of the Soviet embassy instead of the American one.

1979年1月，伊朗發生了一場迥然不同的革命。宗教領袖霍梅尼的上臺和伊朗伊斯蘭共和國(Islamic Republic of Iran)的成立不僅廢黜了一個腐敗的美國盟友──伊朗國王──而且也標誌着伊朗左翼政黨執政的終結。這位宗教領袖和他的追隨者不怎麼喜歡無神論的馬克思主義，對霍梅尼的追隨者而言，蘇聯與美國一樣是敵人。一位名叫馬哈茂德•艾哈邁迪-內賈德(Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)的年輕人就是激進的學生之一，他力主包圍蘇聯大使館而不是美國大使館，但沒有成功。

For the Soviet Union, the Islamic Revolution ushered into power an enemy of its enemy, but not a friend. For the United States, it was a wake-up call that the march of communism was not the only global threat. What nobody could predict was that the new threat would long outlive the old one.

對蘇聯而言，這場伊斯蘭革命(Islamic Revolution)讓其敵人的敵人上臺執政，但卻不是它的朋友。對美國來說，這場革命敲響了警鐘，共產主義的蔓延並不是唯一的全球威脅。大家沒能預料到的是，新威脅比舊威脅歷時更久。

But the broader effect of Khomeini's revolution was on the rest of the Islamic world. For the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire an overtly Islamic movement had seized political power. This achievement reverberated beyond Iran, inspiring even the country's natural enemies in the Arab Sunni world. 'After Khomeini, the Islamists did not just talk,' Mr. Caryl writes. 'They acted. The most potent legacy of the Islamic revolution in Iran was simply to show it could be done.'

然而霍梅尼革命更廣泛的影響產生在其它伊斯蘭世界。自從奧斯曼帝國覆滅以來，一場公然展開的伊斯蘭運動首次攫取了政治權力。這一成果產生的反響超出了伊朗之外，甚至對這個國家在遜尼派阿拉伯世界的宿敵起到了鼓舞作用。“霍梅尼革命之後，伊斯蘭教徒不再只停留在語言上，”卡里爾寫道，“他們行動了。伊朗伊斯蘭革命最有影響的遺產就是向人證明，革命是可以成功的。”

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December was also one of the major stories of 1979 and, like the others chronicled in 'Strange Rebels,' one that was historically significant in ways not apparent until later. The long, costly and ultimately fruitless war pushed the Soviet Union closer to collapse, helping to bring an end to the Cold War. It also helped set the stage for the next global conflict by providing a rallying point and training ground for militant Islam. After all, it was to fight the Soviets that Osama bin Laden first came to Afghanistan.

蘇聯12月入侵阿富汗也是1979年的主要歷史事件之一。就像《奇怪的叛道者》中記錄的其它事件一樣，它的歷史重要性要在事後才顯現出來。這場曠日持久、代價高昂、最終無果的戰爭將蘇聯進一步推到了崩潰的邊緣，促進了冷戰的結束。這場戰爭爲伊斯蘭武裝分子提供了集結點和訓練場地，因而爲下一場全球衝突創造了條件。畢竟，奧薩馬•本•拉登(Osama bin Laden)首次到阿富汗是爲了與蘇聯人戰鬥。

'Strange Rebels,' though engagingly written, is occasionally repetitive, and Mr. Caryl's effort to craft a coherent narrative out of a series of disparate and chaotic events is at times a bit forced. But the reader comes away convinced that the forces set in motion, for good and for ill, in 1979 set the stage for the world we see today, in ways that were hard to see at the time. We'll no doubt face another turning point (maybe we already have?), and when we do, there is no guarantee that it will be any more obvious than it was in 1979.

《奇怪的叛道者》雖然文筆動人，但是偶爾也有贅述之處，卡里爾力圖將一系列互不相關、雜亂無序的事件進行有機連貫地敘述，這個嘗試有時有點牽強。但是讀者放下書時會相信，1979年啓動的大事，不管是好是壞，都爲我們今天看到的世界做好了鋪墊，而這一點當時是很難看到的。毫無疑問，我們還會面臨新的轉折點（也許我們已經在面對了？），當我們真的面對它的時候，沒人能保證它會比1979年的轉折更明顯。