Hail Warrior Arkhipov!
“Out of every hundred men, ten shouldn’t be there, eighty are are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.” (Attributed to Heraclitus)
Yesterday, I read a curious post on Facebook about a Russian submariner who was reputed to have saved the world from nuclear armageddon. At my last count, it was "liked" by some 16,000 readers and shared by another 17,000.
It is a truly inspiring story about a man who used calm, cool reason to resolve conflict. Here I quote the article I read on Facebook (verbatim):
"50 years ago today, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, second-in-command Vasilli Arkhipov of the Soviet submarine B-59 refused to agree with his Captain's order to launch nuclear torpedos against US warships and setting off what might well have been a terminal superpower nuclear war.
The US had been dropping depth charges near the submarine in an attempt to force it to surface, unaware
it was carrying nuclear arms. The Soviet officers, who had lost radio contact with Moscow, concluded that World War 3 had begun, and 2 of the officers agreed to 'blast the warships out of the water'. Arkhipov refused to agree - unanimous consent of 3 officers was required - and thanks to him, we are here to talk about it. His story is finally being told - the BBC is airing a documentary on it. Raise a glass to Vasilli Arkhipov - the Man Who Saved the World."
I was interested in this story and I wanted to learn more. This guy sounded like my kind of hero. He said, "nyet" at the right time and saved the world as result. He was a warrior, who prevented war through his calm demeanor and reasoned argument.
But unfortunately, my investigation led to disappointment.
I found lots of links to this story throughout the internet. It is a story that appeals to our imagination and beliefs about good men and bad men. Consequently, there are many sources that proliferate the heroic actions of Arkhipov.
An excellent PBS documentary, titled The Man Who Saved the World, that aired in October this year even includes glowing testimony from Arkhipov's colleagues and his widow. It is a well researched documentary and it portrays the intensity of the event with artful dramatizations.
I also read a few declassified U.S. Navy reports and academic accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis that substantiated the main details of the event.
Among the facts, we know that a group of Russian submarines were tracked and one was "attacked" by U.S. warships that used training depth charges to signal the submarine to surface. The Russian submarine did carry nuclear armament and it only required three officers to consent to launch of the "special weapon." These events have been confirmed by several sources. If the Russian submarine did in fact, launch a nuclear torpedo into the U.S. fleet, there would be a likely military reaction at the height of the Cold War. So this much of the story is plausible.
None of the interviewed subjects of the PBS documentary witnessed the conflict between the Russian submarine captain and the hero Arkhipov.
If you seek out the sources of this story (apart from the interviews in the PBS documentary), you will find that every link to the role of Vasilis Arkhipov stretches back to a single 122-page book from 2002 by Alex Mozgovoi, called, "The Cuban Samba of the Quartet of Foxtrots."
And the original Mozgovoi account of the Arkhipov story is based on one interview in 2002 with eyewitness survivor Vadim Orlov.
According to Orlov, submarine captain Valentin Savitsky had a temper tantrum during an extremely stressful event (cut off from communications, exhausted, extreme heat where crew members were fainting, and constant explosions above from U.S. depth charges) and he yelled, "Maybe the war has already started up there while we are doing somersaults down here. . .We're going to blast them now. We will die but we will sink them all. We will not disgrace our navy."
So far, so good. These are strong words that make pretty exciting reading. I can just picture the cramped, stifling hot command centre where the captain has lost his cool. Now according to the myth, a political officer consented to the captain's order and only Arkhipov has the refuses to launch.
But this is all that Orlov has to say in the matter, "But we did not fire the torpedo - Savitsky was able to rein in his wrath." Then Orlov notes that Savitsky consulted Arkhipov and political officer Ivan Maslennikov, and decided to surface.
In Orlov's account, Arkhipov is as much a hero as Maslennikov (the third officer required to provide consent to launch) and it sounds as if Savitsky himself might not have been truly serious.
There is no direct evidence that Maslennikov provided consent.
As another factor to the story, we have to remember that Orlov's account came in 2002, some forty years after the event in question. To confound matters further, Russian sailors have an established tradition of leg-pulling or elaboration in their story telling, called "vranyo," which throws further question into Orlov's account.
As a further element that affects our interpretation of the events, Arkhipov died of radiation poisoning in 1998, linked to a time he had previously acquitted himself well aboard another submarine in 1960 during a tragic accident that ultimately killed 30 members. Which leads to further credence to adopt him as a hero.
The interviews with retired Russian sailors and the widow of Arkhipov for the PBS documentary support the concept of Arkhipov as a hero. Perhaps he shared his account with these people, perhaps they conjectured on their own. Perhaps they followed the lead of the interviewer.
My point is this, we have created a hero out of Arkhipov for all the right reasons. But the basis of the story is likely a fabrication of sorts. What conversation actually occurred between those three officers is a mystery. There is simply not enough evidence to substantiate the claim that Arkhipov saved the world (though he well might have done so).
More accurately, this story illustrates that there was a fragile moment in October 1962 when a nuclear war could have started if the Russian Naval system had not relied upon three officers to consent to a nuclear-weapon launch.
However, what good does my research prove? Who cares if Arkhipov did or did not stave off nuclear war? In fact aren't we better off to read about this story, assume the veracity of the account and learn from the moral of the tale - that good men must speak up to stop evil acts?
For some reason I'm not convinced. Let me elaborate my argument a little further.
Hail Warrior Heraclitus!
Do you recall the quote I included at the beginning of this article, about the one warrior who will bring the others back? I've included it again here on a sign at a firefighter training facility to reinforce my point.
I found a powerful sentiment in this quote. I've seen it a couple of times now and I read it again on a website run by a group of people whom I really respect called Fire Service Warrior.
As it so happens, I read that quote and it resonated with me. Here is a concept of "the warrior" not as fighter but as a protector of the larger group - kind of like the Russian sailor Arkhipov. I thought about it and said, "I want to be like that guy, the warrior guy, that's pretty cool."
I even felt inspired to train a little harder as a firefighter and put more energy into my workouts to insure I can carry my weight within my company. My thinking ran along the lines that if I'm not "the warrior," at least I can be counted among the other nine useful guys out of a hundred, right?
So I did some research to see what else Heraclitus had written. Maybe more of his words would help me get through some daunting chin-ups or dreary medical readings.
The problem is that Heraclitus didn't write that quote. It's pretty easy to prove Heraclitus didn't author these words because only 125 fragments of his writing exist today, and most of those are no more than a sentence (compiled by dutiful classicists - thank you scholars).
So I read pretty much every remaining word that Heraclitus wrote - partially because I was doggedly trying to prove a point, and partially because he is an interesting writer.
And if you read even a handful of these quotes, you realize in a heartbeat that Heraclitus does not sound like an arrogant general who scoffs about 90 out of a hundred of his soldiers.
Heraclitus, whom Aristotle called "the Obscure," was a Pre-Socratic philosopher who wrote around 2500 years ago and is probably most famous for his sentiment about how you can't step in the same river twice.
He is a pretty interesting thinker and I enjoyed reading snippets of his writing.
For example, "Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men having barbarian
souls."
But then the next question is, if Heraclitus didn't write those words about "the warrior" among his soldiers, then who did and how did this false attribution occur?
A group of geek scholars (yes geek, not Greek) even tried to track down the source of this falsehood and traced the quote back to 2003, with no older references. The trail ran cold and the scholars probably moved on to other things like beer pong.
I imagine that someone either penned those words and wanted to make themselves sound more convincing by adding a real philosopher, or some "great man" really did write this epigram once upon a time and a student got the quote wrong (maybe it came from the movie 300?), but I've searched for hours and found no-one but Heraclitus.
But then the next question creeps in - What if it doesn't matter?
So what if some college student penned those words for an essay in 2003 instead of a Greek guy living on the Turkish coast in 500 bc.
I read those words and they meant something to me. They even made me feel more motivated to train and excel at my job as a firefighter. If the words are inspirational, who cares who actually penned them?
But if you stop and analyze the sentiment of the quote carefully, the underlying message is a blatant rallying cry for arrogance and misguided beliefs regarding individual superiority.
The reader must then either assume they are akin to the lone warrior among a flock of sacrificial "sheep" - the one-in-a-hundred superman, or accept that they are an inadequate shadow of that superior being.
And, if the reader has a modicum of introspection and healthy self-doubt, one can't help but to question whether they would be most likely counted among the 99%.
Maybe that's why I felt compelled to find the author and read more of their work - to clarify this line of thinking.
But then another chunk of information fell into my lap that puts a tidy bow on this whole long-winded discussion - and I do apologize for taking this long to make my point.
Heroes Versus Pit Crews
While I have been ruminating about Russian sailors and Greek philosophers - who have each shown examples of heroic strength of character - I've also been reading a book on a completely different and seemingly unrelated subject. But everything began to gel together this morning.
Last night, I finished reading the book, Complications; A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, by Atul Gawande.
It was an outstanding book with an underlying sense of compassion, humility and thoughtfulness. As a surgeon, Dr. Gawande described the difficult decisions doctors must make, he investigated systemic problems within the medical system and he explored natural human fallibility.
In the last chapter, he shared a story about a difficult diagnosis based on a flawed hunch that involved dramatic consequences for a young patient. I was deeply moved.
Consequently, as soon as I completed reading the book, I began researching about the author and I stumbled on a video of him discussing the current state of medicine (I've attached a link below - but please bear with me for a few more minutes and watch it later).
In this video lecture, titled How Do We Heal Medicine, Dr. Gawande discussed the concept that we as a society have encouraged doctors to assume authority and autonomy when a systemic approach appears to have more benefits.
He cited research that points to problems with misdiagnosis, economic inefficiency and poor patient outcomes as result of a poorly organized medical system. He argued that this system had evolved over the past hundred years partially out of misguided beliefs in physician autonomy and technical specialization without coordination.
And at one point, he said, "We have trained, hired and rewarded people to be cowboys when what we needed was pit crews, pit crews for patients."
For a few minutes, I was unable to hear anything else he said. I had to stop the video and ponder his remark.
Remember that warrior quote (not by Heraclitus) and the mythic tale of the Russian sailor. Both of those stories sing the praises of "the cowboy," the one person who through daring or superior attribute, somehow leads the tribe to safety.
Our culture is full of these stories. Every blockbuster Hollywood action hero is cut from this cloth in one way or another. This myth is a story that resonates through our culture back through every story and belief in every language from Rambo to Gilgamesh and Batman to Beowolf.
As wonderful as each of those stories are, they encourage people to think of the world in terms of special heroic people (the one in a hundred) and those victims who reside in the normal herd (along with the odd villain who might bring about nuclear Armageddon).
These are old stories that cling to the very tendons and cartilage of our culture. But we must remember that they are stories, only one way to interpret and organize the abounding confusion in the world around us.
If one buys into the myth of the hero, then one must adopt a belief in some kind of superior person - and a slew of extras who simply fill the canvas.
Maybe you put someone on a pedestal. Maybe the details of a story get embellished with re-telling. Maybe one person gets a larger share of credit for a team effort.
Through a bit of delusion and some hard work, you might even convince yourself that you are the one-in-a-hundred warrior, that you will "bring the others back."
Through a bit of soul searching, I've recognized firsthand that the kind of arrogance that goes along with driving oneself to train harder, become a superior performer and lead by example can be a dangerous trap.
Someone must climb on the shoulders of a team if they want to appear remarkable. And no-one really wants anybody to climb on to their shoulders (foot slipping into ear) to steal the thunder from team efforts.
To step away from metaphors for a second, if I try to make myself into a hero, by default you would be pushed into the role of victim, hero or extra and you will likely resent my behaviour.
After all, you (yes, you the reader) are the hero of your own adventure, right.
Conversely, you (still you, the reader) might compare yourself against a myth and find yourself lacking (some thing I, the writer, can also feel deep in my soul). Can it be healthy or inspiring to imagine yourself as one of the 90 soldiers who do not rank merit? Worse still to picture oneself as the half-crazed submarine commander ready to push the world into WWIII (but if you recall, he too had a heroic tale to tell about upholding the honor of the Soviet navy - "We will not disgrace our navy").
Think about reality. As much as we are enticed by siren's songs about heroes and warriors, this is not the world we live in on a day-to-day basis. Tales of heroes and warriors tend to come from embellishment, false attribution and simplistic thinking.
To take warriors as an example, we know that in this modern era, rockets and bullets can't distinguish the superior warrior from undisciplined chaff (even U.S. Navy SEALS are martyred). Before bullets were invented, there were arrows, infection, disease and all manner of things that would kill "superior" men and normal men without discrimination back through to the beginning of time. Is the superior "warrior," of whom we sings songs merely the lucky survivor?
In another version of warrior culture, I get a close up chance to see modern "heroes" in action since I work as a firefighter and paramedic. But I think to myself, have I ever seen an individual save a life alone or perform a rescue independently? Nope, it is always a group effort.
As Dr. Gawande said when he was wrapping up his the lecture about how to heal the modern medical system, "As individualistic as we want to be, complexity requires group success."
A paramedic might perform CPR and bring about resuscitation, but there is a partner who drives the ambulance, helping hands from firefighters and bystanders, a hospital full of nurses and doctors and orderlies and people who wash hospital dishes and make medical equipment in factories who all had a hand in saving that life.
And if you think about the Cuban Missile Crisis when Vasilis Arkhipov may have politely declined a nuclear launch, he didn't act alone. There may or may not have been another officer who shared his belief, naval instructors taught Arkhipov and Captain Satvinsky to respect a certain nuclear launch protocol, someone conceived of a fail-safe method requiring three officers to confirm a launch order, Russian officers were guided as children by educators and family members to behave in a certain way, etc.
Each one of these people could be the hero of the story - it depends on the point-of view.
In fact, there might not be a hero of the submarine story at all if Alex Mozgovoi hadn't interviewed Orlov and published his account of the episode in 2002 (later confirmed by other collaborators).
If I think about my personal experiences, I have to admit I've actually seen a few things I would call heroic but I've seen the people who committed those acts have good days and bad days. One days hero could be a villain the next, or simply part of the herd. As I said before, success in ventures generally seems to come from team efforts.
In the one event of heroics that jumps to my mind, I recall that the hero of the story perceived events in a completely different light from my perception of his actions. He saw himself as the cause of misfortune for his team by his lack of preparation and he said that he was guided by his specific geography, not by his own design when he played the warrior and "brought the others back."
Under scrutiny, this man is a normal man, part of the background like the rest of us, with his own foibles and strengths.
My point is that we should be careful about creating heroes. We should also be careful about creating a culture that reveres individual heroic actions over group efforts.
Personal choice will still ensure that we each have the potential for heroic actions. But I don't think it's healthy to set out to become a hero. Nor is it healthy to go creating heroes. This is a difficult paradigm to support on a personal level. And I suggest that you (the reader) check yourself when you slip into thoughts of heroics within your own life.
Maybe it is a sign of changing times. Maybe the world has become remarkably more complex than it was back in the 1960s when Russian submariners were contemplating whether or not to blow up the world with nuclear weapons (yes, my tongue is in my cheek), or back in 500 bc when Heraclitus was writing about how you can't step into the same river twice (instead of writing about warriors).
And now after all this research and writing, I hope I've become a different man than I was before I stepped into rivers of thought about Arkhipov, Heraclitus and Dr. Gawande. And it appears I will step into a different river tomorrow. Maybe it will be one where we celebrate the successes of the "pit crew" team over the cavalier efforts of the heroic individual.
"We should let ourselves be guided by what is common to all.
Yet, although the Logos (translated as: word, statement, reason, law, ratio, proportion, account) is common to all, most men live as if each of them had a private intelligence of his own." - Heraclitus (but don't trust me, verify it for yourself)
Sources for the Vasilis Arkipov part of the story:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB75/asw-II-16.pdf
http://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol13/tnm_13_3_1-19.pdf
http://books.google.ca/books?id=P-VNltHyq0sC&lpg=PA13&pg=PA13&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/episodes/the-man-who-saved-the-world-watch-the-full-episode/905/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208342/Soviet-submariner-single-handedly-averted-WWIII-height-Cuban-Missile-Crisis.html#ixzz27hZINymr
Sources for Warriors and Heraclitus:
http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Philosophy/heraclitus.pdf
http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=935.0
http://onviolence.com/?e=80
Sources for Atul Gawande:
http://www.ted.com/talks/atul_gawande_how_do_we_heal_medicine.html
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/atul-gawande-harvard-medical-school-commencement-address.html
