But the Alam diaries also reveal his increasing megalomaniacal delusions as he was spoiled by international success, domestic flattery and oil wealth. In 1971, in a £100 million folly of imperial hubris and French catering, he chose to celebrate not the Persian relationship with Islam but the 2500th anniversary of the Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great: these Persepolis parties damaged his reputation further. However the shah—now at the point of his greatest power and success—was actually secretly suffering from cancer. Furthermore, the very success of his reforms—in education, in the economy, in land reform—had planted the seeds of his destruction: a poverty-stricken middle class with educational pretensions but resentment of imperial cronies and their corruption; students and liberals tortured by SAVAK; thousands of ex-peasants who had moved to Teheran to enjoy the new boom only to be forgotten in vast slums, where they were co-opted and cared for by Islamic preachers and organizations; and a determined and organized movement of Islamic Shiite fundamentalism under the control of the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini. The inept Jimmy Carter undermined the shah further with his comments on human rights in Iran. When the riots and protests intensified in late 1978, the Shah was oddly listless and distracted, lacking the will to order a full crackdown: he simply did not wish to shed any more blood. In early 1979, as he lost control of the streets, the shah flew away “on holiday,” never to return. Pursued by the new Iranian regime, betrayed by the Americans and forced to move from country to country as he died of cancer, his end was a Shakespearean tragedy. The shah had appeared magnificently powerful and secure. His rule was clearly flawed both in his personality and his repression but his intentions were good and compared with the monstrous brutality of the Islamic Republic that came after him, he was a paragon.
JOHN PAUL II
1920–2005
His name became part of our history, his thoughts will be an always present inspiration to build … a more peaceful world for all of us.
Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, on the death of John Paul II
In 1978 the Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian pontiff for 455 years. During his long tenure, he became a hero of the struggle for freedom over tyranny. He was a champion of liberty in eastern Europe, particularly in his native Poland, and a supporter of oppressed people all over the world.
A tireless traveler and a master of modern media, John Paul II was a relentless critic of totalitarian tyranny and of the inequalities created by materialism. He strove to build bridges between the Catholic Church and the Jewish and Islamic peoples. And in old age he battled bravely against illness and frailty, dying a truly iconic spiritual leader for people throughout the world.
As a young man in Poland, Wojtyla knew the harsh reality of totalitarian rule. After the Nazis invaded his country in 1939, he was forced to take on menial work, such as laboring in a limestone quarry. It was a time when the Vatican under Pope Pius XII failed to show moral leadership and equivocated over Nazi oppression in Poland and elsewhere in occupied Europe. Wojtyla put his life at risk to smuggle Jews out of Poland and was placed on a Nazi death list. Fortunately he escaped detection during a Gestapo raid on the Archbishop of Kraków’s house in 1944 and survived the Second World War.
In 1946 Wojtyla was ordained as a priest. He rose rapidly through the Church ranks to become archbishop of Kraków in 1963 and a cardinal in 1967. By this time he was established as one of the most important religious figures in Poland, where he was frequently at odds with the communist authorities. He was no unthinking firebrand, but he was more than willing to stand up to the authorities, as when he supported industrial workers in Nowa Huta in their efforts to build a new church.
Wojtyla’s profile increased rapidly at the Vatican, where he was a trusted adviser to Paul VI. So when Paul and his successor, John Paul I, both died in 1978, it was he who won a tight ballot of the cardinals. At the age of just fifty-eight he became pope.
International attention was lavished upon the first non-Italian pope for nearly half a millennium. This suited John Paul II, who set about spreading a global message of freedom for those in need. On his first foreign trip, to Mexico, he spoke up for the unemployed and oppressed, though he held back from advocating political regime change.
After bringing great pressure to bear on the authorities, in 1979 John Paul was permitted to return to Poland, becoming the first reigning pope to visit a communist country. Announcing his arrival as a “pilgrim,” he was given a rapturous welcome that was broadcast around the communist world. The sight of crowds chanting “We want God” caused an international sensation. Having shaken up the communist authorities, John Paul then visited a number of countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain. In Ireland he denounced sectarian violence and terrorism, and in America he spoke passionately against the selfishness of consumerism and capitalism.
In 1981 John Paul was shot at close range in Rome by a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Ağca. The pope had fiercely criticized communism, and it later emerged that the gunman had connections to the Bulgarian secret police, and therefore to the Soviet KGB. The bullets missed his vital organs by millimeters, which he took as a sign from God to continue his work. He publicly forgave his attacker.
Throughout the 1980s John Paul continued his spiritual opposition to communism. After the peaceful revolution of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev—who admitted that without John Paul II there would have been no such speedy end to communism—paid a humble visit to the pontiff in Rome, opening diplomatic relations between most of the former Soviet capitals and the Vatican.
During the next decade John Paul took on the task of extending the hand of peace to the Jewish and Islamic peoples. He allowed the first mosque to be built in the Vatican, and in 1993 he signed an agreement to open relations with Israel. In 2000 he made a high-profile trip to the Holy Land and visited a Holocaust memorial. He also promoted many cardinals from the developing world.
Throughout his long pontificate John Paul stood up for freedom with unwavering resolve. His inspiring voice carried huge authority. His condemnation of Paraguay’s dictator Alfredo Stroessner helped to bring down the latter’s regime, while a speech opposing the death penalty led to its abolition in Guatemala. An appearance on Italian television led to a Mafia don surrendering himself.
Pope John Paul II was generally inflexible over doctrine, remaining doggedly conservative in matters such as the ordination of women and the use of contraception, even in the face of Africa’s AIDS epidemic. Nevertheless, he will be remembered as one of the most outstanding popes in history. To the end he was an inveterate opponent of oppression and inequality. This man of peace used his position nobly and made the papacy relevant again—even for non-Christians. The first steps have been taken to canonizing John Paul.
SAKHAROV
1921–1989
The party apparatus of government … cling tenaciously to their open and secret privileges and are profoundly indifferent to the infringement of human rights, the interests of progress, security, and the future of mankind.
Andrei Sakharov, memorandum to Leonid Brezhnev (March 5, 1971)
Andrei Sakharov, the physicist who was once called the Father of the Soviet H-bomb, became the most prominent political dissident in the world, protesting against the evils and contradictions of Soviet totalitarianism. He represents both the peaks of Russian science and intellectual achievement and the courage of an individual to stand up to rampant tyranny. That stand led to rejection, maltreatment, exile and hardship. Yet, unlike most dissidents, Sakharov survived to see his efforts bear fruit.