Einstein as a Jew and a Philosopher | by Freeman Dyson | The New York Review of Books 2017/3/6 11)07

Abolition was for him the only way to save mankind from the threat of nuclear destruction. He was not sure how abolition
could be achieved. Sometimes he spoke of a world government with power to stop nuclear activities in every country.
Sometimes he spoke of formal agreements between existing governments. Sometimes he spoke about abolishing war as
well as abolishing nuclear weapons. He understood that any abolition of war or of weapons would require a radical change
in our way of thinking.

The essential first step, before any abolition agreement could be effective, was to educate the public. The public and the
political leaders must understand that nuclear weapons were not only intolerably dangerous but also militarily useless.
Once these facts of life were clearly understood, there would be a fighting chance that an abolition agreement could work.
Einstein did whatever he could in his final years to educate the public.

In the last month of his life, he joined with Bertrand Russell to make a public statement that he did not live to see
published. Here are its concluding words:

In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons
threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the Governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge
publicly, that their purposes cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful
means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.

After the Russell-Einstein manifesto was published, there grew out of it an organization called the Pugwash movement,
bringing together scientists from East and West to discuss the problems of war and weapons. The name Pugwash came
from the small town in eastern Canada where the first meeting was held in 1957. Since that time, meetings have been held
in many countries, continuing up to the present day. The basic idea of the meetings is that science gives to scientists of all
countries a common language, so that they can understand one another even when talking about political and human
problems having little to do with science.

Politicians and diplomats have much greater difficulty in understanding one another. Scientists have long experience of
working together in an international enterprise that pays no attention to national or ideological differences. At the
beginning, Bertrand Russell himself presided over the Pugwash meetings. After Russell retired, the leadership was taken
over by Joseph Rotblat, a Polish nuclear physicist who worked at Los Alamos and became famous as the only scientist who
walked out of Los Alamos for reasons of conscience in 1944, when it became known that Germany did not have a serious
nuclear weapons project. General Leslie Groves let him go after he promised not to tell his friends the reason for his
departure. Rotblat ran the Pugwash meetings for forty years. He won the respect of all the participants and many of their
governments.

I attended several of the early Pugwash meetings under the auspices of Russell and Rotblat. At that time they were acting
as a valuable back channel for exchanging views between the American and Soviet governments, when the official
diplomatic channel was blocked by ideological disagreements. The two dominant personalities were Le Szilrd on the
American side and Vladimir Pavlichenko on the Soviet side. Szilrd was an old friend of Einstein from Einsteins Berlin
days. He wrote the letter that Einstein signed in 1939, warning President Roosevelt that nuclear weapons were a possibility,
that uranium was the crucial material for their manufacture, and that it was important to keep the rich uranium ores of the
Belgian Congo out of the hands of Hitler.

Szilrd had also tried in vain to deliver an appeal to President Truman in 1945, urging him to give Japan warning and an
opportunity to surrender before dropping nuclear bombs on Japanese cities. Pavlichenko was the KGB man on the Soviet
side, sent to Pugwash conferences along with the scientists to make sure that they did not deviate from the Soviet line. He
was highly intelligent and well informed about technical and political questions. He knew far more than the scientists about
the actions and intentions of his own government.

Szilrd immediately recognized Pavlichenko as the man to talk to when serious issues were discussed. Any proposal made
to Pavlichenko would reach high levels in the Soviet government. Szilrd had friends at high levels in the American
government, and so this unlikely pair, the Hungarian rebel and the KGB apparatchik, worked fruitfully together to carry
messages in both directions. Now, fifty years later, Pugwash meetings are carrying messages between Israel and hostile
Arab states in the Middle East, and between India and Pakistan in Asia. The hope expressed by Einstein is still alive, that

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