[We have taken the text of the following letter, and the introduction by Andrei Grigorenko, from the May 26 issue of Inprecor, a fortnightly news bulletin published by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.]
Inprecor's Comment
A paradox confronting those in the USSR who want to speak directly to Soviet citizens is that they are compelled to publish their documents abroad in order to have a small chance of their being read in their own country. Because of this, those who really favor socialist democracy must give these texts the broadest possible circulation, whatever their opinion of the content of the documents may be.
By not responding to the letter below, addressed to them by Pyotr Grigorenko in late 1975, the Communist parties of France, Italy, and Britain have demonstrated the gap between their words and deeds. In fact, after all their declarations about democratic rights, they accept that the texts of Grigorenko and other oppositionists are quietly filed away. With the same lethargy, they allow their own documents and statements to be censored (such as Berlinguer's speech to the last congress of the Soviet Communist Party) or simply ignored in the USSR. For how long will the French Communist Party consider it normal that Soviet citizens are kept ignorant of its famous "Charter on Democratic Rights"?
Grigorenko correctly accuses these parties of speaking out of both sides of their mouths, and he proves the accusation with much strength and finesse. He has paid for his denunciation of bureaucratic tyranny with years of imprisonment. But his real courage is in his not having renounced communism. In this sense, he represents a minority within the opposition in the USSR, currently weaker than that in the countries of Eastern Europe.
Nevertheless, in the isolation in which he finds himself, and because of the anti-Semitism scandalously exuded by the bureaucracy, against which it is the elementary duty of all communists to struggle mercilessly, Grigorenko has been led to adopt a completely false position on Zionism. His call for communists to support the "Jewish movement for immigration to their national homeland" is tragically contradictory on at least two counts. First, the Zionist movement and the state of which it is the expression and instrument have played, and still play, the role of direct oppressor of the Arab people, and especially its Palestinian component, in addition to acting as an imperialist beachhead in the Arab East. Thus, the Zionist movement and its state are leading perpetrators of one of the forms of oppression against which Grigorenko has tirelessly fought: the domination of history has amply nations. Second, demonstrated that Zionism is not the solution to the problem of Jewish oppression. Support to Zionism is wholly ineffective as a means of struggle against anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union or anywhere else and, especially in the case of the USSR, even tends to strengthen anti-Semitism by granting the bureaucracy a powerful argument: that the movement for the freedom of Jews in the Soviet Union is linked to a movement that supports imperialism and oppresses the Arabs.
The letter below, previously unpublished, has been in the possession of Pyotr Grigorenko's son Andrei, who has written the introduction to it.
Throughout all the years that my father, Pyotr Grigorenko, was imprisoned—first in an isolated cell in the special psychiatric hospital of Cherniakhovsk (a hospital located in the old buildings of the Insterburg prison in former East Prussia), and then in Psychiatric Hospital No. 5, about a hundred kilometers from Moscow-my mother and I did all we could to hasten his release. It goes without saying that we constantly questioned the doctors and administrators of these two institutions about the possible date of his release. On June 23, 1974, Aleksandra Koyemiakina, the head physician responsible for forced treatments in Hospital No. 5, told us "It is not going to happen right away. The commission assigned to deliberate on this matter will not meet before autumn."
Thus, the telephone call that awakened me on June 26 was completely unexpected. It was one of my friends calling. He had heard on a foreign radio broadcast in Polish that Pyotr Grigorenko had been released. We were astounded. Nevertheless, a little more than an hour later, it was all explained: a telephone call from Hospital No. 5 informed us that we could come and pick up my father. It was, I think, the first time a violation of the law caused me joy instead of sadness.
But the following day [that is, the day after Pyotr Grigorenko's release- Inprecor] my mother, Zinaida Grigorenko, was ordered to report to the nearest militia post. There she had a discussion with two men in civilian clothes who introduced themselves as collaborators of the KGB [the political police-Inprecor]. My father and I were not permitted to attend this discussion, although we were also forbidden to leave the militia post. The discussion with the KGB agents can be summed up this way: My father's meetings with foreigners, and even with his old friends, might be considered a "relapse." This is how the "hospital registry" had been filled out. At the end of this discussion we were advised to leave Moscow for some time. This, at least, happened to coincide with our plans, so we left for the Ukraine, to my father's home town.
But the "hospital registry" was still in effect. We were reminded of this by the presence in this village, located far from any vacation spots, of unknown individuals with no clear occupation, quickly dubbed "cops" by the kids in the village. When we left the Ukraine, we found them again in Crimea. In a word, the vigilant eye of "free medical care" remained focused on its former patient. This vigilant eye was not concerned with the heart attack which had confined my father to his bed shortly after our return to Moscow, nor with his prostate illness, which had been left unattended in the psychiatric hospital, where there are no general practitioners or specialists in any field except psychiatry, nor the loss of an eye, nor the diabetes which appeared during his years of detention. No, the vigilant medical eye was interested in only one thing: Where was my father? Who was he seeing? To whom was he talking?
On January 30, 1976, during a routine interrogation, a KGB officer openly threatened Pyotr Grigorenko with a new incarceration in a psychiatric hospital. Simultaneously, the Soviet press issued appeals to the KGB to adopt measures of "psychiatric prophylaxis."
Thus, in a series of articles by one Joseph Erlich published February 18-21, 1976, under the title "I've Had It," Komsomolskaya Pravda printed a series of slanderous attacks against Soviet dissidents, accusing them of maintaining links with "international imperialism and Zionism." As proof of these claims, this KGB journalist asserted that he had transmitted money to some Soviet citizens, a mission said to have been consigned him by an organization of Russian emigrants, the NTS. Natalia Gorbonevskaya and Zinaida Grigorenko were named. I think it is necessary to state here that neither my mother nor Natalia Gorbonevskaya have ever received money from people they did not know. The aim of these articles was quite clear: discredit the idea of solidarity and stir up anti-Semitic hysteria, claiming that all nonconformist activity motivated by a striving for justice represents "Zionist" maneuvers, regardless of the nationality of the persons charged. This article also had another aim: to terrorize my parents; the other people mentioned by name in the article had already emigrated from the Soviet Union.
Two months later, on April 22, 1976, issue No. 7 of the newspaper News of Ukrainia, which is put out by Soviet embassies for Ukrainians living abroad, published an interview with Ruben Nadjarov, a relatively well-known psychiatrist. This psychiatrist began this interview, which was entitled "Humanism in Reverse," by admitting that he had directly participated in examinations of dissidents. He stated: "Foreign psychiatrists will completely understand the lack of foundation of claims which rest on nothing but the statements of the sick people themselves." Then Nadjarov affirmed that a whole series of Western psychiatrists had been able to convince themselves of this during a discussion with the "famous Grigorenko."
Concurrently, the KGB interrogations of my father continued. Inasmuch as these interrogations consisted exclusively of threats, Pyotr Grigorenko declared last December that he would henceforth refuse to report when summoned by the KGB. On December 5, during the traditional demonstration against the lack of respect for human rights in the USSR, KGB agents adopted a new tactic: mud was thrown at Academician Andrei Sakharov and Pyotr Grigorenko. Such a strange method of psychiatric prophylaxis could appear surprising were it not for the fact that many other cases have demonstrated that there are no clear boundaries between the KGB and the psychiatric institutions, nor between the KGB on the one hand and Soviet foreign trade and diplomacy on the other, not to mention the touching unanimity manifested by the KGB and the Soviet press.
Is this sort of "therapy behind closed doors," which is the sort of treatment a psychiatric expert of Hospital No. 5 declared indispensable during the trial against my father, really the only universal method of resolving the problems of socialist society? In any event, it is not likely that we can expect a response to this question from the Moscow theoreticians of communism. It would be equally interesting to hear the response of the theoreticians of socialism and communism in the West. Unfortunately, this question, as well as many others, has been privately put to the French, Italian, British, and Spanish Communist leaders, but in vain.
Nonetheless, since I remain an optimist, I hope that the response to the questions raised in this letter by my father, Pyotr Grigorenko, who had devoted his entire life to the realization of socialist ideas, will be forthcoming in the near future. I also hope that the people to whom this letter was sent will do everything in their power to make sure that their correspondent is not granted the right to a new dose of "therapy behind closed doors."
Andrei Grigorenko New York, March 1977
Text of Grigorenko's Letter
To the secretaries general of the Communist parties of France, Comrade Marchais; Italy, Comrade Berlinguer; Britain, Comrade McLennan,
The man who is sending you this letter is sixty-eight years of age. He joined the communist movement at the age of fourteen, during the years 1921-22, so difficult for the Soviet Union; to this day he remains faithful to communist ideas, despite the cruel and unjust repression he has suffered from a party that calls itself communist.
This letter is not my first attempt to get in contact with the international communist movement. In February 1968 the writer Aleksei Egrofovich Kosterin, a communist since 1916, and I sent an address to the Central Committees of the Hungarian, Italian, and French CPs and asked them to convey it to all the participants in the Budapest conference of Communist and workers parties.
If you like, you can still discover the content of this address. In 1973 it was published in Russian in Amsterdam by the Herzen Foundation, in a collection entitled "Reflections of a Madman." If one reads it honestly, one will find in this letter nothing but sincere concern for the fate of the communist movement. But this address to the Budapest conference cost me a year in the dark, dank dungeons of the Tashkent KGB, as well as four years and two months in a special psychiatric hospital, which is the most terrible kind of Soviet prison, where I was beaten and subjected to other physical and moral torture. As for Kosterin, he escaped arrest only because he died shortly after the letter was sent.
This terrible experience showed that it was not only useless but even dangerous to send letters to the CPs of the western countries. Nevertheless, the communists of my generation were educated in a spirit of deep confidence in those we considered our comrades in arms. Thus, in June 1969 my wife, Zinaida Mikhailovna Grigorenko, the daughter of an old Bolshevik and herself a communist, sent a letter to the secretaries general of your parties, who were then in Moscow for the international conference of Communist and workers parties. But Waldeck Rochet, Luigi Longo, and John Golan did not consider it possible to convey this appeal for help sent by a communist whose husband, himself a communist, was then being beaten in the KGB dungeons in Tashkent on the orders of people who themselves claim to be communists.
It then became clear that the interests of mutual assistance among the leaders of the CPs were placed higher than the interests of the movement and that it was consequently useless to write to them. But I have now learned from BBC Russianlanguage broadcasts that the French and Italian Communist parties have declared that if they come to power they will preserve the multiparty system; as for the British CP, during its last congress it adopted a resolution in which it called upon the CPSU to grant freedom of expression to all dissidents, including those of non-Marxist currents.
Among us communists uneasy about the fate of the communist movement this news from the BBC awakened a slight ray of hope as to the movement's possibility of emerging from the complete impasse into which the policy of totalitarianism has led it. We do not know how serious this turn from totalitarianism to pluralism is. If what is involved is not a simple tactical maneuver in the context of the struggle for power in their own countries, then we must say that these declarations put the finger on exactly what is lacking in Soviet society. It is solely because the free interchange of ideas does not exist that the development of science is curbed to an extreme degree. Einstein's theory of relativity has been dubbed obscurantism, geneties mysticism, and cybernetics false bourgeois science.
For many years any creative activity in these domains, as in many others, was considered heresy. But it is above all social science that suffers. The party bureaucracy has decided that this science can be developed through direc tives, resolutions, and decrees, and that only the higher bodies and functionaries can draw scientific conclusions from experience.
The consequence of this has been a halt to the development of social science. Practice has followed a totally different road from that indicated by the classics of Marxism-Leninism on a whole series of questions (the most striking example being the theory of the state), but nobody is trying to uncover the reasons for this. Or rather, some people are. Some reckless people have made the attempt. They have been rewarded with camps, prisons, or, as in the case of Leonid Plyushch, special psychiatric hospitals.
It must be clear for everyone, and for Marxists in particular, that it is not military officers or party bodies but theoreticians whose conclusions are independent of the apparatus of the party and the regime who must develop science. Even in physics, theoreticians and experimental physicists fulfill different functions, although there are close links between them. In the social sciences, where experimentation takes place on the living organism of society, on tens and hundreds of millions of people, there is all the more reason for independent creative activity and broad discussion of theoretical conclusions. As for experimenters, which is to say those who lead the development of society in practice, they must be under the tight control of their people. Only the absence of any theoretical work and the lack of independence from the party and state apparatus were able to lead to the annihilation of tens of millions of people, whose story is told with immense force of conviction in The Gulag Archipelago. It is difficult to forgive ignoring this fundamental exigency of Marxism for so long: the independence of theoretical work from the party apparatus. In order to assure their independence in theoretical activity, Marx and Engels did not formally join the party and did not consider themselves bound by its decisions. Lenin is the only example of an individual who was simultaneously a theoretician and practitioner. For a long time he succeeded in carrying on theoretical work independent of the decisions of the party while remaining a very active practitioner. But even he was unable to maintain this balance to the end, and it was practice that finally carried the day. It was precisely on his initiative that the Tenth Congress adopted a resolution which later served as the basis for forbidding all theoretical activity.
The resolution of the British Central Committee assumes extreme, not to say capital, importance in regard to all thisbut only if the British CP really strives to get the CPSU to accord its people the right to free creative activity in all realms of science and life, if it explains its position if it wins their to the other CPs, and support on this point.
Up to now we have not seen such an effort. The Soviet press has not even mentioned this resolution, and we have heard no protest in this regard from the British CP. McLennan himself spoke at the Twenty-Fifth Congres of the CPSU, but he did not say a word about this resolution. It would be an unpardonable and irreversible error if this resolution were to remain on paper and did not become an action document. The international communist movement is going through a very serious crisis. We will emerge from this crisis only by implementing this resolution. The march to the kind of future for which the communist parties are strug gling requires that the Soviet people be liberated from the bureaucratic yoke. Otherwise the assurances of the western communists that they are fighting for "a socialist society that will be the most advanced democracy in the history of the country" (a quotation taken from Pravda's account of the speech of G. Marchais to the plenum of the French CP on November 5-6, 1975) will remain a dead letter.
Your statements will not be believed. And it would be stupid to believe them. Socialism is an international phenomenon; what is more, it must be created without any ready-made model. Those who come after can only use the experience of those who started before. But what do we see? Although at least the most repugnant external trappings of the cult of the personality have been liquidated in the USSR, not long ago I came across an issue of the magazine Korea in which we are treated to a photograph of Kim Il Sung, "the red sun of humanity," fishing. But he is not only fishing; he is also thinking of his people. It is disgusting. One is ashamed that this is also a "communist."
As long as socialism has the face it does in the "socialist camp," even though it will certainly be possible to paint erroneous pictures with the aid of propaganda images, as do Bishop Stockwood and many others, the truth will be out sooner or later. Even people who are not very interested in politics cannot help but wonder why it was East and not West Germany that built the Berlin wall and laid mines along the border of the two Germanies, why people risk their lives to go from East to West Germany and not the other way around. It would be sufficient for Bishop Stockwood to meet V.A. Chelkov, the president of the Church of Seventh Day Adventists, an octogenarian whose wisdom has been forged by life and his spiritual experience, for Stockwood's mental mirages to evaporate. For what could Stockwood say to the fact that Chelkov has been arrested three times since 1930 and has spent twenty-three years in prison, including fifty-five days on death row? And this for exclusively religious activity and for having defended freedom of thought and other human freedoms.
But perhaps on his way Stockwood would meet not only Chelkov but also Sergei Dimitrievich Dudka, whose religious training includes eight years in Soviet concentration camps. But perhaps it would not be Dudko but the Baptist Vints, who has just been sentenced to a long term of detention. Or again, a simple Catholic from Lithuania, Niole Sadounaite, who, in his last statement to the court on June 17, 1975, said: "This is the happiest day of my life. I have been tried for the Chronicle of the Catholic Church of Lithuania, which is struggling against moral and physical tyranny. This means I am being tried for truth and the love of the people.... It is upon me that the enviable role of struggling for the rights of the people has fallen, and my condemnation will be my triumph. It is with joy that I will go into slavery with others. And I am prepared to die that others may live." In any event, Stockwood will undoubtedly come across someone who has been persecuted for his faith. He could not avoid this, since religion is subject to illegal persecution in this country. In 1929, in spite of Lenin's January 23, 1918, decree on separation of church and state (as well as education and the church), laws were adopted linking the new state to "state religions," that is, religions which depend completely on the state, and linking atheism (as the prevailreligious system to the state. A ing dictatorship of state atheism was created de facto, which has meant interference in the domain of religion and in the personal convictions of everyone and very severe repressive measures against believers, primarily against those who try to spread their faith and enter into conflict with the atheism of the state.
This is in total contradiction with the declaration of human rights and with the conventions on rights which the Soviet Union has signed. They do not mention this legislation to the Stockwoods, and more generally it is not brought to the attention of public opinion. Idyllic tableaus are presented for the eyes of the Stockwoods, who may thus be forgiven their mistakes. On the other hand, especially leaders of CPs, communists, cannot be forgiven for the fact that although they see the flaws in the system, they keep quiet and try to persuade both others and themselves that the truth can only hurt. On the contrary, it is your silence that is bad. The crimes of Stalinism, so long as they have not been completely exposed, stifle us and splatter you with indelible mud.
The elimination of the horrors of Stalinism has begun in the USSR. Considerable efforts in this direction were made by the Twentieth and Twenty-Second Congresses of the CPSU. But the essential task remains. The essential thing is precisely what is said in the above-mentioned resolution of the Twenty-Fourth Congress ed out by the of the British CP. The fact is that serious resistance to the line traced out by the Twentieth and Twenty-Second Congresses was quickly manifested within the CPSU, and especially within leading circles, particularly after the Twenty-Second Congress. The effect of this was to intensifyand it could not have been otherwise-the awakening of social forces opposed to the dictatorship. Here I refer to the movement that has been referred to in the West as "dissidence." We participants in this movement call it by a different name: the Golgotha movement. And this is the only correct appellation, for we are united by one thing: the fact that we are prepared for all personal sacrifices to protest against the injustice to which they are trying to continue to subject our people.
My friend Mustafa Djemilev is now dying in the Omsk prison. This young Crimean Tatar, 32 years old, has already been charged three times on the basis of false accusations; a fourth attempt is now under way. The only way he can protest against the complete arbitrariness to which he has been subjected is to go on hunger strike. And he is now in his sixth month of hunger strike. He often loses consciousness, his heartbeat is irregular, but he refuses to give up. Imagine the horror of such a situation. This man, of small physical stature, reduced to a skeleton, this man of inflexible spirit and will, soft and sensitive to the misfortune of others, who not only did not commit any crime but is even incapable of doing so, this man remains isolated, with no one to defend him, in a country whose leaders say they are building communism. He must die simply because a bunch of bureaucrats went mad and threw the Crimean Tatar people out of their historic homeland and because he, Djemilev, refused to recognize the legality of this arbitrary act. So who is right: those who denounce the expulsion of 1,000 people from the island of Diego Suarez, crying genocide, or those who demand the end of genocide perpetrated for more than thirty years against the 500,000 Crimean Tatars? Mustafa is not a communist. On the contrary, the name of communism is associated with savage and uninterrupted repression against his people and against himself.
At the same time, at the other end of the country, in the prison of Dnipropetrovsk, designated a special psychiatric hospital, they are in the process of murdering the spirit of another of my friends, the communist Leonid Plyushch. A remarkable mathematician, he could have led a quiet life, free of all need. But the trouble is that he believes that being a communist means more than simply holding a party card. He raised his voice to protest the illegal repression of "dissidents," following which his home was searched and it was discovered that Leonid Plyushch was devoting his free time to Marxist philosophy. This, and especially his severe criticism of the falsification of the Marxist theory of the state, was the cause of his arrest and subsequent internment in a special psychiatric hospital. Such is the fate of all communists who dare to criticize the mistakes and theoretical poverty of the party hierarchy.
Another friend, Sergei Pissarev, a member of the CPSU since 1920, suffered forty-three interrogations accompanied by torture during the Stalin period, which rendered him an invalid for life. (Ligaments in his spinal column were torn.) He was subsequently interned in a special psychiatric hospital. His only "crime": He has always struggled for the release of people whom he knew to be innocent.
I would also like to mention another person who is very close to me, the communist Henrich Altounian. Simply because he took up my defense and expressed his solidarity with my statements he was successively expelled from the party and the army and then arrested. He spent three years in detention and was then deprived of the right to work in his field (he is a radio engineer). It is communists who are treated most mercilessly. The communists Vladislav Nedobora, Vladimir Ponomarev, and Arkady Levine, all friends of Altounian, were expelled from the party and, like Altounian, condemned to three years in camps because they solidarized with him. When they were released from the camps, they, like Altounian, were denied the right to work in their fields. Levine is now a citizen of Israel, and can give more details of this injustice if you like.
Mikola Rudenko,' a remarkable Ukrainian fantasy writer, an invalid of the great patriotic and communist war, threw himself into philosophy after mastering the literary genre of fantasy. The conclusions he arrived at led him to address himself to the Central Committee of the CPSU. For several years he sent proposals, asking that they be examined. The truths he exposed were so obvious and important that logically they should have been studied and put into effect immediately. But logic gave way to repression. Mikola Rudenko was expelled from the party and the Writers' Union and was forbidden to publish; that is, he was denied the right to express himself and earn his living by exercising his personal capacities. Today this aged man, a war invalid, is compelled to work as a gardener; he lives in a small room from which he can be evicted at any time, since it is service housing. Moreover, he may be arrested at any time, for he has refused to renounce his ideas.
My wife, Zinaida Mikhailovna Grigorenko, also a communist, was expelled from the party and deprived of any means of subsistence solely because she refused to call me insane and condemn my opinions. On the contrary, she struggled for my release from the special psychiatric hospital, that is, she fought for my life. For five years she waged a courageous struggle, under the permanent threat of arrest.
They demanded that our younger son, Andrei Petrovich Grigorenko, speak at a Komsomol meeting and condemn our ideas and actions if he wanted to remain in the Komsomol and at the Institute. Instead he spoke to defend them and explain them, following which he was expelled from the Komsomol and the Institute. This was not done during the meeting itself, at which the participants expressed their sympathy. But such "errors of the masses" are easily corrected. The bureaucratic apparatus takes care of this. The Komsomol committee and the administration of the Institute exhibited the greatest docility, executing the KGB's directives in detail.
These sessions of explanation and public criticism during meetings similar to the one to which our son Andrei was subjected constitute one of the main methods of terror used against "dissidents." And not everyone survives the accusation sessions without bowing down; the scripts are handed out in advance so as to exercise very strong moral pressure on the person aimed at, to make him renounce his ideas, ask forgiveness, and pledge never to fall into the same errors again. No method of frightening or breaking the will of the "lamb who has been led astray" is neglected. Here is an example. The wife of the Ukrainian communist Vladislav Nedobora, Sofia Zinovievna Karasik, who is Jewish, was subjected to one of these sessions for having signed a statement in defense of P.G. Grigorenko.
During this meeting, speeches of a Black Hundreds and pogromist type, of an openly anti-Semitic character, were made. Nobody responded to them except Sofia Karasik. I cannot give any other details of this contemptible procedure of putting pressure on the human personality. If you would like to know more, you can get information from the former Soviet communist, now a citizen of Israel, Arkady Levine, whom I mentioned above, but also from my son, Andrei, who is now living in Munich. Yes, our son has emigrated to Germany, and he did so at my urging. You can imagine the horror of the situation that prevails here if a father sends his beloved son into emigration. It is not only my son, but also the son of my closest friend. And this is not a one-day separation, nor even a month-long one, but a separation for life, unless the order of things changes in our country. My son is also a friend, you can ask him about everything; he will tell you no lies.
Nevertheless, as far as these "publie accusation sessions" are concerned, there is not much need to ask him questions. You have been able to see with your own eyes what happened to Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. Not only have you seen, your own press has participated. In any event, the Soviet newspapers published a selec. tion of the actacks the western communist press has addressed to them. Yesterday, for example (November 25, 1975), Pravda published, under the title "Response to a Renegade," the content of an article from l Humanité filled with unjust attacks on Sakharov. I fully admit that one can disagree with Sakharov's ideas, but in no way can one intervene on the side of his persecutors when one knows that in his homeland he is ceaselessly persecuted, that he cannot open his mouth, and that he is constantly under threat of repressive measures.
And this is true not only of Sakharov. Can one really approve of the conduct of someone who, observing the beating of a man with his hands tied and his mouth gagged, joins in the crowd of people applauding those beating him? The conduct of your press in regard to Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn is analogous to that of those who howl with the wolves. Of course, your press has the full right not to agree with some opinions and have its own point of view on any question, but in the present case your duty is to declare: "We disagree with Sakharov (or Solzhenitsyn), but we will say nothing against them as long as their works are not published in their own country." Unfortunately, your press has acted in such a way that Soviet newspapers have been able to persecute Solzhenitsyn in the name of your press, without even having to resort to internal material.
My own "road to Golgotha" began at the party conference of the Lenin distriet of Moscow on September 7, 1961. And this was for having committed the "terrible crime" of intervening against the desire of the party apparatus and of additionally proposing such "horrible" things as the elimination of high incomes for party and state functionaries as well as their complete revocability. These "crimes" won me the heaviest sanctions within the party; I was also relieved of my functions honorary chairman of the military academy and was sent to the Far East. I denounced these repressive measures as illegal. Subsequently, I established links with the "dissidents" and protested against all measures of repression that came to my attention. Because of this I have been subjected to the following repressive measures during the past fifteen years: After two years' exile in the Far East, I was arrested, declared insane, and sent to a special psychiatric hospital. At the same time, I was demoted from the rank of general to that of private and then expelled from the army, without receiving any pay since the day of my arrest, without compensation or any pension (a pension of 120 rubles, instead of the 300 rubles set by law, was granted me twenty months after my arrest). Then there was the second arrest, the psychiatric hospital again, and the withdrawal of my pension.
The latter measure was aimed more specifically against my wife. She was punished by leaving two invalids, herself and our son, an invalid from birth, without any means of support. My wife was punished for having defended her husband. Thus, out of fifteen years 1 spent two years in exile and six and a half years in the dungeons of the KGB and the most terrible prisons, those that are called special psychiatric hospitals. In addition, I have lived seven years without a pension or other source of income. What is even more scandalous is that punishments like demotion and expulsion from the army without pay or compensation of any kind, as well as deprivation of pension or its reduction from 300 to 120 rubles, are illegal from the standpoint of law when applied to people who have been declared insane by a court. Moreover, it is impossible for me to get judicial assistance for my defense.
None of the demands from me or my wife has been answered: not by the court, nor the prosecutor, nor the government, nor the party leadership, nor the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Through its total silence for several years, the bureaucratic apparatus has shown that it is omnipotent against an individual, that it can do whatever it sees fit to that individual. It can crush him to dust and no law protects that individual.
The aim of the movement of "nonconformists" has never been formulated, but it emerges clearly in practice. It consists of demonstrating that the repression against them is not based on written laws but on arbitrary practices. All those who join this movement expose this arbitrariness, exposing themselves to danger and making choices according to their own apprecia tion and possibilities.
Vladimir Bukovsky survived ten psychiatric examinations. It then became clear that people who were mentally healthy were being locked up as "madmen," and these internments became public knowledge. For this Bukovsky was rewarded with twelve years' deprivation of liberty, which were added to the previous six years inflicted for similar "crimes." Hence, in initiating his action by denouncing arbitrariness, a 20 year old young man embarked on a road which runs through prison camps and prisons; his condemnation to twelve years in prison will run out when he is fifty. An entire life devoted to the service of people. Is this not an act of heroism? I am proud of the fact that such a man has honored me with his friendship.
Semion Gluzman, a psychiatrist whom I have never met but who, on the basis of what I had published in samizdat about the prosecution and sentence to which I was subjected, wrote and published "The Psychiatric Examination by Default of P. Grigorenko." This cost him a seven-year term in prison camp.
Valentin Moroz, after serving a first sentence for having denounced the Russification practices of the authorities in the Ukraine, wrote Report from the Beria Reserve, in which he demonstrated the inhumanity of the Soviet camps and prisons in our time. In "recompense" he received a new enormous sentence.
Edward Kuznetsov tried to hijack an airplane, fully knowing that this attempt would not succeed, and he and all his friends were seized by agents of the KGB. But it was as a hero that he went into this act, even more reckless than a deathdefying challenge. Result: arrest and death sentence. But as he had hoped, his case moved the entire world and drew the attention of world opinion to the Jewish emigration from the USSR, demonstrating before the entire world the duplicity of the authorities who on the one hand do not grant authorization to leave but on the other assert that none of the Soviet Jews want to leave.
The wave of protest that affected the entire world saved Edward's life, but unfortunately we Soviet communists who have taken the "road of Golgotha" have not heard the voice of international communist public opinion. We have not heard this voice and, shaken, we wonder: Why should one be moved when communists suffer in the prisons of Chile but keep silent or find justifications when totally innocent communists and noncommunists rot in the prisons and inhuman camps of the Soviet Union in numbers several times greater?
It is only now-finally—that l'Humanité has pronounced itself for the defense of Leonid Plyushch; the representatives of the Italian and French Communist parties have taken positions, with the support of the Spanish party. The congress of the British CP has voted a milestone resolution on the CPSU. But how do we, Soviet citizens, learn about these events? You don't see a line in the Soviet press. When they publish these documents, your newspapers are not sold. Hence, the only sources of information we have are the BBC, the Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and other radio stations of this type. But these are jammed. Yes, dear comrades, they are jammed. Here is something to think about. I think there are economists among you who can calculate the cost of such an operation. The sum, I believe, is a large one. The country is covered with jamming equipment. But look in the budget for the record of the funds spent on this. This is an example of how the Soviet government informs people and how it conceals the funds that are spent to do it.
Why do you keep silent? Why do you accept the distortion of news concerning your action? Let us take the example of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the British CP. News about this congress did not even mention the existence of this resolution addressed to the CPSU, but on the other hand it did stress the following quotation: The congress notes that "the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries unshakably continue their forward march, without uncontrolled inflation and massive unemployment." We will not examine the assessment of the situation in the Soviet Union offered here. That is another subject. But it is quite evident that by not mentioning the resolution dealing directly with the CPSU the news about the congress was not objective, and I am weighing my words. You tolerate nonobjective news about your own affairs. In acting in this way, you suggest that some of your statements are intended solely for "internal consumption" and are useful to you as tactical initiatives in your struggle for power.
An honest policy of the Communist parties must inevitably consider the interests of the entire communist movement. And these interests require a critical analysis of the experience of the USSR. It is not enough to say, like Georges Marchais, that the French CP is striving for a "socialist society that will be the most advanced in the history of the country." We have had enough of these expressions. The CPSU talks about this even more than the PCF. We Soviet communists-as well as the communists of France, Italy, Britain, and Spain-have the right to ask an important question: Will you adopt the "advanced democracy" of the USSR or not? If you will not adopt it entirely, what will you borrow from it?
The bogeyman of "interference in the internal affairs" of another party still seems to frighten you. Why, I don't know. But first of all, what is happening in the Soviet Union cannot be considered purely as an internal affair. Lenin himself said this at the very beginning of the establishment of the Soviet republic. He used to say that socialism could no longer be judged by theoretical features-and thus not by the declarations of the leaders of western Communist parties-but by the living practice of the Soviet state. It was precisely for this reason that he called our country the child of the world proletariat. But no genuine creator can be indifferent to the development of his own work and to what it is becoming. It is for this reason that one cannot remain passive and if necessary must take critical positions on questions in which the principles common to all those who want to take the road of socialism are at stake.
In addition, it would be good to approach the problem of interference in the affairs of the USSR from a standpoint identical to that which permits interference in the affairs of any other country. Here is what Luigi Longo wrote in l'Unità about the death of Franco: "Now the Spanish people, all the democratic forces of Europe and the whole world, face the problem of liquidating the bloody heritage of the dictatorial regime. Francoism must follow Franco into the grave." Then: "The death of the dictator ... cannot in itself resolve the problems of Spain. ... For the rebirth of democracy, a struggle of all social and political forces is indispensable, as well as commitment on the side of the broad popular masses... of all the forces that have suffered the repression of the fascist regime because of their aspiration for freedom and progress in Spain. A broad and united struggle for fundamental changes in Spain is indispensable above all because the reactionary forces, which command strength and power, would like to preserve the essence of the old regime while endowing it with the mask of a certain liberalization. The struggle between the old and the new... has already begun. ... The peoples of Europe must not observe as indifferent spectators, but as active participants who rise up on the side of all the progressive forces of Spain." And finally: "The direct obligation and duty of all peoples and governments is to contribute to the new Spain, to its renovation, to progress." (I am quoting according to the November 25, 1975, issue of Prauda.)
Comrade Longo obviously does not regard this program as interference in the internal affairs of Spain. So, if we change the extracts we have just quoted, replacing "Franco," "Francoism," "Francoist regime," and "Spain" with "Stalin," "Stalinism," "Stalinist regime," and "USSR," would Longo's judgments become false?
Can "the death of the dictator ... in itself" resolve all the problems of the USSR? Was Stalin perhaps not a dictator? Perhaps he never even existed? Or perhaps a "broad and united struggle for fundamental changes" in the USSR is not necessary? Nor any "commitment on the side of the broad popular masses"? Did Stalinism not give rise to "reactionary forces commanding strength and power" which, rather than following Stalin into the grave, would like to "preserve the essence of the old regime while endowing it with a certain mask of liberalization"? Can the peoples of Europe, including the Communist parties, observe the struggle between the old and the new in the USSR not as "active participants who rise up on the side of all the progressive forces" in the USSR but as "indifferent spectators"? Applied to the USSR, to Stalin and Stalinism, wouldn't the "direct obligation and duty of peoples and governments" be to "contribute directly and give their total support to renovation and progress" in the USSR?
Do western Communists really believe that the answer is no? If this is not the case, why do they remain silent? Even the actions of the CPSU, which compromise the entire Communist movement to the limits of what is tolerable (gross violations of human rights and cruel and illegal repression within the USSR, intervention in friendly countries) are not criticized and are not evaluated as they should be. Consequently, the movement for the "renovation and progress" of the Soviet Union receives support only from democratic circles (of noncommunist orientation) in the civilized countries. This is an extremely dangerous phenomenon for the communist movement. In following such a tactic, it can easily find itself separated from real progress. In order to end this abnormal situation, the communists of all countries must support as firmly as possible the resolution of the last congress of the British CP and in the first place must win amnesty for political prisoners in the USSR. They must forcefully intervene in defense of human rights, against the cruel and illegal repression, not only in Chile but also in the socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union.
At present, the entire world knows the names of two great men of our time: Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. There is no doubt that in any democratic country such people would have been regarded as the pride of the nation. But here in the Soviet Union Solzhenitsyn suffered cruel and illegal repression for a long period and then, after a frenzied press campaign worthy of the Black Hundreds," he was thrown out of the country. Sakharov is harassed and threatened with physical violence to this day, as are the members of his family; this violence is compounded by many forms of discrimination. Moved, the entire world has protested against such savagery. Why have the Communists remained silent? Up to now, such attitudes have existed only in the world of crime. Have the moral values of this world now penetrated the political world?
The attitude of the Soviet authorities toward Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov is not exceptional. It is an overall line whose aim is to stifle all thought. It is for this reason, more than any other, that a communist has no right to keep silent.
I have already mentioned the talented Ukrainian writer and philosopher, the war invalid and communist Rudenko, who has suffered repression simply because he does not think along the lines of the canon imposed from above but according to his own judgment. I could also mention others who have been repressed for the same reason. The biologist Sergei Kovalev and the mathematician Andrei Tverdokhlebov have been arrested and are to be brought to trial.
The former was indicted for participating in publishing the Chronicle of Current Events and the Chronicle of the Catholic Church. I do not know who really publishes these two journals, but I do know the journals well. I believe them to be a brilliant discovery for the nonconformist movement. Without these publications, people could not have seen the agonizing "climbing of Golgotha" by the best of our people. To try these people for such reasons is impossible, even according to Soviet law. The chronicles communicate only various facts without political commentary. That is where their strength lies. The accumulation of descriptions of arbitrary acts, with no commentary, makes for moving reading. Those who do not read the chronicles cannot claim any profound knowledge of the USSR. It is unforgivable that the CPs of the capitalist countries are ignorant of the facts published in them. I would ask the publisher Valery Chalidze in New York to send you a complete collection of the chronicles, but you yourselves could have subscribed to all the publications of our samizdat, which are reprinted in New York by Chalidze, who not long ago lived and worked in Moscow, threatened by all the dangers we ourselves face today. If you want to know the USSR other than through official handouts, you will purchase these subscriptions. I do not know what the official accusation against Andrei Tverdokhlebov was, but in reality he is being prosecuted for creating the Soviet section of Amnesty International and for participating in its activities.
Both will undoubtedly be convicted." A Soviet court cannot find in favor of people who exhibit a free creative spirit. Once they have served their terms, these people will be barred from scientific activities. If you disagree with such actions, of which the Soviet authorities are guilty, then protest. If you do not believe me, then ask that observers in whom you have confidence be present at the trials and then you will be convinced of the truth or falsity of my accusations.
All those I have mentioned in this letter are people of great talent. Not all have had the opportunity to complete their higher education. Prison has blocked the path of Mustafa Djemilev and Vladimir Bukovsky, but neither has stopped because of that. Djemilev has become a public figure and writer of talent; Bukovsky finished his biology courses in prison and works in this field. To understand what this feat represents, one must oneself spend some time as an inmate in a Soviet prison.
Kronid Lyubarsky, a talented astronomer, is continuing his research in prison. They are now preparing to deprive him of his university degrees. When one of his former collaborators remarked that Lyubarsky is a scientist whose work has been fruitful, the representative of the Pan- Soviet Astronomy Committee stated: "It is not important that he is a scientist. We must judge his conduct in society. And this judgment was handed down by the court. Lyubarsky did not repent, neither before the court nor in prison, and for us this is the most important thing."
The literary historian Gabriel Superfin, the Ukrainian writer Chernovil, and many others are suffering in the camps. One of the most talented writers, and an indefatigable fighter against arbitrary practices, Anatoly Marchenko, is in exile in Siberia. I could continue this sad but heroic list, could talk endlessly about the young talents stifled by a merciless bureaucratic machine that does not spare the most daring youth, the most stoic and most creative of our country. But my knowledge is limited and the length of this letter does not allow me to go on. It is for this reason that despite my desire I cannot mention many of them, whether personally known to me or not.
My debt is especially great to those who are called "nationalists" in the countries which have a state tradition of their own—Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia-but also to the participants in the Jewish movement for immigration to their national homeland. After the UN General Assembly's adoption of a shameful anti-Semitic resolution with the active participation of the Soviet delegation, communists must support this movement with the greatest resolution and without the slightest compromise.
I am coming to the end. In the article I quoted above, Luigi Longo was perfectly correct to write that after the death of the dictator one must not be content with "preserving the essence of the old regime by granting it the mask of a certain liberalization." Unfortunately, the essence of the Stalinist regime was preserved in many sectors.
Today arrests no longer have the massive character that they did under Stalin. But the essential has remained, a total intransigence in regard to free thought. This does not appear as clearly as it did in the past, when such thought was openly stamped out. Nowadays the articles of the criminal code are used to this end. The dictatorship of a personality, eliminated, has been replaced by a collective leadership. But the state oligarchy, like the dictator in the past, remains uncontrolled by the people and the party. The organs of repression have become even more powerful, but for the moment they are not assigned the same work they carried out under Stalin. Nonetheless, the entire repressive arsenal has been preserved. These organs are used against nonconformists. Convocation to these organs for "educational purposes" constitutes a warning. It leads to being subjected to systematic criticism during a meeting. This is followed by expulsion from the party, the Komsomol, and the trade unions, removal from one's job. One is then forbidden to practice one's profession or live in given localities, forbidden to remain in certain regions (the Letts, for example, were forced to leave their republic); finally, there is arrest and condemnation to a term in an ordinary prison or a special psychiatric hospital (which is also a prison, but of a more terrible kind). After his release, the victim must confront a whole series of discriminatory acts on the part of the authorities; he is subjected to police surveillance, prevented from living in certain regions, prevented from working in his field. These are some of the methods a regime uncontrolled by the people uses to stifle thought, a regime which could launch mass terror or draw the country into a war at any time.
Is this sort of communism to your liking? If not, let it be known openly. You do not have to interfere in our internal affairs, just say that you do not want a communism whose development is based on injections of fear. Put forward as a sine qua non condition for unity that any persecution for crimes of opinion be ended, that complete freedom of reception and distribution of news, regardless of borders, be established in a country which has built a classless society, that free examination of all points of view and events which occur in this country, as well as others, be established, including the actions of the party and state apparatus.
The first of the sine qua non conditions for unity must be total amnesty for all political prisoners in the USSR and the prohibition of the use of psychiatry as a means of repression against "nonconformists."
Respectfully, P. Grigorenko November-December 1975
Notes
1. This address to the Budapest conference was published in French in the magazine Quatrième Internationale, No. 9 (September-October 1973). An English translation appears in Samizdat: Voices of the Soviet Opposition (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1974) pp. 274-75.- IP
2. Mustafa Djemilev was sentenced to two and a half years in a camp on July 15, 1976.—Andrei Grigorenko.
3. At the beginning of 1976 Leonid Plyushch was expelled from the USSR and is now living in France-A.G.
4. M. Rudenko, director of the Ukrainian group to oversee the Helsinki accords, has been arrested. O. Tikhi, also a member of the Ukrainian group, was arrested on the same day. The leader of the Moscow Helsinki group, Yu. Orlov, a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia, and A. Ginzburg, were also arrested.—A.G.
5. A. Grigorenko has since emigrated to the United States.-A.G.
6. A reactionary Tsarist organization sprinkled with cops and military officers which organized, among other things, many pogroms during the period before the revolution.-Inprecor
7. Russian-language editions are available from Khronika Press, 505 Eighth Avenue, New York, New York 10018. English translations are published by Amnesty International, 10 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HF, England.—IP
8. Andrei Tverdokhlebov was sentenced to five years internal exile in April 1976 under Article 190-1 of the Russian Criminal Code (anti-Soviet slander). Sergei Kovalev was sentenced in December 1975 to seven years in a strict-regime labor camp and three years internal exile. He was convicted under Article 70 of the Russian Criminal Code (anti-Soviet activity).—IP
9. Nevertheless, work is found for them. Let a few young people gather at the statue of Mayakovsky to read and listen to poetry, and they will soon be surrounded by a hundred or so plainclothes KGB agents who are assigned to break up this "mob" through provocations. Seven people arrive at Red Square, sit down in a quiet corner in which there is not the slightest traffic, and launch slogans protesting the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia. Soon dozens of "defenders of order," also in plainclothes, attack them. After hitting the demonstrators, they drag them off to prison. (This is not enough. Subsequently, resorting to false testimony, they assert in court that the demonstrators had grossly violated public order.) A group of painters exhibit their work in an empty field (since the authorities could not find them a hall). The empty field is soon filled with "security forces" who tear up the canvasses and hit the artists. People assemble in a place of worship, which could be a synagogue or a church, and the "protectors of order" appear. Arrogant, unembarrassed, they are there not to defend order but to prevent the people from praying. In addition, they are entirely free to proceed to totally arbitrary arrests among the believers. When a demonstration was organized on the occasion of a holiday, the whole route of march and even the contingents of demonstrators were literally infiltrated by KGB agents. Currently, with the approach of the Twenty- Fifth Congress, many citizens of the USSR whose rights have been infringed upon by the bureaucracy, are addressing the congress, writing letters and sending petitions. Some Tatars, who succeeded in passing through the wall which the KGB had literally erected around them in Tashkent, have described frightful scenes: all the exit points-the airport, train station, roads-were occupied by a multitude of KGB agents. Tatars were stopped, searched, and relieved of the petitions they were carrying to the congress. The petitions were then burned. Their tickets were also confiscated. Only their money was returned to them. And the KGB has many other affairs going for it. In 1968 I wrote to Yuri Andropov [the boss of the KGB-Inprecor] to inform him that the surveillance of my personal activity was occupying twenty-six agents. Since then I have been in the same place for five years, but the people I mentioned are still occupied with this "important" work.—A.G.