KOSYGIN-BREZHNEV THREATEN DISSENTERS IN USSR WITH POLICE CLUB
By George Saunders
As protests by Soviet intellectuals over the recent trials of young rebels and dissenters broaden in scope, the Brezhnev—Kosygin regime has felt called upon to intensify its counterpressures.
This was evident in the major speech by General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev on March 29, warning that protesters "cannot go unpunished." The April 9-10 meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union [CPSU] also reflected the regime's concern over growing rank-and-file defiance at a time of turmoil in neighboring Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Previous to these events, the main literary paper, Literaturnaya Gazeta, on March 27, ran a big article by its chief editor, Aleksandr Chakovsky, who is also an official of the Soviet Writers Union. Chakovsky polemicized at length against some of the recent protest statements by intellectuals such as Pavel Litvinov. Among authors and signers of these statements have been many leading writers and scientists and other prominent persons. However, the Soviet press has not printed their statements. Ironically, Chakovsky gave considerable space to quotes from letters of a different kind -- written by apologists for the trials, all previously unknown figures.
Among Chakovsky's more benevolent suggestions was that the young people recently jailed might better have been exiled and denied Soviet citizenship.
A similar line was pursued in an article by Sergei Mikhalkov, another bureaucrat of the Writers Union. Writing in the March 30 Komsomolskaya Pravda, the Young Communist League paper, he demanded closer ideological supervision for writers who are party members, and complained that some prominent writers were still defying warnings and agitating against the trials.
The Moscow party organization has held a series of meetings to denounce dissidents. Two well~known writers, Stepan Shchipachev and Aleksei Surkov, gave speeches at such a meeting, blasting “those who sign letters which provide nourishment for imperialist propaganda."
The positions taken by Surkov and Shchipachev are symptomatic of the pressure being applied by the régime now. Neither was ever an outstanding anti- Stalinist or "liberalizer," although in recent years both have gone along with the majority of the writers community in favoring relaxation of literary controls.
Both were among the great number criti-
cized during Khrushchev's campaign
against "abstract art" in 1964. And in
1966, Surkov was one of the signers of
a petition opposing a possible rehabili-
tation of Stalin at the Twenty-third
Congress of the CPSU.
That these two figures have now
crumbled before the regime's pressure
shows that a drive is on to break away
the weaker wills, the more bureaucratic
elements. A strong spirit of solidarity
among the writers has been a limiting
factor on the regime for several years,
and the intention seems to be to break
up this solidarity.
But pressure, intimidation, and
police action will not necessarily work.
Such methods have been greatly intensi-
fied in the last three years, but have
only aroused greater protests. Further
intensification may have the same effect.
A good description of the atmos-
phere of resistance among Soviet intel-
lectuals appeared in an article by
Patricia Blake in the March 24, 1968,
New York Times Magazine. Written from
the point of view of a bourgeois student
of Soviet letters, the article shows
Miss Blake's close knowledge of and good
feel for the Soviet literary scene, but
it naturally falls short of a clear un~-
derstanding of the significance of the
intellectuals' struggle.
Miss Blake does not see that this
is part of the broader movement toward
the regeneration of the Russian social-
ist revolution and the revival of work~
ers democracy in the spirit of Lenin's
State and Revolution. She imagines per-
haps that the protesting youth and in-
tellectuals are fighting for "freedom"
as enjoyed by American writers and schol-
ars. But they are probablyless naive on
that subject than she.
Nevertheless, her description of
the Soviet intellectual dissent is an
accurate and useful one: "The simple
fact is," she writes, "that the Russian
intellectual has, by and large, ceased
to be afraid. The old, fearful sense of
isolation from which writers and readers,
teachers and students, scholars, scien-
tists and artists suffered under Stalin
has gradually been replaced by a sense
of community that now gives them the
courage to risk prison for the sake of
commonly shared principle. This change
seems very nearly miraculous when one
considers how intellectually, artistic-
ally and morally stupefying was Stalin's
terror.... [Emphasis added. ]
"Today intellectuals of all ages are openly calling, not only for greater intellectual and artistic freedom, but, increasingly, for fundamental changes in Soviet society.* They are fighting for their beliefs from the prisoner's dock, on the streets, in underground books and magazines and, indeed, on any tribune they can find -- including the foreign press. They throw flowers on paddy wagons, demonstrate outside courtrooms, and assemble in public squares carrying placards calling for adherence to the Constitution. They hold illegal press conferences for Western newsmen where they accuse Soviet newspapers of slander, and threaten to sue. They draft letters, signed by a who's who of Soviet literature, science, and scholarship, demanding an end to violations of the law, and address them to Brezhnev and Kosygin, the Politburo, the Supreme Court, Pravda and Izvestia, and circulate them all over Mos~ cow. In short, the liberal intelligentsia is confronting the Soviet leadership with its own myths."
One of the recent protest statements that Miss Blake quotes in her article is especially interesting. It was drafted by Pyotr Yakir, son of Maj. Gen. Iona Yakir, one of the top Red Army officers shot on Stalin's orders in 1937. Gen. Yakir was rehabilitated after Stalin's death; Pyotr, the son, spent seven-— teen years in Stalin's prison camps, and now works as a historian.
Pyotr Yakir's statement denounced the January trial of young rebels in Moscow in sharp terms: "Even Andrei Vyshinsky would have envied the organization of this trial," Yakir wrote, adding: "The inhuman punishment of members of the intelligentsia is a logical extension of
* Miss Blake no doubt thinks the Soviet rebels favor restoration of capitalism, but there is no evidence that they advocate anything but greater democracy within the postcapitalist framework. The establishment of democratic workers control over the government and economy would be a "fundamental change" in the present political structure, which is characterized by exclusive bureaucratic command from above. But that change would not alter the basic social and economic foundations -- planned economy and public ownership of all major means of production and distribution.
the atmosphere of public life in recent
years. The process of the restoration of
Stalinism is going on -- slowly but re-
morselessly."
The "naive hopes" raised by the
denunciation of Stalin at the twentieth
and twenty-second CPSU congresses, he
pointed out, had not been realized. "The
name of Stalin is being pronounced from
the highest platforms in an entirely
positive context."
Yakir pointed to the publication
of many works praising Stalin, while
those critical of the "great genius" were
suppressed. The same point was made by
literary historian Lev Kopelev, who to-
gether with five others was recently ex-
pelled from the CPSU for signing protest
statements. (See World Outlook, April 5,
pp. 300-302.)
Yakir contrasted the trend toward
rehabilitating Stalin with the continued
negative evaluation of Trotsky's role in
Soviet history.
Yakir's statement closed with an
appeal to Soviet citizens to "raise your
voices against the impending danger of
new Stalins and Yezhovs...We remind you
that people who dared to think are now
languishing in harsh forced~labor camps.
Every time you are silent, another step-
ping-stone is added, leading to new trials
of a Daniel or a Ginzburg. Little by 1lit-
tle, with your acquiescence, a new 1947
may come upon us."
Yakir's mention of Trotsky was not
accidental. A number of Soviet “historical"
articles in the past three years have
painted Stalin favorably -- precisely in
connection with his role in defeating
"Trotskyism." In fact, the March 1968 is-
sue of the monthly journal Problems of
CPSU History {Voprosy_Istorii KPSS] ran
just such an article, entitled "The Par-
1358 Struggle with Trotskyism in 1928-
1930.
Aside from being a rehash of stale
old falsifications of history, the article
included the following subtle but reveal-
ing passage: "The Sixteenth Congress [of
the CPSU] summed up the struggle with
Trotskyism for the period following the
Fifteenth Congress. The reports of J.V.
Stalin and G.K.Ordjonokidze, as well as
the speeches of I.M.Vareikis,; I.D.Kabakov,
P.P.Postyshev, Ya.E.Rudzutak, R.I.Eikhe,
E.M.Yaroslavsky, and others, laid out a
clear picture of this struggle."