SOVIET INTELLECTUALS APPEAL TO
WORLD COMMUNISTS AGAINST POLITICAL TRIALS
Twelve leading Soviet intellectuals took the very courageous action of airmailing a document February 25 to the conference of Communist parties that opened the following day in Budapest. The document appealed to the conference "to consider the peril caused by the tranpling on man in our country."
The document was sent in defiance of heavy pressure from the KGB (secret political police), which has threatened the intellectuals with imprisonment if they persist in criticizing violations of Soviet law in trying and condemning citizens for holding views that do not meet with official approval.
The document protested the "series of political trials" in recent years and the imprisonment of individuals solely "for their beliefs."
Excerpts from the document, as published in the Western press, included the following:
"The trials have been conducted with gross violations of legality, the major one being an absence of public information. The people no longer wish to submit to such illegality and this has led to indignation and protests, which have been mounting from trial to trial.
"We have sent many individual and collective letters to various juridical, governmental and party organs, all the way to the Central Committee of the Communist party.
"These letters have remained unanswered. Instead the reply to those who have protested most actively has consisted of being discharged from their jobs, summons to the KGB for threats of arrests and, finally, the most shocking form of reprisal, forcible confinement in a mental hospital.
"We know that many Communists in foreign countries have expressed their disapproval of political repression in recent years. We appeal to the participants in the consultative conference to fully consider the perils caused by the trampling on man in our country."
The twelve signers were: Pavel M. Litvinov, Mrs. Larisa Daniel, Dr. Zamira Asanova, Akelsei Katerin, Pyotr Yakir, Viktor Krazin, Ilya Gabai, Boris Shragin, Anatoly Levitin, Yuli Kim, Yuri Glazov, and Pyotr Grigorenko.
This protest followed news from Moscow February 21 that some 200 prisoners in two labor camps and one prison had begun a hunger strike the previous week in support of their demands for better conditions.
Yuli M. Daniel, the writer given a five-year term in Camp No. 17, was said to be among those taking part in the protest action.
Besides Camp No. 17, Camp No. 11 near Potma and a prison in Vladimir were reported to be involved.
The demands of the prisoners included recognition of their special status as political prisoners, improved living conditions and food, abolition of forced labor, and an end to the restric-— tions on their right to send and receive letters.
The delegates at the conference of Communist parties, all graduates of the school of Stalinism, are the last ones to be inclined to heed the cries of intellectuals being smothered by their Kremlin colleagues. But it is not within their power to suppress news of the document that was placed before then.
The mood among the Soviet people behind appeals like this, coupled with demonstrations in the prisons and labor camps, can renew the process begun with the "de-Stalinization," and finally win the restoration of proletarian democracy in the Soviet Union.