Soviet secret police. 28
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- neo-Stalinists (of whom Suslov is considered the major representative). an interview with Zhores Medvedev
changes. The masses will be able to go into motion only in a situation of serious economic, political, or social crisis. Such a perspective is neither probable nor desirable."
The practical conclusions that flow from this analysis imply lending priority to propagandist activity essentially directed toward party members and the intelligentsia. In this regard, it is necessary to stress the importance and interest of two works of Roy Medvedev that have been published in French — "Stalinism" and "On Socialist Democracy" - which constitute significant contributions to knowledge and analysis of the USSR. In reading these works, one is struck by the chasm that exists between the analysis of Soviet society and the action perspectives developed.
We certainly do not share some of the analyses made by Roy and Zhores Medvedev, in particular on the role of the various social forces in the antibureaucratic struggle. But we believe that the opening of a broad debate between revolutionary Marxists and this important current of the Soviet apposition is urgent and necessary. The publication of this interview is a first step in this direction.
Zhores Medvedev was born in 1925 in Tbilisi, Georgia. His father, a philosopher and party member, was arrested and deported in 1937. He died in a camp in 1941. A world renowned geneticist and biochemist, Zhores participated in the struggle against the rehabilitation of Stalin. In May
1970 he was interned in a psychiatric hospital on the pretext that a medical examination was necessary. He was released several months later as a result of a broad mobilization of the international and Soviet scientific Intelligentsia. He now lives in London and has published such works as The Rise and Fall of Lysenko, Ten Years After Ivan Denissovich, and A Question of Madness
(on his internment in a psychiatric hospital), the latter in collaboration with his brother Roy.
movement to some extent. Not only did they cooperate entirely with the KGB, but they also perjured themselves. They gave a full account of everything that was going on and how it was going on, as well as speaking about their connections with emigré groups - with the NTS* in particular - and about money they had received. But, in the course of their trial and at a press conference, they also made a number of totally false statements. They said that absolutely no one was persecuted, that the stories about the psychiatric hospitals and documents such groups abroad playing a role of this kind, had a highly demoralizing impact.
On top of this, the affair coincided with a bitter campaign against Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn in connection with the publication of The Gulag Archipel-
*NTS: People-Workers' Alliance, an extremist rightwing emigré organization created in 1930 in France and Germany. The NTS cooperated with the Nazi forces during the war in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. After the war, the NTS supported terrorist activities, but was later transformed into an anti-Soviet propaganda group with a base in
Frankfurt, West Germany, and with branches in other countries. The NTS is considered as criminal according to Soviet laws.
**Chronical of Current Events: One of the leading samizdat (self-published) publications of the Soviet
Zhores & Roy Medvedev opposition, produced roughly regularly for several years despite bureaucratic repression.
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USSR ago, culminating in the expulsion of Solzhenitsyn. By this time, Sakharov had slowed down on using his authority to intervene in economic and political problems from socialist-liberal positions, on questions such as civil rights and freedom of the press, otc., as he had been doing up until then. He switched to an antisocialist position and began to limit his demands mainly to questions such as emigration and the Jackson amendment.* He called on the American Congress and Senate to vote for the Jackson amendment, thinking that this would force the Soviet govemment to make concessions. But this was a mistake, for anyone who has any knowledge of the history of the Sovief Union would have grasped that the Soviet government would not make any concessions under pressure from the Jackson amendment but that, on the contrary, this amendment would have negative consequences. Solzhenitsyn had enjoyed a great deal of popularity as a writer and as a moral leader who had suffered in the camps, But on his arrival in the West he published his Letter to the Soviet Leaders, in which he virtually called for a return to monarchy. He invited the Soviet leadership to remain at the head of the state, but to abandon their ideology, i.e., to govern the country by authoritarian methods. In short, he wanted them to become dictators and to stop being leaders of the party. They were supposed to govern according to the principles of an enlightened dictatorship and no longer through the party. All of this. is quite unacceptable and positively strange, especially coming from Solzhenitsyn, since any dictatorship is likely to become bloody and totalitarian. Furthermore, he says that all political parties and groups should be prohibited; only religious associations ought to be tolerated. In the first version of his letter the only political movement that would be allowed to continue to exist would be the Komsomol. ** But then in his second version he even wants to get rid of that. What he is proposing is a program in which society would continue to be governed by the present leaders because, he believes, they are now governing because they are power hungry and because society would become disorganized if they were deprived of this power. Political parties and political freedom are not regarded as being necessary; only religious freedom is. These views have caused some disappointment among the intelligentsia, scientists, and other forces that, in general, are not religious but are chiefly mobilized by the question of political freedom. *Jackson amendment: An amendment proposed by Senator Henry Jackson to the U.S. -Soviet trade bill requiring that the Soviet government allow a certain number of Jews to leave the Soviet Union each year in exchange for the United States' granting the Soviet Union "most-favored-nation" status. **Komsomol: Communist Youth League 30
So, you think that the crisis can be attributed to the mistakes of certain individuals and not to any underlying ideological weakness on the part of the majority of the dissident groups?
It is the outcome of an inadequate knowledge of history and of political work. For example, Solzhenitsyn has come out against Marx. At a press conference in Stockholm he cited Marx, taking his quotations from the correspondence between Marx and Engels. But that doesn't mean to say he's actually read Marx. Someone must have given him the quotations or extracts out of context. Similarly, Shafarevich also claims to be quoting Marx. But, as anyone can easily check, some of the extracts and quatations he gives as coming from Marx in fact come From other authors - those cited by Marx in order to criticize them. "Marx, volume whatever, page suchand-such" frequently yields utterly absurd quotations. He thinks he's quoting Marx, but in fact he's not quating Marx at all but During or someone else. This comes from poor philosophical education and from a poor understanding of these disciplines. Anyone who reads Shafarevich's article in the anthology Voices From Under the Rubble will soon see what I'm talking about. This article about socialism shows the author knows absolutely nothing about it. It's a completely absurd article; he assimilates socialist society with the Incas, and lumps that together with all the shortcomings of ancient Greece and a whole lot more besides. He attacks every kind of socialist idea, going right back to Plato. In his contribution, Solzhenitsyn criticizes all ideas of revolution, starting with the French Revolution and Marat, even though all this has absolutely no direct connection with the problems of today and thus there is no jusfification for this kind of analogy. As a result, these extremely infantile and primitive political outbursts, with their utter ignorance of the real causes of events, have led to deep disenchantment with respect to these personalities, who occupied a predominant position both in the Soviet Union and in the eyes of the foreign press. And this had had a demoralizing impact. The Gulag Archipelago could have had a tremendous Impact, if only Solzhenitsyn hadn't then gone on to publish his Letter to the Soviet Leaders and if he hadn't exaggerated the figures. Recently, he stated that 66 million people perished in the camps, and that 44 million people had died in camps during the war. This makes a total of 110 million people dead, which is an exaggeration, to say the least; but it does raise the problem of the liberties that Solzhenitsyn is prepared to take with the facts. Similarly, he has stated recently that it was Shliapnikov who was the main leader of the October Revolution, and that Lenin was not the founder of the Bolshevik party. These and other similar statements show just how unfit he is to speak about these matters. Others, Maksimov for example, have found themselves in the same situation.
However, things are a little different with Sakharov. While he does make good many mistakes and inaccurate statements, he has managed to preserve his popularity because he's a much more tolerant and far more modest man. He doesn't make utterances like a prophet; all he does is express his personal opinion. He doesn't pose as some messiah; he doesn't pretend to be an absolute moral leader calling upon people to repent their ways or to do this or that. So, when he does express an idea or make a mistake, people do realize that these are his own mistakes and that this is simply because he isn't sufficiently well informed. This is obviously not a very good thing, but at least it's understandable; one can't be expected to know everything. The fact that he was always ready to defend political rights and minorities earned him a great deal of sympathy on the part of people living inside the USSR and abroad. He has a great many personal qualities, and that's why people are more ready to forgive him. But it would do Sakharov a great deal of harm if he were to allow his head to be turned by his growing reputation and to start making statements of a more general nature. I hope that he has the wisdom to steer clear of this, In his latest book, About My Country and the World, Sakharov comes to a great many wrong conclusions. He even goes so far as to criticize the Americans for not having won the Vietnam war and for having withdrawn, which is proof of weakness in his eyes. He takes the side of the Americans, criticizing them for leaving Vietnam and abandoning their allies instead of sending a powerful expeditionary force. But this is ridiculous, and it results from a lack of understanding of what actually happened in Vietnam and of what is happening at the present time. A powerful expeditionary force would have changed nothing; the only way the Americans could have established their domination in Vietnam would have been by committing wholesale genocide. In 1968 and 1970, however, Sakharov strongly condemned the U.S. intervention in Vietnam.
What do you think of Grigorenko's view, and particularly his views on the degeneration of the Soviet state? Grigorenko is saying very little at the present time. After many years in a psychiatric hospital, he's now an old man and his political activities are much diminished. For the most part, those of his earlier works that we know of are extremely brilliant; they are distinguished by a great deal of interior enthusiasm and conviction. He is a good deal more correct on a great many points; he had a much better understanding of the bureaucratic machine and the way it worked. In some ways he was closer to it than we are, because he had been a general and a professor at the Academy, which means he knew this system from the inside. So, there is no question about it; when he speaks about bureaucratic degeneration and about the defeat during the war, he's right. On other points, however, Grigorenko has rather overestimated his possibilities. He failed to understand that, under conditions in which he was acting, it was impossible to create a powerful, active organization capable of influencing events. He was convinced that it was possible to build up a highly disciplined opposition movement. He was still suffering a little from his general's complex. It was very difficult to discuss things with him, since he was always trying to impose his views on people. And this drove away a good many people who sympathized with him and who might otherwise have worked with him. His own personality and his ambitions for rapid change meant that he failed to attract people to him. His desire to bring about a rapid victory and the strategy he laid out in light of this perspective prevented him from calmly undertaking cautious political work. He was after a rapid solution; he was highly impatient and imprudent. And it was this that helped lead him into a trap; he was misled and lured to Uzbekistan, where he was arrested - something they would never have dared to do in Moscow. He should have been more prudent and persevering. Politically speaking, Grigorenko is one of the purest figures in the opposition. You can sense the full mea-
Grigorenko with Ivan Yakimovich 31
USSR sure of his sincerity and his purity when you read his works; you can feel that he acted in accordance with his deepest ideological convictions, without ever bothering to consider the risks he was running. Some of the others are occasionally slightly hypocritical; you get the impression that they are too concerned with expressing ideas likely to be picked up as widely as possible abroad in order to enjoy attention and support from the international press. You get the feeling they're out to create some sensation. But you find none of that with Grigorenko. He never seeks to stir up attention; he has always sought to mobilize forces inside the country and not outside it, and that is where his great merit lies. Q You raised the question of tactics while speak-
Wing of Grigorenko, What needs to be done? And how should it be done? During the round table," if I understood you correctly, you said that it was important to say and do only those things that could be taken up by people who do not enjoy the protection of international opinion. Is this a tactical problem, or do you think one should remain within the narrow limits of Soviet legality as it is understood by the present Soviet leadership? In other words, should one play the game according to the rules laid down by the Soviet leaders in order to change the Soviet society? Is this just a question of tactics, a way to avoid provoking repression, or do you think that the only correct line is to avoid entering into open conflict with those in power?
I don't think we should separate problems of tactics from the problem of results, because the choice of a correct tactic implies that one obtains some results from one's actions. In any case, this is never an individual problem. On reading Solzhenitsyn's autobiographical book, The Calf Butted the Oak, it becomes very clear that he thought he could change the nature of Soviet society singlehandedly, that all he had to do was to publish and The Gulag Archipelago, which is undoubtedly a powerful book, would suffice to bring the entire regime crashing down. It was perfectly utopian to think that he could destroy the regime unaided. I think we can say that anyone wanting to bring about some change needs to win over not just one or two people, but a much more sizable group, which is sensirive to the need for change. The people at the top of the apparatus are not the only ones involved in the decision-making process. The internediate layer of the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia wield a fair amount of power. Certainly, they * The reference is to the round table on the opposition in the USSR which was held during the conference organized in London on November 22 and 23, 1975, by the magazine Critique. It was during this conference that this interview was conducted - INPRECOR 32 don't do so in a synchronized manner; nonetheless, this power makes itself felt in the end. After all, these are the people who prepare drafts and plans; they are the ones who write Brezhnev's speeches. All these people, who participate directly in the preparation of projects and sit on various committees, do manage to bring about certain changes. For example, this year there has been talk of increased repression. And yet, if you look at the most recent literary awards you will see that the two authors who have received prizes this year, Feodor Abramov and Troepolsky, are both Novy Mir authors who worked with Tvardovsky and who were persecuted and have had a great deal of difficulty getting their work known in the past. Abramov had a great deal of difficulty getting his work published, and the authorities created all sorts of obstacles for him. Tropolsky also had trouble finding a publisher for the book that eventually won him his prize. It's a book about a dog, al though in reality it's a social novel. He finally managed to get it printed as a book about an animal in the magazine Science and Life; that was the only way he could slip through the censorship. He would never have been able to get it printed in any literary magazine. And yet, now his book has won a major prize. There has been progress in the field of literature. Attention is now paid to the quality of a work and to reader interest in it. If a book arouses interest, if it manages to attract a brood response among readers, then this is regarded as a quality. The ideologTeal aspects of a book are no longer the only ones to be taken into consideration. So, this layer of society already enjoys a great deal of importance in the Soviet Union. It is most impertant to remain in touch with this layer — with scienfific circles and with the creative intelligentsia -if we are to envisage any kind of oppositional activity. It is highly important for someone like Roy Medvedev that his book has been read, even by party members - people working inside the party apparatus - so that these people can see that he is describing real political, economic, and perhaps historical shortcomings. It is important that these people grasp the fact that what he says is correct and that his recommendations are consequently useful. This is a tactical problem, but one that is connected with more general conditions. But suppose Roy Medvedev suddenly started writing that the economy should be denationalized, or when someone arrives with a program such as that put forward by the "Program of the Democratic Movement" - whose author remains unknown - which states that the capitalist system has proved its vitality and the socialist system has proved its lack of vitality, then one automatically deprives oneself of all possibility of making or maintaining contact with people who may think the same way but who would never dream of saying so openly. Anyway, the more serious among them are perfectly well aware that a great many social changes are inevitable. They understand that certain avenues of
development are closed to the Soviet Union and that one must choose the be. possible from among those that remain open. Roy Medvedev published his Political Diary in 19641970, and the two volumes are currently available. In the first volume, there is an article on foreign policy in which he openly criticized Soviet policy in the Middle East. He wrote that Nasser was the sole guarantor of the stability of Soviet policy in Egypt, its only advocate and the sole basis for cooperation between the Soviet Union and the Arabs. Nasser maintained friendly relations and determined this policy, and that was all. Take Nasser away, and there was nothing solid uniting the interests of the Soviet Union with those of Egypt. He criticized the fact that this policy was founded on a single man and predicted that the union between the USSR and Egypt would collapse the day that Nasser disappeared, because the social structures of the two countries were so different. And that is what happened. Following Nasser's death, Sadat changed the orientation of Egypt's policy, and today I think he is primarily under American influence. I think he is far more dependent on American policy than on Soviet policy. Roy's analysis turned out to be perfectly correct on this point.
You mentioned experts and the need to influence them. But a good many Marxists, at least in the West, hold the view that the interests of the experts are closely bound up with those of the bureaucracy. In view of this, do you think that any policy liable to jeopardize the interests of the bureaucracy would be capable of winning the support of the experts?
Certainly, these interests are connected. But it should not be forgotten That power is in the hands of the governing elite. For their part, the experts enjoy intellectual, moral, and material privileges, which is another thing entirely. Consequently, anyone who sees himself as an expert - assuming we can call it that - is concerned with certain democratic freedoms, freedom to move around and to travel, as well as a fine dacha and his job. Those are his centers of interest. He wants to be able to go abroad, to visit Rome, Paris. He wants to be able to form friendships with his colleagues abroad, whether it be the director of an institute in the United States, a sociologist, or whatever. He wants to be able to keep in touch with other specialists. His interests are not only bound up with government service, but also with freedom and a certain kind of security: freedom from arrest, freedom from arbitrary dismissal From his job for having expressed some idea running counter to official dogma. Their interests are the same as those of other people.
Quite so, but how do you think they would react to the emergence of workers councils in the Soviet Union? This might seem to be a purely theoretical question in the context of the
USSR today, but it may not necessarily be so sometime in the future. I ask this not from considerations of dogma, but because history has shown that whereever major conflicts have arisen - Hungary in 1956, Poland in the same year, Czechoslovakia in 1968, partially in Poland at the and of 1970 — workers councils have made their appearance. Don't you think that on these occasions, at times when the social and political conflict reaches an extremely acute point, that the experts are more likely to end up on the other side, on the side of the regime and the bureaucracy?
The reactions will be differentiated, and we should beware of generalizing. As I have already said, there is a group of liberal Marxists, whom we might classify as experts, which has formulated a number of liberal ideas. This group could line up behind the workers councils. But workers councils cannot arise spontaneously in the Soviet Union the way they did in Poland or in other countries lacking the same historical traditions as the Soviet Union, Furthermore, industry is much more important in the Soviet Union, and can be compared only with difficulty to Hungarian or Rumanian industry. I fear that if workers councils were to develop they would most likely be turned into auxiliary, consultative organs of the trade unions for the purpose of resolving questions of norms and wages. The growing complexity of industry has seen the emergence of a great many problems that cannot be dealt with administratively, but which need to be correctly resolved with the participation of the workers - questions of production norms, wages, the distribution of bonuses, and a good many other problems that are difficult to resolve administratively in large enterprises, Workers councils may appear, but they will not be able to settle problems of production, but more likely questions of everyday life, the material and economic problems of workers' families.
When you speak of the specific traditions of the Soviet working class, you are not referring to the traditions of 1917, but to more recent traditions. This raises the problem of the apparent passivity of the Soviet working class today. Indeed, seen from abroad, Soviet society is notably silent, very few people express their views, and the working class even less than the rest of society. What are your views on the current situation, how do you account for this, and what is the outlook for the future? A One cannot reaily say that the working class is passive, at least not within the meaning of that term as it is used in the Soviet Union. One can speak of the passivity of the working class in the sense that it is not producing new political ideas or currents within the USSR. And it would be difficult to create a workers group or a new workers party. Only in this sense can it be said that the work-
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USSR ing class is passive. But it is far from being passive or downtrodden in the sense in which we understand the term in the Soviet Union. A good many foreign journalists have sought permission to affend trade-union meetings, but this has been refused. During union or party meetings, the workers often vigorously criticize the local and central administration, the regional organs such as the obkom and the gorkom, the factory management. If there is an active and well-prepared group of workers inside the factory, they can play a role in the regular meetings of the union or the party if they are party members. This generally takes the form of forceful criticisms of shortcomings in the sphere of production or in the economic and political spheres. This creates an atmosphere of political activity. As a result, no factory worker will ever admit that he is passive. Because they are not particularly well educated in the political or cultural spheres, for example, the bulk of their activity is concentrated on economic questions. In addition, it is easy to mobilize the workers to form teams of volunteers (druvziny) to combat hooliganism, etc. Often enough during trials of disripresen the ves of refore he he hormon i who can be expected to react in accordance with the wishes of the administration. These are the forms taken by the activity of the workers. Seen from the West, it may look a little like passivity.
How do you account for this contradiction between the dissidents and the working class or, to be more precise, certain representatives of the working class? How is it that the dissidents have failed to arouse the interest of the working class and thus break out of their isolated situation?
There is no way they can communicate with each other. Personally - and I think my brother would agree with me on this - 1 do not consider the freedom to emigrate, that is, to leave the country freely and return freely, to be the chief democratic freedom. 1 think the most important one is freedom of the press. Freedom of the press makes it possible for different social groups to communicate among themselves through publications, 34 tracts, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets. If there was genuine freedom of the press in the Soviet Union as there is in England, then it would be possible to establish contact between intellectuals and workers, office workers, or even other groups of intellectuals. A dissident intellectual can't go into a factory and deliver a speech to the workers. For one thing, he wouldn't be allowed through the factory gates; second, no one would listen to him. In addition, it is not possible to operate with a large number of people under the present circumstances.
In his book On Socialist Democracy Roy Medvedev quotes a dissident who says that up until now those members of the intelligentsia involved in the opposition movement have fought only for their own rights as members of a social stratum and that the intelligentsia has failed to develop a broader program capable of reaching not only the intelligentsia but also other social strata, the working class in particular. Roy would seem to agree with this. What do you think about it yourself?
One can agree with that, and Roy agreed with it. The problem of emigration is perfectly secondary for a worker or a peasant, and he would never take the risks involved in giving his backing to demands of this kind. A good many of the intelligentsia's demands strike him as being very distant, and they do not affect him directly. Conversely, you will not find the intelligentsia mobilizing around the question of wages or the unjust distribution of the national product. There have been several cases of mass mobilizations in this country over the question of unjust economic distribution that have not received any backing from the intelligentsia, which, on the other hand, is capable of reacting very strongly with hundreds of signatures in protest against the trial of Xor Y. Of course, they are perfectly right to protest against these trials, but it's not enough. For example, when special bonuses for arduous work in the Far East and in the Great North were abolished, this was a big blow to large strata of the working class of these regions. No one opposed this measure at the time; no one protested. It was only when this measure resulted in the exodus of a large number of people who reckoned that they were underpaid for the job - Siberia lost roughly o million inhabitants between the 1959 and 1970 censuses - that people began to analyze the reasons for this exodus and began to realize that the main reason for it was to be found in these unwise economic decisions. This was clearly established, but at the top. Intellectuals and economists could have forecast this result perfectly well and could have criticized these measures while there was still time. In that way they could have protected a great many workers who instead suddenly found themselves thrust into far worse conditions. There have been a good many declarations and protests over questions of rights, such as the fact that
members of kolkhozi (collective farms) are not allowed to hold internal passports. But people protest a lot less when it's a question of economics. For example, the liquidation of the MTS* profoundly disorganized our agriculture from an economic point of view, and its consequences were thoroughly negative. No one protested, even though this caused massive upheavals among MTS workers: hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million, people were forced to seek work elsewhere because they refused to join the kolkhozi, as this would have entailed a loss of priv¡leges they had enjoyed as workers, especially pension rights and other material advantages. Yet no one protested. This was also bound up with the absence of freedom of the press. Of course, it was possible to raise purely individual protests, but it would have been impossible to get an article published in Pravda or to hand out a printed leaflet. Consequently, those who did not agree with the measure asked themselves: what's the point of protesting over this question, especially as my protest will attract no attention abroad since no one is interested in this question,
I'd like to ask you something about the national question in the USSR. Do you think that assimilation, by which I mean general Russification, is an inevitable phenomenon, bound up with the socially neutral industrial progress that the national movements are protesting against? What is the outlook for the national movement in the Soviet Union, and what are your views on the rights of a non-Russian republic to secede from the Union?
As with most national questions, there are two currents. I don't know much about the situation in Central Asia. I know the situation in Georgia - where I was born - and in the Ukraine and the Baltic lands rather better. The problem is most acute in the Baltic lands, where national cultural traditions are the oldest and where there is a long tradition of fighting for independence not only against the Russians but also against Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. This results from a general shortcoming of the central government, which is incapable of formulating a specific policy for each nation or of taking into consideration the culture, * Medvedev is referring to a reform of Soviet agriculture carried out under Khrushchev in 1958. The main element of this reform was the sale to the kolkhozi of agricultural machinery and tractors that had previously been rented to the kolkhozi by the State Tractor and Agricultural Machines Stations (the MTS mentioned by Medvedev). The sale of tractors and agricultural machinery to the kolkhozi meant the passage of these means of production from the nationalized sector of the economy to the non-state sector. The elimination of the MTS posed serious problems for the workers who had been employed there; many refused to be integrated info the kolkhozi because of the living conditions of the kolkhozi members at the time - INPRECOR history, and national sentiment of each of the different peoples under its sway. It has developed rather a global approach, However, you can't take the same attitude toward the Estonians and the Bashkirs, even though there are more Bashkirs than Estonians. The Estonians want to preserve their national culture and are fighting for the restoration of Estonian schools and for Estonian-language classes. This is not the case with the Bashkirs. A Bashkir will do everything in his power to give his child a Russian education rather than a Bashkir one. He knows very well that Bashkir culture is weak and that is has no long-standing traditions. The Bashkir language doesn't open up any very exciting possibilities, and it has even come to look rather artificial these days. So the Bashkir makes every effort to give his children a Russian education. To some extent, these nations are doomed to assimilation, and in fact a good many of them are already assimilated: the Bashkirs, the Mordovians, the different peoples of Siberia. This is the case for several dozen already. The situation is different for Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Estonia, among others, all of which have more ancient cultures and wish to preserve their traditions. At the present time, there is no individual approach to each of these nations. However, education is available in Estonian, Ukrainian, etc. But getting an education in the national language may well constitute a handicap for the child if he ever wants to enter Moscow or Leningrad universities, or in other domains. The education given in the national languages is less complete than that in Russian, and the textbooks and the teaching are not as good. As a result, assimilation in the Balfic lands and in the Ukraine is inevitable to some extent. This is clear in the scientific world. After the war, greater attention was paid to national traditions, and the Armenian Academy of Science started publishing scientific works in Armenian, the Ukrainians in Ukrainian, the Belorussians in Bielorussian, etc. This meant - and I can refer to my own personal experience here - that I was unable to read articles published in the Ukrainian- language biochemistry review. On the other hand, I had no difficulty reading the biochemistry publications coming from Britain Tatar families dumped on Central Asian railway platform after 1944 expulsion from Crimea
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USSR or the United States. Today, the Poles publish a biochemistry review in English, as do the Hungarians, the Rumanians, the Swedes, etc. Conversely, the Ukrainians still bring out their raview in Ukrainian, and I can understand only very little of it. Similarly, I don't know any Armenian, so I can't read an article published in Armenian, no matter how important it is. To my way of thinking, a scientific work published in Armenian constitutes a great loss in terms of Soviet culture. Similarly, it is Inevitable that one language will be dominant of the state level. When Khrushchev came to power, he instituted a greater degree of freedom in the use of national languages in the administration. But this raised a great many problems. Roy has told me of the following case. The Tajik Institute of Educational Sciences sent a letter in Tajik to the Ukraine Institute of Educational Sciences. It thus became necessary to find a translator capable of translating From Tajik into Ukrainian, The reply was to be sent in Ukrainian, The situation becomes even more absurd for correspondence between an Armenian institute and a Tajik institute. We need a common language for administrative purposes; it makes communication so much easier.
Suppose the state provided for the right of secession, and suppose there are nationalities that have suffered, or consider they have sufFered, from national oppression. In some ways, this could amount to an incitement to secession.
Yes, it could. Indeed, the national question is the basic problem holding up the promulgafion of the new constitution. There are plenty of other problems, but the national problem is the central one. The recognition of the right of nations to secede, coupled with the total absence of any procedure permitting nations to exercise this right, was the chief shortcoming of the 1936 constitution. In fact, the first Soviet constitution took the form of a declaration. If it is going to provide for certain rights, the constitution must, as a fundamental law, also provide for a definite procedure whereby these rights con be exercised. This is where the main difficulty resides, if the constitution is to stand as a Fundamental law and not just as a simple declaration. It should also guarantee the rights of citizenship. The old constitution said nothing about citizenship - who is entitled to be a citizen of the USSR, how to acquire or lose Soviet citizenship. All if says is that problems concerning citizenship are to be setted by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which decides as it sees fit. There ore no institutional means by which citizens can lodge a complaint. They can only complain to this same Presidium, but to no one else. The fact that this is a declaration and not a legal document creates tremendous difficulties regarding the adoption of the new constitution. If the constitution grants the right of secession, it is perfectly normal that it should also guaran38 tee certain mechanisms. Whether these mechanisms function properly or not is another matter. Perhaps a referendum would fail to give a majority in favor of, say, the secession of Bielorussia from the Soviet Union. But it should be for the referendum to decide a question like this; we cannot leave the job of deciding on the secession of the Bielorussian Republic to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. A referendum should be held. It's as simple as that. Q How would you describe the political situafion in the USSR on the eve of the twentyfifth congress? Do you think that we will see a neo-Stalinist type reaction after Brezhnev, as many Soviet intellectuals fear?
Intellectuals fear it, but if is difficult to predict what will happen after the twenty-fifth congress, Suslov, Pelshe, and Grechko will almost certainly be retired after the twenty-fifth congress, since they will be T7, 74, and 73 years of age respectively. People of this age are supposed to resign from the Politbureau; indeed, when Mikoyan was asked to resign from the Politbureau it was decided to set the age limit for membership on the Politbureau at 70. So, the oldest group should therefore bow out, and it so happens that this is the most conservative group. In the event that Brezhnev refires for health reasons alone, I don't think that Kirilenko will be the man to take his place. Kirilenko is not a man of very high calibre nor of any very great independence, and his length of tenure as prin cipal leader would necessarily be short because of his age. The Soviet system requires a long period of stability at the top; someone can't be appointed for a year or so, only to take a fresh look at the problem after so short a time. So the successor has to be sought among men with a reasonable prospect of being able to govern the country for a longer period. If Brezhnev is in good health, and if the rumors concerning his illness are unfounded, then | expect he will remain at his post for the reason that there is no obvious replacement for the time being. On the other hand, if Brezhnev does put in a request for an honorable retirement for medical reasons and, consequently, a younger group does come to the fore, I don't really see who the eventual successor could be — Grishin, Mazurov, Andropov? As for Shelepin, the most conservative of the "young, " he has already been ousted from the Politbureau. Grishin, who is one of the relatively young members of the Politbureau, is highly reactionary and not very intelligent, as far as I know. Andropov is the best educated, but people are nervous about him because he is the head of the KGB. And the association of ideas around this function is always bad. It's hard to forecast. A man can manifest certain character traits in one job, and other traits in another job, When Andropov was secretary of the Central Committee he was thought of as a liberal, or at least as more liberal than others. When
he moved to the KGB he immediately acquired a reputation as a conservative, It's hard to say to what extent this repufation is justified, because we know nothing about these people, their political views, their ambitions, or their plans. Assuming a younger group is due for promotion, my impression is that it is more likely to be found among this stratum of leaders, that is, the group that has most to gain from the broadening of international relations and from a lessening of the Soviet Union's isolation, and which is convinced that the country can no longer be governed by purely repressive methods. I don't think that there will be a resurgence of repression. As with any hand-over of power, the new leader never feels quite sure of himself at first and thus tends to use tougher methods. That's what happened with Brezhnev up until the Czechoslovakia affair. He has become more liberal in recent years. You can see this in his policies. He has come to feel more in control of his power and thus to feel that his room for maneuver is greater. Until 1968 he was an uncertain figure and he was challenged by a number of people; Shelest, Shelepin, Egorychev, and others openly criticized his methods and his political decisions. He was aware of his own instability, making concessions and faking a number of highly unpopular decisions. He hesitated enormously over Czechoslovakia, His attitude was very hesitant in comparison to the "hardliners, *who were calling for rapid action, Even after the occupation he was beset by indecision. Dubcek remained secretary of the Czech CP for months after the occupation, which is evidence of hesitation within the Soviet leadership. Khrushchev's methods in Hungary were far more brutal.
What role do you think international solidarity con play with respect to the opposition in the USSR? In particular, what are the tasks of the left and the extreme left? A Roy Medvedev has written that when oppositionists in the Soviet Union call for outside support, they should call more on the left than on the right, because the left is more desirous of seeing a real improvement in the economic and political situation and in the general climate inside the Soviet Union than the right. For the right, any political difficulties, repression, etc., inside the USSR are merely seen as propaganda material for use against the Soviet Union. I think this view is partly correct, but also partly inadequate. For one thing, support given by certain governmental circles in the West to appositionists does have a certain importance, objectively speaking. To some extent, the Soviet govemment is obliged to take into consideration support coming from certain "influential circles, " to use their expression. But these "influential circles" are highly selective in their defense of oppositionists. It is noteworthy that whenever someone is fired for having submitted a request for permission to emigrate to Israel, then this case of repression is immediately accorded wide publicity in the West, arousing a wave of protests and evoking an article in the Times. On the other hand, if someone losses his job because of his convictions - for example, because he said that the policy of the leadership is not authentically socialist, or because he has expressed an opinion that is not orthodox, criticizing the Soviet government's interference in the internal affairs of another coun try — in other words, if someone with distinctly leftwing ideas is fired, then he will find himself isolated with no hope of gaining any attention in the West. It's a slightly paradoxical situation.
USUR ELGASEL I RIGORENKO. EMOROZ PLYUSHCH SUITUCHNÝ & ALL SOUIET DISSIDENTS! Thus, while it is certainly correct to say that we should support everyone, it is at the same time necessary to introduce a certain balance into this support. It is correct to support those who will in any case enjoy a wide measure of support, even if our voice has little hope of making itself heard through the chorus of protests. But it is even more necessary to defend those who do not enjoy wide publicity and who suffer for correct ideas, even if these ideas are not thought of as correct in the West. So, the Western left ought to intervene to defend the right of everyone to express their own ideas, and to defend all those who are victims of repression because of their ideas, their writings, or their public statements. But it can only express solidarity with those whose ideas it shares; the left-wing press should back the socialist currents within the opposition in the USSR, offering them a chance to express themselves by affording them the freedom of the press that they do not enjoy in the Soviet Union. A certain process of differentiation is inevitable in this respect. B
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