Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union
This is what happened with the formation of the dissident Committee to Monitor Soviet Observance of the Helsinki Accords, which during recent months were the focus of Soviet dissident activity. The Helsinki Group members gathered information on Soviet human rights abuses, interviewed affected individuals and held Press conferences exactly as if they were citizens of a Western democracy. The arrests of Dr. Orlov, February 10, Helsinki Group member Mr. A. Ginzburg, on February 3, Ukrainian Helsinki group leader Mr. Rudenko, and Ukrainian Helsinki group member Olexy Tikhy on February 5 were a means of demonstrating to them that they are not.
Dissidents learn to live with uncertainty. The Soviet Government operates in secrecy and it is hard to judge the mood of the authorities. For many months it appeared possible that the Soviet authorities would tolerate the existence of the unofficial Helsinki monitoring committee because of their justification in the light of the Helsinki agreement and the obvious violation of the spirit of the agreement which arresting the members of the monitoring committees would represent.
Solzhenitsyn Fund
Now, however, it is clear that the Soviet authorities will continue to punish organised dissident activity even when it conforms to internationally accepted standards of human rights. Under these circumstances, Soviet dissidents form an important category of the population. They are the only group in the Soviet Union which openly challenges the authorities.
The dissident subculture is populated by people who know each other well and can always be found at each-others’ homes. None can be confident that their actions are unknown to the KGB. Many, like Mr. Ginzburg, are chronically ill, the legacy of unrelenting pressures and years in a camp. Dissidents cannot speak freely on the phone (if their phone has not been disconnected) or in their apartments for fear of bugging. Outsiders must be treated with suspicion because a neighbour or casual friend could be an informer.
They do, however, have two institutions. The Solzhenitsyn fund was set up by exiled author Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1974 with royalties from his book about Stalinist prison camps, the Gulag Archipelago. Since then, the fund has dispersed 270,000 roubles (£210,000) to about 1,500 political prisoners or their families. The fund was administered until his arrest by Mr. Ginzburg who said its purpose was to assure that “political prisoners today had a chance to survive.” It is undoubtedly a source of irritation to the authorities because it takes the illegitimacy of political arrests for granted and works to mitigate the severity of State punishment.
Unofficial Chronicle
The Chronicle of Current Events, also operates unofficially and has become an important part of the Soviet scene. Now in its ninth year, the Chronicle appears once every two or three months in typewritten carbon copies. Probably no more than a few hundred copies of each issue are produced, but the Chronicle circulates widely by hand and contains the most recent dissident information, including searches and arrests. The Chronicle’s accuracy and impartiality have led many to suggest that it is the best newspaper in the Soviet Union.
The dissidents inevitably become outcasts despite this pressure however, their way of life has a certain attraction which the Soviet authorities have at various times indirectly acknowledged. The Communist Party newspaper Pravda, in its attack on the dissidents on February 12, said that there are still people in the Soviet Union, who are attracted by talk of greater freedom in the West, and thus it was necessary to be politically vigilant as “never before.”
There are at least several hundred people in Moscow who, although not active dissidents, are willing to risk signing petitions in support of arrested dissidents. At least 1,000 have made personal contributions to the Solzhenitsyn Fund. A petition circulated on behalf of Mr. Ginzburg was signed by more than 200 persons. There was a time when signing a petition meant almost automatic dismissal. Now it may merely limit a person’s progress in a career without costing him his job.
Sympathetic Listeners
Those who do sign petitions must always live with the uncertainty of a possible call from the KGB, informing their employers. But the KGB is now believed to be hesitant to see people fired for signing petitions lest they form an ever-growing and embarrassing pool of dissidents.
Beyond those who support the dissidents, moreover, there is a far larger number of persons who sympathise. Just who and how many is impossible to say. I estimate that as many as a fourth of the people in the major cities may listen to foreign radio broadcasts and are aware of the reaction to dissident arrests in the West. But many take it for granted that they have less freedom in the Soviet Union, and while they may sympathise, regard the dissidents’ efforts as useless.
However, the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, continues to maintain itself. As older dissidents are imprisoned or emigrate, new ones appear. “Many people want to live decently,” said Dr. Turchin, “But most have no courage to do so. For some people, however, the desire to live decently is stronger than the fear of possible consequences. The dissidents exist as a subculture within the dominant culture. They think otherwise, act otherwise, do otherwise and so defy totalitarianism. You will always find some persons to represent the subculture.”
The Financial Times, Tuesday, April 5, 1977
Nationalism in Lithuania
The Ghost in the Machine
Something odd went on one night last month in Vilnius, capital of Soviet Lithuania. Along Lenin Prospekt, the main avenue, clusters of militiamen were in. evidence at regular intervals, and in the darkened side streets police were stopping passers-by and asking for identification.
There were two explanations for what was taking place. The police said they were investigating the fatal shooting of a militiaman during the robbery of an office of the state insurance company. Lithuanian nationalists said that Vilnius is always ringed with police on February 16, because it is the anniversary of Lithuania gaining independence after the First World War.
Mr. Kestutis Jokubynas, an archivist who spent 17 years in Soviet prison camps for nationalist activities, was picked up that evening in front of one of the main hotels in Vilnius. He spent his years in the camps learning foreign languages and has applied to emigrate to Canada. When the police asked him about the shooting, he told them. “I’m not going to play a part in your comedy.”
Whatever the reason for the display of force that night, there is no doubt that nationalism continues to be a factor in Lithuanian life even today, 37 years after the country was incorporated into the Soviet Union to be transformed from a somewhat backward, independent nation with a largely agrarian economy into a highly industrial and primarily urban Soviet republic.
The incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940 was accompanied by mass deportations. Lithuania was subsequently occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War and then, for eight years after the war, new deportations took place together with forced collectivisation and bitter partisan warfare against Soviet rule.
Once the partisans were suppressed and the futility of further resistance was generally accepted, Lithuania embarked on a period of remarkable economic growth under a programme of rapid industrialisation. During 1940–69, taking the period as a whole, Lithuania actually led all Soviet republics with the growth rate of its gross industrial product. Soviet figures show that Lithuanian industrial output has risen 49 times over since 1940, whereas industrial output in the Soviet Union as a whole between 1940 and 1972 increased by 13.6 times.
The creation of a modern industrial base, which has made Lithuania a major producer of machine tools, automation equipment, electronic computers, radio and TV sets, refrigerators, and fishing trawlers, has been accompanied by urbanisation.
Only 22.9 per cent of the population of Lithuania lived in cities in 1939, but by 1975 the urban population had risen to 57 per cent, including about 450,000 persons in Vilnius. The post-war collectivisation of agriculture, which provoked armed resistance from Lithuanian peasants, was 96 per cent accomplished by mid-1952. Today the emphasis is on inducing peasants to leave their surviving individual homesteads for prefabricated “agro-towns” and creating automated complexes for highly specialised agricultural production, freeing workers to go into industry which is short of manpower, and changing the character of the republic still further.
Against this background, Lithuanian nationalism, which is thought to be among the most fervent of local nationalisms in the Soviet Union, only rarely takes the form of open mass resistance. Although there was a riot in Kaunas in 1972 following the self-immolation of a young Roman Catholic, it was by far the worst nationalist disturbance in the Soviet Union during the last 20 years. Resistance now manifests itself in frequent acts of individual protest, rare in other parts of the Soviet Union; the circulation of Lithuanian language underground journals; and the existence of various ill-defined nationalist groups which have a marked appeal, particularly for the young.
The atmosphere in Vilnius is one of surface calm brought about at least partially by economic development. The fate of the formerly independent country is aptly reflected in the appearance of the town, which is circled by rows of modern apartment blocks built with materials and processes standard throughout the Soviet Union, but has at its heart the old city with darkened passageways and inner courtyards in the shadow of old, ornate Catholic churches.
Lithuania enjoys a material standard of living which is higher than that of the Soviet Union as a whole. It trails only Estonia and Latvia among Soviet republics in terms of produced income per capita.
Nationalist incidents are seldom mentioned in the Press, but the following are reliably reported to have taken place in recent months in the city of Vilnius: a Lithuanian Soviet Republic flag was torn down from the dormitory of Vilnius state university; students removed a portrait of Lenin from the central post office; signs saying “Free Lithuania—Russians get out,” appeared on public buildings; and the old Lithuanian national flag was raised for a brief moment above the Ministry of Internal Affairs which has charge of the police.
Such incidents are not likely to interfere with the Lithuanian Republic’s economic growth which will be aided during the 1976–80 five-year plan period by the construction of an atomic power station and the opening of the first stage of the massive Mazeikiai oil refinery which is to go into service in 1978. But overt acts of protest are not typical in the Soviet Union and stand, as visible manifestations of a nationalist feeling that material progress has not been able to eliminate.
There are believed to be many small groups of people scattered throughout the Republic who meet for religious or national purposes but have no legal means of communicating with each other. On December 21 four men in Kaunas and Ionova were arrested. Typewriters and hundreds of nationalist leaflets were confiscated. The men were connected with a group called the Union of Organisations of Independent Peoples, but despite signs that they had made extensive organisational preparations, their group was completely unknown to nationalists in Vilnius.
The most tangible manifestations of enduring Lithuanian nationalism are the underground Lithuanian language journals which appear regularly and discuss religious issues as well as aspects of Lithuanian history during the period when the country was independent. There are four such journals today, the oldest and most famous being the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church which, despite attempts to repress it, has been appearing in typescript since the spring of 1972. Two arrests were made in Vilnius recently in connection with the chronicle. No underground journals appear in Latvia or Estonia, the two other Baltic republics absorbed by the Soviet Union.
Lithuania has recovered demographically as well as economically, from the destruction of the Second World War and the mass deportations of 1940–41 and 1946–50. In 1975, however, the population of 3.3m was only slightly higher than the population had been in 1939. About 80 per cent, of the population are Lithuanians (although Lithuanians comprise only 43 per cent, of the population of Vilnius), and the national balance is relatively stable. Lithuanians have dominated the leadership of the Lithuanian Communist Party since the Khrushchev era and the party leadership is believed to be committed to developing national culture in a socialist context.
The difficulty in Lithuania, as in other Soviet national republics, is that not all aspects of Lithuanian national culture fit easily into the socialist framework. The collectivisation and transformation of agriculture is helping to complete the process of placing the republic on an urbanised basis more amenable to Soviet rule. But the teachings of the Church, in what is traditionally a devout outpost of Catholicism in north-eastern Europe, are opposed to Marxism. It is this ideological conflict which gives nationalism in Lithuania its unusual tenacity.
There are now believed to be 1½ m believers in Lithuania. Their share in the population is far higher than in the Soviet Union as a whole. Many people in Lithuania attend Church festivals and many often mark special occasions such as births, or funerals with religious rites as a passive means of expressing nationalist sentiments.
A nationalist Catholic priest in Vilnius, however, said he saw little hope for the future of Catholicism in Lithuania. There is a shortage of bibles and religious texts, he said, and a Soviet law forbids anyone but a parent from giving religious instruction to a child, which effectively precludes not only religious schools—but even, according to the strict letter of the law, religious instruction by close relatives. At the same time, children are subject to a steady stream of atheist propaganda.
Financial Times, Thursday, June 16, 1977
The Belgrade conference
The Price of Respectability
With the convening of the Belgrade Conference at which fulfilment of the 1975 Helsinki Agreement is to be reviewed, the Soviet leaders are aware of the steep price in terms of respect for human rights they are being asked for Soviet entry as a respected member of the world community.
The Soviet Union’s recent attempts to expand ties with the West have all met the insistence that they consent to some measure of internal liberalization.
Even against this background, the Belgrade Conference represents a new stage in East-West relations because, although the Helsinki Agreement reflected Soviet acceptance of the humanitarian provisions of the Final Act in return for Western agreement to security arrangements and the European territorial status quo, the discussions at Belgrade promise to move beyond what human rights commitments the USSR is ready to make publicly to the even more sensitive question of how fulfilment of these commitments is to be judged.
The need to proceed from the general to the particular will mean that the conference will concern itself with the fate of the nine imprisoned members of the unofficial Helsinki Agreement Monitoring Group and of Mr. Anatoly Shcharansky, the group’s liaison with the Western Press, who faces charges of treason punishable by execution.
The prospective espionage trial of Mr. Shcharansky and the trials of the other imprisoned Helsinki Group members will probably not begin until well after the Belgrade preparatory meeting is over, but the prospect of these trials is one measure of Soviet resistance to being pressed on the human rights issue.
The USSR has every reason to seek to avoid discussion at Belgrade of their implementation of the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Agreement. They have not honoured their human rights pledges and in the Belgrade review of Helsinki they face Western attempts to force them to accept some degree of internal liberalization in exchange for mutual security arrangements and closer ties.
The USSR was the driving force behind the idea of a European Security Conference ever since the Warsaw Pact first suggested it in the mid-1960s. The human rights provisions of the Helsinki Agreement’s Final Act, however, were accepted only reluctantly and growing Soviet apprehension over the possibility of being humiliated at Belgrade over the human rights issue has been reflected in a highly defensive propaganda campaign in the Soviet Press.
Soviet propaganda does not appear to have deterred the West from pressing the human rights question and the West’s determination to examine the issue thoroughly at Belgrade puts the Soviet Union in a quandary. The Soviet media have supported the Helsinki Agreement vociferously and were it not for the human rights provisions, the USSR could make a strong case that it has implemented the accords responsibly.
The USSR has incorporated the Helsinki statement of principles on international relations almost verbatim into the chapter of the new Soviet constitution on foreign policy and the 1975 friendship treaty signed by the Soviet Union and East Germany also enumerated the principles in the Helsinki Final Act.
The USSR has notified neighbouring countries about two sets of military manoeuvres in the last two years involving more than 25,000 men—one in the Caucasus and one in the area north of Leningrad—as called for in the Final Act, and Soviet disarmament proposals, such as the proposal for a treaty renouncing first use of nuclear weapons, are in keeping with the Helsinki call for steps toward effective disarmament.
The Soviet Communist Party leader Mr. Brezhnev has suggested international conferences on the environment, transport and energy in compliance with sections of the Final Act calling for international co-operation in these areas, and the Soviet Union has expanded its trade and industrial co-operation with the West and begun supplying trade statistics in keeping with the provisions of the Final Act on the exchange of commercial and economic information. It has also simplified procedures for foreign journalists and taken other steps to implement the agreement.
However, the Soviet Union has not honoured its Helsinki pledges to respect human rights and facilitate the free flow of information and it is this failure which is likely to be taken up at Belgrade because it undermines the Helsinki understanding on which better East-West relations were to be based.
The most striking example of the Soviet Union’s failure here has been the arrests of the members of the dissident groups who sought to monitor fulfilment of the Helsinki pledges. Between February and April, 10 members of the main Helsinki group in Moscow and affiliated groups in Georgia and the Ukraine were arrested (one was subsequently released), others emigrated under pressure and there were numerous house searches and confiscations directed against persons connected with the groups. Those few group members who remain active are under constant threat of arrest.
Against the general lack of democratic liberties, specific examples of the Soviet Union’s direct violation of its Helsinki human rights pledges include the widespread refusal of applications for family reunification (there are 50 outstanding cases involving Britain alone), the denial of the right to emigrate to more than 1,000 Penteconstalists and Baptists, the denial of national rights to the Crimean Tatars who have sought for many years to return to their homeland in the Crimea from which they were deported en masse in 1944, the denial of permission to emigrate to Germans and Jews for arbitrary reasons or with no reason given at all, and retaliation against those who seek to emigrate through dismissals, psychiatric confinement and arrests or trumped up charges.
Other violations of the Soviet pledge to facilitate the free flow of information include the switching-off of telephones for dissidents or those with contacts abroad, massive eavesdropping, mail and telegraph censorship, the effective embargo on non-communist foreign newspapers and periodicals, and the harassment of foreign journalists.
Soviet officials, in an implicit recognition that the Soviet Union has done little to improve its human rights record in the last two years, say implementation of the Helsinki human rights provisions depends on the level of détente. This may mean that the Soviet Union will not accept any Western attempt to make the level and quality of détente dependent on Soviet human rights observation.
At its final meeting before the Belgrade conference, the dissident committee to monitor the Helsinki accords made its own recommendations to the Belgrade conference. It suggested that objective criteria be established for assessing the Soviet Union’s human rights performance, which would bring the Western attempt to compel Soviet liberalisation into sharper focus. If the participants at Belgrade try to arrive at an East-West consensus on what it means to respect human rights, however, the result may not merely clarify the situation—it could also clarify how far apart the two sides really are.
Financial Times, Tuesday, September 20, 1977
Holidays in Russia
Taking a Healthy Rest
The Soviet masses are once again trickling away from the summer resorts, back to school and factory. The biggest exodus will come from Sochi, the country’s principal health resort and unofficial capital of the “Russian Riviera,” where at the height of the season holiday makers were arriving at a rate of over 50 trainloads and 100 flights a day.
Developed in the 1930s as a resort for working people, Sochi today extends for hundreds of miles along the Black Sea. It is a place of gardens, cypresses and palm trees, crowds milling along the promenades and rows of modern high rise sanatoria and rest houses.
Sochi offers the distractions of any seaside resort, notably miles of coast. But it also prides itself on being a “city of health.” Of the 3m. visitors to Sochi last year, over lm. received some form of medical treatment.
The rest homes and sanatoria were originally built because of the proximity of the Matsesta hydrogen sulphide mineral springs, now the basis for the Soviet Union’s largest physiotherapeutic establishment, where 6m. treatments a year are given for diseases of the joints, heart, skin, and nervous system.
Life in the lush, subtropical spa has two different sides. The sanatoria and rest homes are run by Soviet trade unions and represent the organised side. Besides medical treatment in the sanatoria, they generally provide semi-private rooms, landscaped grounds, exercise and recreational facilities, and a secluded stretch of private beach.
But most of the hundreds of thousands who pour into Sochi at the height of the season do not stay in the rest homes or sanatoria. These “wild people,” as the Soviet press calls them participate in the unorganised side of Sochi life—a world of cots in private homes for roubles 1.50 a night, busy arcades, long queues at restaurants and waterfront cafes, and beaches so crowded that there is hardly room to sit.
The Black Sea has the warmest sea water in the Soviet Union. Summer weather there lasts from May until November. The novelty particularly for visitors from Siberia and the far north, whose fares to Sochi are frequently government-subsidised, may be why the air and water temperature are continually announced over public address systems. As a change, visitors can take an interest in the radio and poster propaganda campaign against alcoholism and smoking.