'DISSENT IN RUSSIA,' BY ABRAHAM BRUMBERG, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, JULY 1974. 'MOSCOW: NOTES ON A SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE,' BY EARL CALLEN, THE ATLANTIC, MAY 1974.
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CPYRGHT
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
AN AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW
JULY 1974
Foreign Policy under a Paralyzed Presidency
Chalmers M. Roberts 675
World Oil Cooperation or International Chaos Walter J. Levy 690
Natural Resource Dependency and Japanese Foreign Policy
Sabura Okita 714
Europe and America: A Critical Phase Karl Kaiser 725
Population and Development: Is a Consensus. Possible?
Michael S. Teitelbaum 742
The New Nuclear Debate: Sense or Nonsense?
Ted Greenwood and Michael L. Nacht 761
Dissent in Russia . Abraham Brumberg.781
Peru's Ambiguous Revolution Abraham F. Lowenthal 799
Asian. Triangle: China, India, Japan . . William W. Lockwood $i8
Tremors in the Western Pacific . . Eugene B. Mihaly 839
Correspondence .. . $5o
Recent Books on international Relations 853 -
Source Material . . . . . . . ..Donald Wasson 87.1
WILLIAM P. BUNDY
Editor
JAMES CHACE
JENNIFER SEYMOUR WHITAKER Managing Editor ELIZABETH H. BRYANT
Assistant Editor Book Editor
Editorial Advisory Board
A. DOAK BARNETT HARVEY BROOKS JOHN J. MCCLOY
C. FRED BERGSTEN CARL XAYSEN HARRY C. MCPHERSON, JR.
JAMES H. BILLINGTON WILLIAM L. LANGER WILLIAM M. ROTH
Published quarterly by the Council on' Foreign Relations, Inc. Editorial Office, 58 East
68 Street, New York, N.Y. I002i. The Editors will consider manuscripts submitted, but
assume no responsibility regarding them. Cable address Foraffairs, New York. Payments
and inquiries concerning subscriptions and reprints of articles should be sent to Foreign
Affairs, 428 East Preston Street, Baltimore, laid. 21202. Subscription price $io.oo a year,
post-free to any address.
a , No. . yrig.
t 1974, ounce on Foreign Relations, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.
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DISSENT IN RUSSIA
By flbraham Bruinberg
CPYRGHT
HE first chapter in the history of open political dissent in
post-Khrushchev (or for that matter in post-Stalin) Russia
may be said to have begun in October 1967. At that time
the young physicist and grandson of the late Soviet Commissar
for Foreign Affairs, Pavel Litvinov (now in the United States)
threw down the gauntlet to the Soviet authorities by openly dis-
tributing the final statement made at his closed trial three months
earlier by Vladimir Bukovsky, a young dissident arrested and
sentenced to three years in a forced labor camp. Bukovsky had
organized a demonstration, in January of that year, against the
arrest of a number of dissidents who had helped yet another
young dissident, Alexander Ginzburg, compile a White Book
on the February 1966 trial of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky.
and Yuli Daniel, sentenced respectively to seven and five years
hard labor for having published their works abroad. The ineluct-
able pattern-arrest-protest-arrest-had thus come into being
two years earlier. What distinguished Litvinov's action from the
others was that his protest was set down on paper, signed, and
distributed to Soviet and foreign newsmen alike. Perhaps, then,
Litvinov may also be credited with initiating a new genre of
samizdat, all previous such unofficial "self-publications" having
been circulated only sub rosa,
. , In January 1968, Alexander Ginzburg (who had himself been
arrested in February 1967), and three of his associates, were
sentenced to long prison and labor camp terms, after a four-day
bogus trial replete with bogus evidence and bogus witnesses-two
of .them clearly agents provocateurs. The public reaction was
instantaneous and extraordinary. Emboldened perhaps by the
examples of Litvinov and Piotr Grigorenko-a Soviet Major
General with a long record. of civil disobedience-as well as .by
official Soviet propaganda extolling the benefits of "socialist le-
gality," hundreds of Soviet citizens flooded their own and foreign
newspaper offices, and. also the headquarters of various foreign
Communist parties, with letters protesting the latest perversion
of justice in their country, and voicing alarm about the specter
.of Stalinist-or quasi-Stalinist-terror in general.
For the next year or so, open protests against specific judicial
malpractices-letters, petitions, statements-became the princi-
pal instrument of what has come to be known as the Russian
"Democratic Movement," a loose conglomeration of perhaps
2,ooo people or so, most of them members of the intelligentsia,
and most of them concentrated in Moscow and Leningrad. It
was a heady period. As one of the "Movement's" most active par-
ticipants, now in the United States, recalls: "the pure idealism,
the totally selfless attitudes and hopes, the previously nonexistent
hopes ... it was the time of the Prague spring, the best days of
our lives." It was a period that saw the birth of the bimonthly
Chronicle of Current Events, an. anonymously edited news bulle-
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tin containing scrupulously accurate information on the burgeon-
ing struggle for human rights in the U.S.S.R., as well as on the
authorities' efforts to combat it. Other hallmarks of this period:
the furious battle waged by Alexander Solzhenitsyn-with the
support of some of his fellow-writers-against the suppression
of.his works and the institution of censorship in general; the for-
mation of the so-called "Initiative Group for the Defense of Hu-
man Rights in the U.S.S.R.," consisting of about 15 members and
6o active sympathizers; the emergence into the open of various
forms of national and religious dissent, both of which provided
the "Democratic Movement" with at least a potential base for
mass support; and the astonishing growth and transformation of
samizdat from occasional items of unorthodox fiction and poetry
to something resembling an opposition press.
The first chapter-or period-came to a halt roughly by the
middle of 1969. So did a measure of the early zeal and enthusi-
asm. The government, while obviously not viewing the dissidents'
activities as a serious threat, nevertheless took forceful measures
to suppress them: arrests, trials (formally "open" but in fact
closed, unpublicized, and rigged), house-searches, interrogations,
dismissals from jobs and from the Party, and finally that most
odious of all. forms of political persecution-confinement to
mental hospitals.' Yet, contrary to what might have been ex-
pected, the initial enthusiasm did not yield to despair: many of
the dissidents defiantly invited arrest, in the hope that their sac-
rifice would serve as an example to others, as well as a challenge
to the world not to remain passive. With this came a realization
that.the early methods did not work, and that new forms of op-
position would have to be devised. Not that the practice of send-
ing signed letters of protest ceased; it exists to this day, But as
the repressions continued, some dissenters concluded that anon-
ymous, and in some cases even illegal and conspiratorial methods
(such as underground political organizations) might be prefer-
able. Paradoxically, too, the reprisals stimulated many dissidents
toward greater introspection and reflection, to a look into the
country's past, a more conscious stock-taking, and a. search for
.ideological and practical solutions to Russia's many and endur-
ing problems.
II
During the following three years, Soviet dissent took on many
new and fascinating forms. One was the gradual process of differ-
entiation among those who had earlier been united not only in
their ultimate and vaguely defined goals (which might perhaps
be best described as the elimination of the Stalinist heritage of
lies and illegality), but also in their methods. Now differences
.began to arise. Some dissidents, known as "legalists," carefully
eschewed any explicit strictures against Soviet political institu-
tions as such, confining themselves to forceful yet reasoned crit-
icism of "socialist legality." Their most distinguished representa-
tive has no doubt been Academician Andrei Sakharov, who in
1970, together with two other physicists, Andrei Tverdokhlebov
and Valery Chalidze, founded the Committee for Human Rights,
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.
w ose aim is to struggle o'r t e observance to oviet law, an N 16
do so strictly "in accordance with the laws of the land." Others,
while similarly determined to act entirely within legal confines,
have laid the stress on gradual economic, social and political re-
forms. Many of the latter-most prominently the historian Roy
Medvedev and his twin brother, Zhores (like Chalidze, now an
involuntary exile in the West)-consider themselves loyal Marx-
ist-Leninists. While the bulk of what might be called the "Dem-
ocratic Opposition" has evidently become thoroughly disillu-
sioned with Marxism of any variety, the Chronicle of Current
Events (our most valuable source of information on that period)
occasionally reported on the existence-and liquidation-of
small illegal revolutionary groups, with programs that blend a
curious social utopianism with elements of militant Trotskyism.
More interesting and significant has been the emergence of
what might be called a "right wing" within the dissident camp
--significant, because it corresponds to the rise of similar tenden-
cies on the "official" level. In particular there has been a revival
of "Slavophilism," that nineteenth-century philosophical school
that looked for Russia's salvation in the country's unique histor-
ical and religious traditions, disdainfully rejecting what it con-
sidered the corrupting influence of the West. The All-Russian
Society for the Protection of Historical Monuments, founded
.with official blessings in June 1966, and journals such as Molo-
daya Gvardiya. (Young Guard), the monthly organ of the-Young
Communist League, and Nash Sovremennik (Our Contempo-
rary), have all been expressions of the new Russian patriotism,
often laced with thinly disguised anti-Semitic and generally
xenophobic views. However, since Slavophilism is, at least in
theory, fundamentally at odds with the dogmas of Marxism-
Leninism, its true believers have "gone below," expressing their
ideas in such samizdat publications as Veche (the word for town
assemblies in medieval Russia), of which eight bulky issues have
appeared thus far, and in occasional essays and articles. In 1971,
a brochure called A Word to the Nation: A Manifesto of Rus-
sian Patriots made its appearance in samizdat. Unabashedly ad-
vocating racist, anti-Semitic, totalitarian, and theocratic ideas, it
may be the product of one man's demented labors, or that of a
group-it is hard to tell. But it may well reflect a larger body of
opinion than is commonly assumed-the widespread anti-Jewish
sentiments, abetted and encouraged by official "anti-Zionist"
propaganda of the most primitive and repulsive kind, indirectly
testify to this.
As in the case of the Slavophiles, so have other tendencies, po-
litical or otherwise, found a home in samizdat. Indeed, from 1969
to 1972 samizdat had gradually become a vehicle for a discus-
sion of a wide range of views, thus appealing intellectually to
thousands of readers who otherwise had no interest in political
dissent per se. Separate journals and documents sprang up to deal
with legal matters, to spell out Stalinist crimes and their sup-
pression, to advocate the formation of underground political
organizations, to urge genuine federalism coupled with parlia-
mentary democracy, and to discuss the theoretical and practical
0P2YRGHT
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there continued to be publication of works of fiction, both Rus-
sian and foreign, proscribed by Soviet censorship. Mention
might also be made of The Ukrainian Herald, a journal pub-
lished by Ukrainian dissidents, which was modeled after the
Chronicle of Current Events, and which was recently sup-
pressed; and the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church,
expressing the views of Catholics in a country where opposition
to Soviet domination has both a national and religious character.
The remarkable diversity of samizdat literature should not,
of course, be confused with numerical strength. A "party" may
well consist of a mere handful of individuals; a ringing "man-
ifesto" is likely to be the work of a single man; factional wran-
gling among political oppositionists is as rife in Russia today as
it was at the turn of the century.- Nor is the intellectual level of
some of these documents necessarily impressive. Indeed, some
are. painfully naive, simplistic, utopian, or abstruse. Program-
matic writings in particular are notoriously given more to vague
generalizations than to rigorous analysis. Nevertheless, they all
testified, at the very least, to a certain process of political matur-
ation, to the efforts of some individuals not to rest content with
the slogans that animated the protest movement when it first burst
into. the open.
Finally, the period 1969-1972 (and to a considerable extent
the present, too) has been characterized by a remarkable increase
.in-links between the Soviet dissenters and the outside world. Sud
denly, .Soviet political opposition ceased to be only an internal
concern, and its vicissitudes and fortunes engaged the sympathetic
interest of a sizeable segment of world public opinion. This is
probably attributable, in part, to the successes scored by the Jew-
ish "exodus movement." The once cowed and timid Jewish com-
munity-or at any rate those of its members eager to leave the
U.S.S.R. for Israel-"caught up with and surpassed," to use a
favorite Soviet phrase, all other groups of dissidents within the
country, in the determination with which they pursued their
aims, as well as, eventually, in their attainments. The piece-
meal emigration of Soviet Jews would have been impossible
without the energetic aid of Jewish communities throughout the
world, in the first. place Israel and the United States, and so ap-
peals for outside support became a norm to be emulated increas-
ingly by other dissidents as well.
Glasnost (publicity) has been, of course, a principal aim of the
dissident movement ever since its inception; but it was not until
1970-71 that this aim was achieved. The dismal trials of Soviet
dissenters made headlines in American and European newspap-
ers. Western correspondents filed numerous stories and frequently
acted as conduits for samizdat material. Various Western organ-
izations, such as Amnesty International, began to concern them-
selves with the fate- of individual dissenters. The International
League for the Rights of Man in New York established a formal
organizational bond with. Sakharov's Human Rights Committee;
professional organizations of psychiatrists, notoriously reluctant
to delve into the murky waters of politics, began to evince inter-
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authorities that the situation could no longer be tolerated.
thus reaching the Western public before the limited number
of poorly reproduced copies could reach Soviet readers. Broad-
casts beamed to the Soviet Union by Western radio stations
did the rest. It was a bizarre spectacle, a unique product of
our technological age, a source of succor to the embattled Soviet
dissidents-but also yet another factor that persuaded the Soviet
est fn and a'sense o outrage at the 1arbaric'uae aftheir piofe"ssion
in Russia; and religious groups (e.g., the Baptists) published the
appeals of their persecuted co-religionists in the U.S.S.R. In
time, the telephone became one of the most effective instruments
of glasnost-so much so that some of the protests were actually
phoned to journalists in Great Britain and the United States,
-tPYRGHT
Although the KGB had persistently hounded the Soviet dis-
senters and had never been known for excessive charity in coping
with any manifestations of opposition to the regime, it seemed
strangely reluctant to employ all the weapons in its arsenal
against what must surely have been one of its most formidable
irritants-the Chronicle of Current Events. The reasons for this
apparent timidity had been a subject of endless speculations by
Soviet specialists in the West. The most plausible explanations
offered were: (a) that the Soviet security police could eradicate
the Chronicle (and the group of people behind it) only by un-
dertaking a series of massive arrests, thus antagonizing the Soviet
intelligentsia as a whole as well as public opinion abroad-all of
which it was unwilling to do; (b) that the KGB knew precisely
who was connected with the Chronicle, but preferred to keep
them under surveillance, so as eventually to net as many as pos-
sible. In retrospect, the second hypothesis seems closer to the
truth than the first.
Toward the end of 1971, the Soviet authorities had apparently
decided that the situation was getting out of hand, and that the
"Democratic Movement" must sustain a decisive defeat. Accord-
ing to information that has subsequently reached the West, the
Politburo itself resolved to liquidate the Chronicle, and in-
structed the KGB to do so.
But the KGB today is no longer what. it was in the days of
Stalin. Though some of its present methods are palpably similar
to those employed in the past, on the whole they are not predom-
inantly those of terror and brutality, but rather a more subtle
mixture of threats, intimidation, promises-and coercion. In
what was to become known as "Case No. 24," therefore, the KGB
at first moved relatively slowly. A number of arrests were made
in the Ukraine, where national restiveness among intellectuals
had of late become particularly strong. In Moscow and Lenin-
grad prominent dissenters were "invited" to appear at the head-
quarters of the security police for interrogation. Homes were
searched, and "incriminating" samizdat material (some of it of
a perfectly innocuous nature) was confiscated. This was followed
by arrests, culminating, on June 21, 1972, in the detention of
Piotr Yakir. To the dissident
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in ee t he writing on the wall.
Piotr Yakir is the son of a much decorated Civil War hero,
who along with other top officers was shot in June 1937 on
fabricated charges of spying. Shortly thereafter, Piotr himself,
then 14 years old, was seized by the police and spent the next i5
years of his life in various prisons and concentration camps. His
father, as well as the other officers, was "rehabilitated" in the
195os, and Piotr was taken under Khrushchev's personal wing
and allowed to lecture and write about his father. This, of course,
was during the heyday of the "de-Stalinization drive."
With Khrushchev's ouster in October 1964, "de-Stalinization"
too came. to a halt, and Piotr Yakir, alarmed by what he per-
ceived to be not merely a silence on Stalinism but organized
efforts to revive it, became increasingly-and overtly-involved
in the protest movement. In 1968-69, he emerged as one of its
most active leaders, author and co-signer of numerous "open
letters" and petitions. The KGB -was obviously aware of his
activities (he made no attempt to hide them), but it was gener-
ally assumed that Yakir would be left alone, no matter what,
since his arrest could only be interpreted-in the words of one
of his close personal friends, now in the West "as a final symbol
of the actual restoration of Stalinism in our country."
Yakir's arrest in June 1972, therefore, produced a shattering
effect on the Soviet dissident community. The atmosphere of de-
spondency and gloom intensified when it was learned, after
several months, that Yakir had decided to cooperate with his
jailors, to divulge all he knew and to implicate (as it eventually
turned out) more than a hundred of his friends and associates.
(Yakir's._propensity for alcohol was well known, and it seemed
reasonable to assume that it was this particular weakness that the
KGB exploited in order to break him.)
More arrests and interrogations followed, and in September
1972 Victor Krasin, another prominent civil rights activist with
an impressive record of protest and imprisonment, was put in
jail. He, too, it was soon learned, had been "persuaded" to coop-
erate with the authorities. After a while, it became evident that
the KGB was grooming both Krasin and Yakir for an elaborate
"show trial," which would serve as a warning to their friends to
desist from any further activities against the regime. While the
KGB was thus showing its teeth-as well as its reliance upon
some of the most discredited Stalinist methods-it also engaged
in a new and considerably more refined strategy, i.e., allowing
and even encouraging various known oppositionists to leave the
country (in effect expelling them) as part of the "Jewish exodus"
to Israel, which was gathering momentum at that time. (Some of
the dissidents who have left since 1972 have indeed been Jewish
or part-Jewish, or married to Jews, but others, as the authorities
were fully aware, had no connection at all, familial or ideolog-
ical, with the Jewish movement.)
Issue No. 27 of the Chronicle appeared in October 1972. Since
no other issues were forthcoming for 18 months, it seemed clear
that, the journal would no longer see the light of day-at least
not under the (unknown) auspices
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Movement" (though not necessarily all other dissident groups)
was in a state of disarray. "Moscow
" a recentl
arrived youn
,
y
g
Russian told this author, was the scene of heartrending scenes :
dozens of dissidents returned from camps, prisons and exile to
which they had been banished in 1968-69-or earlier-only to
find their former comrades talking about nothing else except
leaving the country." In March 1o71 'Academician Sakharov
received a letter from Yakir, written in jail, in which its author
admitted to having engaged in "anti-Soviet activities," and im-
plored the scientist to "understand [him) correctly" and to avoid
01-6PYRGHT
similar "mistakes and delusions." At the end. of August 1973
Yakir and Krasin were put on trial. Foreign correspondents were
refused entry, but they might as well have been there: both de-
fendants fully admitted their "guilt" (e.g., passing "anti-Soviet
material" to the West and collaborating with the NTS, a right-
wing Russian emigre organization with headquarters in Ger-
many, which had for years published many samizdat documents,
including all the issues-in Russian=of the Chronicle of Current
Events). In a macabre "press conference" staged a few days later,
Krasin and Yakir repeated their confessions, and named some
Western correspondents as their contacts. The tragicomedy was
played out to the end.
Following the trial, Zhores Medvedev, by then in exile in
London, revealed that by 1970 his fellow-dissidents had decided
that Yakir could no longer be trusted. Roy Medvedev, in a long
essay, "The Problem of Democratization and the Problem of
Detente," circulated in samizdat in October)' explicitly accused
both Yakir and Krasin of "provocational activity." Whatever the
truth of these allegations, it is clear that the KGB had largely
succeeded.in accomplishing its mission, and that the small group
of civil rights activists who had been in the forefront of the
dissent movement in 1968-69 had been decimated.
IV
Yet if` the Politburo and the Soviet security police could con-
gratulate themselves on a job well done, they clearly miscalcu-
lated in their apparent belief that "Case No. 24" would deci-
sively eradicate all remaining expressions of political resistance
in their country. For as the drive against the dissidents gathered
force, two men stepped into the fray, challenging the authorities
in terms far more radical and far more intransigent than they
had ever done in the past. More importantly, the issues they
raised-=and the spirited debate that subsequently ensued-no
longer touched upon problems of concern primarily to Soviet
citizens, but involved the . general attitude of the West to the
U.S.S.R. and indeed some very concrete policy issues facing
Western governments, in the first place the United States.
Whereas in 1969-1972 Soviet dissenters were principally inter-
ested in attaining glasnost abroad as a means of insurance against
government reprisals and as a source of moral and political sup-
port, the West was now being drawn intimately into a dialogue
1
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critics of the Soviet regime. The issues were East-West relations, CPYRGHT
the Jackson Amendment, detente, and the future of Russia; and
the two men were, of course, Andrei Sakharov and Alexander
Solzhenitsyn.
Sakharov. had long been profoundly concerned with East-West
relations, as his three famous memoranda, published respectively
in 1968, 147o and 1971, demonstrated. Yet while in the past
Sakharov seemed to believe that his efforts to "speak sense" to
the Soviet leaders (to whom his memoranda had been addressed)
would produce a useful dialogue between the regime and its
"loyal opposition," and while in the past he clung to a belief in
a socialism reformed through a gradual "convergence between
the capitalist and socialist systems, accompanied by demilitariza-
tion, a strengthening of the social protection of the rights of
working people, and the creation of an economy of a mixed
type,"8 by 1973 he had obviously changed his mind. As a result o
the grim anti-dissent campaign and the failure of his efforts
Sakharov came to two momentous conclusions:, first, that thi
Soviet system bore no relation whatever to what he had earlie
believed to be certain endemic features of a socialist society
second, that necessary fundamental reforms in Soviet life coin
only come as a result of specific policies of the West.
On July io, 1973, Sakharov gave an interview to the Swedis
Radio and Television, in which he expressed his. profound dis
illusionment with the Soviet system:
It is simply capitalism developed to its extremes, the sort of capitalism you
have in the United States ... but with extreme monopolization. We ough
not to be surprised, then, that we have the same problems, qualitatively
speaking, the same criminality, the same alienation of the individual, as i
the capitalist world. With the difference that our society is an extreme in
stance, as it were, extremely unfree, extremely constrained ideologically ..
[also) probably the most pretentious society; it's not the best society but i
claims to be far better than all the others.'
The interview, as could have been expected, elicited a furiou
storm of attacks and calumnies in the Soviet media. Sakharo
was accused of "grovelling before the capitalist system," and-
ominously-"slandering the Soviet Union." A few weeks late
he was summoned to an interview with the First Deputy Prose -
tutor of the U.S.S.R., Mikhail Malyarov, who warned Sakharo
to refrain from any further "anti-Soviet activities." Instead o
heeding. Malyarov's advice, Sakharov a week later called to
Western correspondents to his house, handed them the text
his interview with the Soviet official and answered questions on.wide range of problems. In this interview, Sakharov succinctl
formulated his views on detente :
We are facing very concrete problems, of whether in the process of rapproch -
ment there will be a democratization of Soviet society or not.... Deten e
without democratization, a rapprochement when the West in fact accep s
our rules of the game . . . would be very dangerous and wouldn't solve a
of the world's problems .... It would be the cultivation and encourageme t
of closed countries where everything that happens goes unseen by foreign ey .
No one should dream of having such a neighbor, especially if that neighbor
is armed to the teeth.5
These views logically led Sakharov to an explicit endorseme t
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of the Jackson Amendment, which would deny long-term credits
and most-favored-nation tariff status to any "non-market econ-
omy" nation that denies its citizens the right to emigrate. And so
"
in an
Open Letter to the Congress of the United States," dated
September 14, 1973, Sakharov forcefully appealed "to the Con-
gress of the United States to give its support to the Jackson
Amendment, which represents in my view and in the view of its
sponsors an attempt to protect the right of emigration of citizens
in countries that are entering into new and friendlier relations
with the United States."
The Jackson Amendment is, of course, aimed first and foremost
at the Soviet Union, and affects, at least at this time, the Jews
more than any other ethnic group in the U.S.S.R. Even granting
that Sakharov is firmly committed to the notion that the West,
in establishing. closer cooperative links with the Soviet Union,
must,.as much as a matter of principle as that of practicality, de-
mand certain concessions from the U.S.S.R. in return for eco-
nomic and technological help, it might still be wondered why
he chose the issue of emigration above all others. Yet in his letter
to the U.S. Congress, as well as in a number of other statements
that Saknarov has issued within the past half year or so, he has
made his reasons crystal clear: First, the Jackson Amendment
serves as a symbol of the kind of policy Sakharov believes that
the :West must follow in its relations with the Soviet Union.
Second, emigration is a universal human right, embodied in the
U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Moscow
has ratified. Third, to cite his letter to the U.S. Congress, "the
abandonment. of a policy of principle would be a betrayal of the
thousands of Jews and non-Jews who want to emigrate, of the
hundreds in camps and mental hospitals, of the victims of the
Berlin Wall." Fourth, the untrarnelled right to emigrate would
eventually- force the Soviet Union to adopt measures that would
discourage the desire of Soviet citizens to leave their country-
that is, to reform the system in the direction of greater freedom
and material welfare. Western failure to press this demand upon
the Soviet regime would, indeed, "lead to stronger repressions on
ideological grounds," to disastrous consequences for "interna-
tional confidence, detente, and the entire future of mankind."
While Sakharov was issuing these statements, amidst a hys-
terical campaign in the Soviet press ("spontaneous" meetings of
protest by "indignant Soviet workers, and so on), Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, too, decided to have his say. Unlike Sakharov
,
Solzhenitsyn had until then limited himself-with several nota-
ble exceptions, such as an acid statement on the use of psychiatric
hospitals, which he compared, mutatis mutandis, to the exter-
mination policies of Nazi Germany-to a vigorous defense of
freedom of speech and religion in the U.S.S.R. On August 28.
However, exactly one week after Sakharov's first oress conference.
oolzhenitsyn invited two Western correspondents to a news con-
ference of his own. Much of what he said' was a repetition of his
past statements, especially as it related to the campaign of slander
that the Soviet press had waged against him for several years.
Tr
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other Soviet dissidents, specifically singling out numerous indi-
viduals-such as General Grigorenko and Vladimir Bukovsky'
-to praise their "indomitable" courage and their inhuman suf-
fering, while also castigating the West for failing to do whatever
possible to secure their release. While agreeing with Sakharov
on the need for outside pressure, he implicitly disagreed with the
physicist by demanding that the West refuse to compromise with
the Soviet regime on any matter of principle whatsoever-an
attitude which needless to say, holds out little promise for any
meaningful detente.
Two weeks later, Solzhenitsyn addressed a long letter to the
Nobel Committee in Oslo, nominating Andrei Sakharov for the
Nobel Peace Prize. Reaffirming his deep concern for Soviet
dissidents, Solzhenitsyn-true to his calling of writer/philos-
opher rather than politician-avoided the practical questions re-
garding East-West relations raised by Sakharov, referred to
detente (obliquely) as being dominated by "the spirit of Munich
-the. spirit of concessions and compromise," and called upon
the world to renounce violence, both internal and external, both
in. relations between states and in the relations between the gov-
ernments and their people, as the only means of securing, a. last-
ing peace..
The practical suggestions made by Sakharov were, however,
taken up.by Roy Medvedev, in the essay on detente and demo-
cratization referred to above. Disagreeing with his friend and
.colleague on his call for outside pressure as the only means of
achieving a democratization of Soviet society, Medvedev said:
It would be a gross oversimplification ... to presume that only with the help
of outside pressure-and pressure, moreover, involving inter-state relations
or trade-is it possible to achieve some substantive concessions from a coun-
try such as the Soviet Union in the conduct of our domestic policy. Outside
.pressure can play a negative as well as a positive role; it can deter our organs
of power from certain actions in some cases, and in other cases, on the con-
trary, it can provoke those or other undesirable actions and in that way only
impede the process of democratization of Soviet society.
Support for the Jackson Amendment, Medvedev. felt, be-
longed in this last category. As a confirmed "Marxist-Leninist,"
he argued, moreover, that appeals for support must be directed
not at groups or governments that utilize the pressure for their
own selfish reasons (i.e., profits), who are not at all interested in
.the process of internal democratization and who are in fact
deeply opposed to any kind of socialism whatsoever,. but to those
"leftist social organizations which are most interested in the
evolution of genuine socialist democracy in our country." Re-
liance on specifically anti-Soviet organizations would only be
grist for KGB mills-a sentiment echoed by Roy's brother in
London shortly thereafter.
Whatever the flaws or outright errors in Medvedev's argu-
ment (e.g., he criticized Solzhenitsyn for comparing the South
African treatment of blacks with the Soviet treatment of dissi-
dents', whereas Solzhenitsyn had in fact only deplored the lack of
response by the world to the latter as compared with the former),
his essay represented a closely reasoned argument in which he
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tried to formulate his agreements and disagreements with
Sakharov's position. Yet so high run the passions within the
Soviet dissident community that, Medvedev found himself im-
mediately under attack by numerous of his colleagues, some of
whom levelled rather absurd charges against him (e.g., "raising
[his] hands against two boundlessly courageous men of our time,
the moral pride of Russia, Academician Sakharov, and Alex-
ander Solzhenitsyn").?
These criticisms impelled'Medvedev to issue yet another essay
on this subject in April of this year ("Once More About De-
mocratization and Detente"), in which he answered some of the
criticisms, and attempted to formulate as concisely as possible the
relationship between pressure from the outside (in which he
fully believes) and the changes that can come only from within,
as well as the prospects for changes instituted "from above" (in
his earlier essay the only true means of effecting any meaningful
reforms) and for those that can be generated "from below."
In March of this year Solzhenitsyn-already abroad by this
time-published his "Letter to the Soviet Leaders," which raised
yet another flurry of criticism and counter-criticism. Without
attempting to do full justice either to Solzhenitsyn or to his .
critics-in the first place Sakharov, a subject this.author has
treated extensively elsewhere"-suffice it to say that Solzhenit-
syn, in a manner singularly reminiscent of the ideas of the Slavo-
philes of the early nineteenth century, proposed essentially that
Russia turn her energies inward, renounce Marxism-Leninism,
which he holds responsible for all the ills that have befallen
Soviet society, and also renounce unlimited technological and
economic growth as "not only unnecessary but ruinous." In his
reply, Sakharov affirmed his belief in international cooperation,
technology and detente as the only guarantees for democracy and
progress, rejecting Solzhenitsyn's views on ideology as "sche-
matic" and unperceptive of its real role in the Soviet Union (that
is, as "a convenient facade". and justification for the Party's re-
tention of power). He also criticized his friend's "way of think-
ing'.' as a species of "religious-patriarchal romanticism."
At the same time, Sakharov welcomed the "Letter" as an im-
portant contribution to the continuing discussion of major
issues affecting the future of Russia and the West, and paid trib-
ute to the writer as "a giant in the struggle for human decency in
our tragic contemporary world." Roy Medvedev, too, reacted to
Solzhenitsyn's letter, criticizing him, though far less exhaus-
tively, in terms similar to Sakharov's. In the meantime, Sakharov
had also issued a reply to both Medvedev brothers, while other
samizdat writers in the Soviet Union have published various
statements directed at all four-the Medvedev brothers, Solz-
henitsyn, and Sakharov. And so the debate goes on.
V
What, in the light of the foregoing, are some of the conclusions
that may be drawn regarding the current and future state of
dissent in the U.S.S.R., as well as some of the lessons for the West?
Perhaps the most important conclusion is that perorations
App
1-2
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1-2 dPYRGHT
in the past.
It would be presumptuous to predict either the nature of the
debate or its results, but perhaps a few thoughts on the subject
should be ventured:
(f) Within the "Democratic Opposition," individual differ-
ences will probably revolve largely around problems of strategy
and tactics, and are not likely to lead to fundamental schisms
among the various protagonists. In this connection, it should be
stressed that while the divergencies between the outlooks of men
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of Stalin-plus the fact that popular discontent, if not open,
is nevertheless deep and pervasive, encourages the growth of
bn the 'future of p611iticat oppbsitloni-and public opinion-in
the Soviet Union are much too premature. There is little doubt
that the KGB drive against the dissidents has yielded some re-
sults. The small group of intrepid men and women that had led
the struggle for human rights in the years 1967-69 has been fairly
effectively shattered, as much by sundry repressive measures as by
the fact that so many of them have been allowed to leave their
country. If the Soviet authorities could succeed in getting rid
of all the present and potential "trouble-makers," it would even-
tually make the country both "Juden-" and "intelligentsia-rein,"
at the mercy of unscrupulous careerists, reactionary pseudo-
intellectuals, and a cowed, unhappy and dispirited populace.
There seems little danger. of tjiat. The very elimination of
terror-so that the penalty for political nonconformity, how-
ever odious, is no longer as awe-inspiring'as it was in the days
unorthodox ideas and may very 'well lead, in turn, to more
.defiant and even organized forms of opposition to the regime.
Detente, too, with all its pitfalls and shortcomings, encourages
dissent (even though. it is in the interest of the Soviet leaders to
suppress dissent while improving relations with the West), if
only because detente without world public opinion is impossible;
and:.world public opinion is surely on the side of the. victims of
the KGB, and not vice versa.
The very existence of the debate described above shows that
the spirit of free thought in Russia has not been extinguished, a
conclusion underscored, as this -article was in press, by the re-
appearance of the Chronicle of Current Events. In the future,
the search for solutions to Russia's problems will probably not be
carried on solely within the coniines of the Soviet Union, but
jointly with both Western thinkers and the steadily growing com-
munity of Russians in exile. The Soviet authorities, of course,
count on the eventual disappearance from the public eye of men
who had been considered martyrs when in the U.S.S.R. and'
material for sensational news stories when they arrived in the
West. No doubt they will have proved correct in their calcula-
tions-to some extent. Yet Solzhenitsyn, Medvedev, Chalidze,
Litvinov, and all the others will probably continue to exert con-
siderable influence on their colleagues whom they have left
behind. The exposure to their ideas (by means of radio and
possibly expanding tourism) may well bring new forces to the
fore, just as resolute-and indeed perhaps even more resolute-
than those who have spoken up and acted upon their convictions
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Appr
like. Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, and the Medvedev brothers are
formidable, they are not as great or abrasive as frequently
assumed. Medvedev may fondly cling to his faith in Marxism,
yet in his A Book on Socialist Democracy (shortly to appear in
English) he sharply depicts the totalitarian nature of Soviet
society, his practical proposals stopping just short of a defense of
a multi-party system in the U.S.S.R. Solzhenitsyn idealizes pre-
Petrine Russia (hardly a model of progress and democracy),
yet his uncompromising stand on intellectual freedom constitutes
a powerful indictment against the Soviet system in toto. More-
over, whatever their differences, all these men invariably close
ranks when one of them is attacked by the regime-an almost
automatic (and deeply moving) reflex that is not likely to.dis--
appear.
(a)- As a whole, the views of the "Democrats" are probably
going to become increasingly radical even as their number de-
creases--or remains constant. The examples of Sakharov and
Solzhenitsyn are instructive. Over the past few years, the first
has turned from a mild to an astringent critic of the regime,
while the second has escalated his demands and placed himself
squarely within the dissident camp-something he had refused
to do in the past. Also, in his earlier works (e.g., The First Circle
and Cancer Ward) Solzhenitsyn's exclusive subject was Stalin-
ist Russia. In his extraordinary Gulag Archipelago, however,:
published in January of this year, he ascribes the. ideological and
actual origins, of Soviet terror to the hitherto sacrosanct Lenin.
The trend toward seeing Stalinism not as an aberration but as an
endemic part of a system fashioned by the Bolsheviks had already
emerged in the writings of other samizdat authors. As this trend
continues, so will the belief that the Soviet system cannot be
changed either by partial reforms or strict observance of "So-
cialist legality," but only by a complete rejection of the ideolog-
ical, economic and political bases upon which it rests.
(3) The deepening political debate may also be expected to
turn on issues that transcend the primary concerns of the intel-
ligentsia. Thus far the dissidents have not aimed their appeals at
the population at large, paying little attention to such deep-seated
grievances as social inequality, the rank exploitation of the
peasantry; economic privations, housing conditions, and so on.
But there have been signs of a growing awareness that dissent,
if it is ever to assume broader proportions, must address itself
.to'. these issues, too.
(c) Finally, the persistence of nationalist discontent may also
prove a fertile soil for the spread of political dissidence in gen- .
er.al. As mentioned earlier,.. the animosities of various ethnic
groups provided the "Democrats" with at least a potential base
for mass support. There is no evidence that nationalist sentiments
are on the wane; quite to the contrary, they are growing. In their
search for viable strategies and tactics, the political dissidents
may well choose to link their demands with those of the demo-
cratic nationalists of, say, the Baltic countries, the Ukraine, or
even Central Asia, and perhaps enter into more intimate orga-
nizational contacts_as_well_
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? , , is u un must , and it would be sheer
. *ft folly to sound confident about the trends within the dissident com-
munity, and even more so to ignore the ability of the Soviet au-.
thorities to cope with them if they ever reach serious proportions.
Still, for the time being it would seem as if the political ferment
and the debate are destined t6-go on, and that nothing but a com-
plete breakdown in the East-West relationship could terminate
them, thus setting the wheel of history backwards.
. Which, of course, brings us back to the issue of detente-the
principal subject of the current debate, and the principal guaran-
tee of its existence. Its benefits seem fairly obvious to us but the
fundamental and deeply disturbing question still remains: At
what price? What about the issues raised by Sakharov, Solzhen-
itsyn, the Medvedevs and others? None of them has the mo-
nopoly on truth, none of them should be regarded as a prophet.
But surely they and countless others like them better represent
Russia's conscience and wisdom than the officials or official rep-
resentatives with whom the West is perforce in contact. Perhaps
the words of Samuel Pisar, whose seminal work has provided
some of the basic ideas that led the West to enter into a new re-
lationship with the U.S.S.R., are worth quoting in this instance
--even though they refer only to Sakharov:
What we are asking Sakharov is to tell us, whatever our nationality may be, .
the conditions under which he thinks we can agree to move forward along
the path of detente, particularly between America and Russia. We urgently
need to know precisely what he thinks about precisely that question. If we
do not find that out, the new political efforts will simply be sacrificed by de-
fault and discouragement upon the altar of a moral purity it is not within
our power to achieve.",
i General Grigorenko, for example, has been confined to a psychiatric hospital since
2969, despite numerous efforts-including a finding by Soviet doctors--to release him as
perfectly sane and healthy.
- 2It also appeared in the Die Zeit (Hamburg). and, severely truncated, in The New
York Times.
a See index (London), Winter 1973, p. 30. 4 Ibid., p. 23.
,$Ibid., p. 28.
R Ibid., PP. fI-45.
2In 1972, as punishment for`Bukovsky's continuing activities-principally for having
made available to the West an enormous amount of material bearing on the use of psy-
chiatry for political means-he was sentenced to a total of 12 years of imprisonment,
camp and exile.
9 Letter by the writer v. Maximov, A Chronicle of Human Rights in the U.S.S.R. (New
''. York), No. 5-6, p. 8. Maximov is a gifted novelist who has recently been permitted to
leave the Soviet Union.
10 The New Leader, May 27, 1974.
12 Le Monde, September 16-27, 2973?
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MAY 1974 VOLUME 233 NO. 5
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Robert Manning
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THE ATLANTIC
ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR. 37 Is the Vice Presidency Necessary?
No
OibrAvio PAz 45 In Praise of Hands
And the once and future craftsman
48 Useful Beauty
A portfolio of contemporary
WILLIAM KENNEDY 53 The Quest for Heliotrope
or, The Pursuit of Joyce in Dublin
GARY WILLS 79 The Impeachment Man
Raoul Berger fiddles his own tune
FELICIA LAMPORT 86 Portrait of a Mirage
Would you walk a mile fora camel?
89 Why .Ted Kennedy Can't Win, and -
-Other Opinions -About the Democrats-
Responses to David Broder's 'The
Democrats' Dilemma"
CLAIRE STERLING 98 The Making of the - - -
Sub-Saharan Wasteland
Can nomads-and governments-change
their ways?
MARTIN RALRoVSKY 106 Destiny's Forgotten Darlings
Little League glory reconsidered
FICTION
JOHN GARDNER 61 King Gregor and the Fool
POETRY
LESLIE NoRRIs' 52 Eagle and Hummingbird
EDWIN BROOK 85 Diagnosis
REPORTS & COMMENT
FRANCES FITZGERALD 4 Vietnam: The Cadres and
the Villagers
EARL CALLEN 16 Moscow: Notes on a
Scientific Conference
LIFE & LETTERS
KENNETH BAKER 121 In the Beholder's Eye
RICHARD TODD 127 Getting Real
JOSEPH KANON 132 Examined Lives
EDWARD WEEKS 135 The Peripatetic Reviewer
PHOEBE ADAMS 139 Short Reviews: Books
L. E. SissntAN 26 Innocent Bystander
29 The Mail
t
Cover: Photograph by Ken Bell of Jordanian silver good luck charms. In the ,diddle
East countries "lucky hand" 'traditionally offers protection against the evil eye.
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CPYRGHT C"PYRGHT
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Moscow.
Notes on a
,apers at the Conference: papers
invited by the Program Committee
(invited papers), and papers con-
tributed by authors (contributed
papers)... .
The - sponsors of the conference
were he International Union of
Pure d Applied Physics (IUPAP),
and he Soviet Academy of
Scien s. Following custom, a Pro-1
gram ternational Advisory Com-
mittee was appointed. The planners
mailed announcements, invitations,
ands icitations of ten-minute con-
tribute talks to interested scientists
aroun the world. For Soviet scien-
tists t procedure was different. A
Confe nce Committee, and each
labors ry, decided which employ-
ees wo ld be allowed to attend, and
these ersons were given application
forms y their supervisors.
cluded Voronel's na
those convicted of
Voronel and the othe
as they recounted thi
were ecstatJ
Scientific Conference
On Saturday, December 15, 1973,-
in Moscow, officers of the KGB in-
terrogated four. Russian scientists,
Mark Azbel, Victor Brailovsky, Al-
exander .Lunts, and Alexander
VoroneI, about violations of Regu-
lation 209-1 of the Russian Criminal
Code, outlawing parasitism. A
"parasite" is defined as an "able-
bodied person.. stubbornly refusing
to engage in honest work and lead-
ing an antisocial parasitic way of
life." It is the crime for which oth-
ers have been convicted recently.
. That - Azbel, Brailovsky, Lunts,
Voronel, and another scientist,
Moshe Gitterman, had been fired
from their jobs or forced to resign
when they applied - for emigration
visas to Israel is not thought to be
relevant by the Soviet authorities in
considering their "parasitism."
Each of the scientists is Jewish;
each is. an active critic of the Soviet
regime. Voronel spent one year in
jail in the 1950s-for writing a high
school class essay on civil liberties.
But- whatever the charges, the real
crimes of Voronel and the others
are these: they have applied to emi-
grate,. and they. have publicly de-
fended nuclear physicist Andrei
Sakharov, next to Alexander Sol-
zhenitsyn the most outspoken and
insistent Soviet dissident. And for-
eign physicists mounted an unprece-
dented demonstration on their be-
half. at the International Conference
on Magnetism in Moscow, in Au-
gust, 1973.
An international physicists' con-
,ference on magnetism is held every
three years. Recent conferences were
in England, the United States, and
France. In 1973 it was the turn of
-the Soviet Union. The bulletin an-
_'nouncing it read:
The International Conference on
Magnetism will be held in Moscow,
22-28 August 1973 The scien-
tific program will include papers on
basic theoretical and experimental
investigations of magnetism, -on
magnetic materials and their prop-
erties and on important new appli-
cations of magnetism. According to
tradition there will be two types of
Unp rsons
Mar Azbel, Moshe Gitterman,
and exander Voronel are physi-
cists; lexander Lunts and Victor
Brailo ky are mathematicians and
electri 11 engineers. (Moshe Gitter-
man as released from the Soviet
Union month after the conference,
most robably because of appeals.
on his behalf by Senator Edward
Kenne y.) Mark Azbel was once a
profess )r at Moscow State Univer-
sity, a group leader of the presti-
gious Landau Institute of Theo-
retical Physics, the author of. a
textbo k and of many research pa-
pers. oday he is no longer a pro-
fessor or a group leader nor even
an em loyee. His books have been
remov d from the libraries and
from t e schools. His published pa-
pers a e not referenced, and his re-
search is not published. When Azbel
applie for an exit visa in January, .
1973, join his twelve-year-old son
in Isr el, he lost his job; he has
been ithout work for the past year.
Altho h Azbel is internationally
reno ed, in the Soviet Union he is
an un erson, as are- the others. Fel-
low s entists and all cautious per-
sons s un them. The extent of their
isolati n is emphasized by the min-
utiae f recognition in which they
take mfort. A few months ago
Voron 1 was crossing a Moscow
street,- jaywalked, and was charged
and fi ed. A local newspaper in-
story to me
They relished the imagined surpris
of their former friend
the editor, the anger
that an unperson had
Since Azbel, Git
Voronel work in m
wished to attend the
principle, there should
in a list o1
, the pique o
s
een named- 1
gnetism, the
nference.
bar. to their admissi
rules of the sponsorin
IUPAP. Like the
IUPAP, chemists, biol
tronomers also have inf
ganizations, which arel
bers of a parent ore
International Council
Unions (ICSU). The
recommended to all
members-including t
have been n
n, under th
organization
hysicists o
gists, and
ernational or
in turn mem
anization, th
of Scientifi
nions, and ar
its nations
tional Academy of Scences and th
Soviet Academy of Scilences:
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL
OF SCIENTIFIC UNIONS:
AMENDMENT O THE
STATUTES
The Extraordinary General Assem-
bly of the International Council of
Scientific Unions, immediately pre-
ceding the XIV General Assembly
at Helsinki, Finland, September
1972, amended the S atutes of the
Council. The following new provi-
sion concerning the non-dis-
criminatory philosophy of ICSU
was incorporated into he Statutes:
5. In pursuing the objectives
the Council shall observe the ba-
sic policy of non-discrimination-
and affirm the rights of scientists
throughout the world to adhere
to or to associate with inter-
national scientific activity without
regard to race, religion, political
philosophy, ethnic origin, citizen-
ship, language or sex. The Coun-
cil shall recognize and respect
the independence o the internal
scientific planning of its National
Members.
RESOLUTION ON THE FREE
CIRCULATION OF
SCIENTISTS
The XTV General Assembly
It Recapitulates that the dec-
laration of "political non-discrimi-
nation" is reaffirmed, nd moreover
..: the Council shall take all mea-
suns within its power to ensure the
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without any political discnmina
tron. .
-this policy be adopted also by the
Unions adhering to ICSU for all
their. activities;
-the ICSU National Members be
invited to follow this policy.
American and Soviet delegations
at the 1972 assembly supported the
resolution, which "observes with re-
gret. that scientists are still today
sometimes not allowed freely to at-
tend ... scientific meetings . ei-
ther abroad or. in their home
countries....." This was a reaffir-
mation of a ten-year-old policy, but
one which has been viulated time
and again by the Soviet Union and
the -socialist bloc nations, partic-
ularly with respect. to granting of
visas. No Israelis were issued visas
to attend an IUPAP-sponsored con-
-ference in Moscow in 1968. In War-
saw in 1972, again at an IUPAP-
sponsored conference, the Israelis
had.. great difficulty in obtaining
visas, and most were unable to at-
tend. And in August, 1972, the
Hungarian government refused to
issue. visas to South African scien-
tists wishing to attend an IUPAP-
sponsored conference on nuclear
structure.
An IUPAP regulation states that
"IUPAP will not sponsor a confer-
ence if visas. are re''used for travel
to it purely on grounds of nation-
ality or citizenship." Since the So-
viet Union has no diplomatic rela-
tions with Israel, the Israelis applied
for visas through the Soviet Con-
sulate in Vienna. Though applicants
everywhere received their visas
months in advance, those for the Is-
raelis were not issued until Monday,
August 20, two days before the con-
ference, and in one instance, only
two hours before the flight to Mos-
Cow.: Of the twelve Israelis who had
arranged to attend, only six had
risked ' going' to Vienna without
visas. But in the end the Soviet
Union: complied with the regu-
lations. All twelve visas were issued
on the afternoon of the twentieth.
How..to go?
Back in November, 1972, antici-
pating that they would, have trouble
getting into the coming Moscow -
meeting, Azbel, Gitterman, and
ference on magnetism held in Den-
ver in 1972, a few of those of us in
attendance posted notices of a spe-
cial session to discuss the problems
raised by the forthcoming Moscow
conference. Although the officers of
the conference were opposed to dis-
cussion of social issues the session
was held anyway. There the Ameri-
can representative on (and chairman
of) the IUPAP Commission on
Magnetism told us that IUPAP was.
being firm with the Soviet Union,
and that visas would be issued to
Israeli scientists. The question of
Azbel, Gitterman, and Voronel was
raised but not answered, though we
were told that IUPAP was doing ev-
erything in its power to see that
they would be permitted to attend
the conference.
In June, 1973, .while Leonid
Brezhnev visited Richard Nixon in
Washington to speak of detente,
seven Russian scientists, Azbel,
Voronel, and Gitterman among
them, went on a hunger strike in
Moscow. They wanted to emigrate
to Israel, and they wanted the
United States to support their right
to do so. Voronel's skin became
purple' and his body shook from
cold. Azbel was close to death. The
world noted, and after two weeks
the seven gave up. They began to
eat- again, at first sparingly. They
convalesced together, discussing
science to fill the time in prepara-
tion for the magnetism conference
two months away. By then they
would be well enough to attend,
and would wish to present papers.
The three knew that the Soviet
Union would not permit them to go
to the conference as Soviet citizens.
They had applied for exit visas to
Israel. They had been granted Is-
raeli citizenship. They had been ap-
pointed to * faculty positions at Is-
raeli universities. So they decided
that they would attend the confer-
ence as Israelis. There is no IUPAP
or conference rule which restricts
membership of a delegation to resi-
dents. They arranged to be ap-
pointed members of the Israeli dele-
gation, and Israel deposited their
registration fees. Abstracts of their
talks were phoned from Moscow to
Israel, to a member of the Program
International Advisory Committee,
and mailed fro
I
l b
m
srae
ack to the
Voronel wrote to friends in the Conference Committee.
-unUMental right o . participation, e 'states. At an American con- In July, one month before the
conference, Voronel visited Soviet
physicist A. S. Borovik-Romanov, a
fair, humane person. and chairman
of the Program Committee, to learn
if his abstract and those of Azbel
and Gitterman had been received
and if they might attend. Borovik-
Romanov responded that they had
missed the deadline for submission
of papers. As for attendance, that
was not within his authority to
grant. Academician S.' V. 'Von-
sovsky, a physicist influential in the
domestic and international politics
of science, was chairman of the con-
ference. He and the organizing com-
mittee must decide on attendance.
Borovik-Romanov said that he ex-
pected that they would not be per-
mitted to come as members of the
Israeli delegation, but he would take
up their request with Vonsovsky
and the organizing committee.
A few days after Voronel's visit,
Gitterman called Borovik-Romanov.
He pleaded that few Soviet physi-
cists would risk speaking to them
and they no longer were allowed to
attend research seminars at the in-
stitutes or to use the research facili-
ties. They had to attend the confer-
ence. Had Borovik-Romanov heard
anything from Academician Von-
sovsky? No. Borovik-Romanov had
not heard anything yet. -There was
nothing more they could do. They
.would be informed of any decision.
A few weeks later the three scien-
tists tried again. They wrote to Aca-
demician Vonsovsky:
Being members of the Israeli de-
legation to the International Con-
ference on Magnetism, from Tel
Aviv University, but living
presently in Moscow while awaiting
permission of the Soviet authorities
to emigrate to Israel, we ask the
Organizing Committee to send our
registration forms not to Israel but
to our Moscow addresses below.
They pointed out that their registra-
tion fees had been deposited by the
Israeli government at the Foreign
Trade Bank, in hard foreign cur-
rency, as required. No answer was
ever received.
That month a petition addressed
to physicists throughout the world
went out from the New York-based
Committee of Concerned Scientists,
and an offshoot of it, an ad hoc
Magnetism Committee on Human
Rights:
CP) RGHT
Approved For R9I9a o 1999/09/07 ? CIA _RDD7G_A1 1 GA AAAA1 nn5200/11
Dear Friend: for us. There is nothing you can do discrimination against J
Gitterman, and A. Voronel, along
with many others, have lost their
jobs in the Soviet Union because
they dared apply for emigration
visas. Recently they went without
food, ` drinking nothing but water
for 14 days, in an attempt to publi-
cize their plight. All three physicists
have written abstracts of talks (en-
closed) for the Magnetism Confer-
ence in Moscow. Whether they will
be permitted to register and, attend
the Conference is problematical.
We cannot invoke their names
for fear of possible consequences to
them, but perhaps the enclosed pe-
tition, signed by large numbers of
scientists,' will aid Azbel, Gitter-
man, Voronel and others in gaining
entry to the Conference... .
Four hundred and seventy-two
scientists from many nations signed
the petition, and it was sent to the
chairman of the IUPAP Magnetism
Commission.
Doing Something
Wednesday, August 22, was the
first day of the International Con-
ference on Magnetism. Fifteen hun-
dred conferees gathered at the Hotel
Russiya, where they were to eat and
sleep for the next week.. (Excluding
food, Westerners had to pay eigh-
teen rubles a day, or about twenty-
seven dollars at the conference ex-
change rate, for a room for which
Soviet scientists paid three rubles.)
The conference sessions were held
at Moscow State University. There
the conferees passed between uni-
formed police carving rifles, guard-
ing the entrance. Each registrant
was issued a large blue lapel badge.
The guards would * be at the door
each day but the last; only those
wearing badges would be admitted.
That first night a few of us visited
Azbel, Gitterman, Voronel, and the
others, in Voronel's apartment. They
knew nothing of thee. meeting on
their behalf -in Denver, had heard
nothing from IUPAP, or ICSU,
nothing of the petition. We wished
to protest, but we feared that our
actions would bring retribution not
on. ourselves-we were protected by
foreign passports-but on Azbel and
the others. The Soviet scientists con-
ferred, and Azbel told us: "You
may do whatever you consider
proper on our behalf. Do not fear
As you know, Mark Azbel, ht. that can hurt us. Anything the au- these people had co
thorities wish to do to us they can.
do to us now. There is only one
thing you can do that will hurt us,
and that is to do nothing." None of
us knew what we could do, but
.each swore to himself to do some-
thing.
Thursday,- August 23. Delegates
wearing blue. badges walked past
the armed guards and entered the
meeting, eight sessions running at
once, twenty sessions in all, one
hundred and thirty-six speakers.
The delegates had earphones to fol-
low simultaneous translation into
Russian and English.
That day Mark Azbel remained
in his apartment, a metro ride from
Moscow State University, where he
himself taught until two years ago,.
but which was now barred to him
by armed guards. Although he
couldn't be among his fellow scien-
tists at the conference, he had
learned from his visitors that his pa=
per, .having been carried out by a
tourist, was being published in
Physical Review Letters, the Ameri-
can journal of important new dis-
coveries in physics.-The paper, en-
.titled "Random Two-Component
One-Dimensional Ising Model for
Heteropolymer Melting," was on the
theory of the melting of nucleic acid
mixtures, DNA, at elevated tem-
peratures. Azbel had had to work
out his calculations on biophysics in
the isolation of his apartment. Al-
though scientific papers usually
credit the author and the laboratory
or institute at which he works, the
Physical Review Letter reads only:
"M. Ya. Azbel, Moscow, Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics.
Preoccupied with thoughts of Az-
bel, Voronel. and Gitterman, some
of us questioned the conference
chairman, Academician Vonsovsky,
about them. Of course the Soviet
Jews could not come as Israelis, he
told us.. They are Soviet citizens. Of
course they cannot present papers.
Their papers were submitted too
late. This would be unfair to others
whose papers were rejected because
they were too late. And it is not be-
cause they are Jews. These persons
are trouble-makers. There is no dis-
crimination against Jews in the So-
viet Union. He, Vonsovsky, is mar-
ried to a Jew. Soviet law prohibits
within the required tim
to attend, it would ha
ranged. But now unfi
was- too late. Regist
closed, and it would.
others who had not reg
low these persons in lat
Though his wife and
are Jews, there is much
mician Vonsovsky pre
ws. If only,
e to him
and asked
e been ar-
rtunately it
ation was
unfair to
tered to al-
:ier children
that Acade-
Eers not to
know about the life of !,Jews in the
Soviet Union. Discrimi
ation is en-
demic and pervasive. I
country's greatest, of th
in mathematics and
about half were Jews. L
entering class in thes
about five hundred
usual. Only three wer
three are sons of prom
at the university, p
enough- clout to gain
ment for.their sons.
The Soviet Union h
vision: there are too
the professions. They w
Jews are hindered fr
college to train for the
the 1960s,
?ersity, the
st year, the
fields had
Jews. All
ent faculty
rsons with
pecial treat-
made a de--
any Jews in
nt no more_-
r entering
professions-
A man need not be a practicing
Jew. So long as his identification
card reads "Jew," his cl
brilliant, will find it di
come a scientist, or a
doctor. Every -Jew knc
dld, however
f'icult to be-
lawyer, or a
ws . this and.
every official denies it.
Since religious discrimination is a
violation of the Soviet Constitution,
it is accomplished in ormally. or
-nominally on other grounds, such as
ideology. For example at Moscow
State one of the admissions tests
pertains to the subject of Commu-
nism. Jews know they till be failed
on this test no matter ow they an-
swer. In one instance we learned of,
two brilliant Jewish b ys, preparing
for the tests, studied horthand, as
well as science and hi tory. During
the interrogation .on Communist
ideology, they recorded clandes-
tinely the interrogator's questions and
their responses. With. a verbatim
transcript of accurate nswers, they
are now appealing their failing grades
to higher authorities, c ting the law
against discrimination.
Friday, August 24. There was
disturbing incident a the confer
ence. Over the public address sys
tam one of the American visito
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000100580001-2
denounced the exclusion of Azbel,
Gitterman, and Voronel. The trans-
lator remained silent, and the Soviet
conferees, were spared hearing the
insult through their earphones.
News
In Russia, it is safer not to speak
of, dangerous matters. When one
must discuss them with trusted
friends, one does not do so in pub-
lic buildings, or hotels, or in the
laboratories. Those may be bugged.
One -does not speak in restaurants
or taxicabs. The waiters, the drivers
may be spies. Since talk is inhibited
and- the press, the radio, and the
books and magazines are controlled,
the Russian people are ignorant of
many things. Few ordinary persons,
have heard of, the U.S.-Soviet grain
deal. Each year the press reports.
new miracles of farming. Why
should the Russians need to buy
American wheat when their own
crops have been so huge? Watergate
is a puzzle. The word is known to
them, but only those well up in the
power structure know what it repre-
sents. The Russians want detente,
and Nixon stands for detente; hence
Nixon is favored and Watergate is
not reported.
The Soviet press may, not discuss
the grain deal or Watergate, but it
does give news, both foreign and
domestic. 'the big foreign news that
week in August was of a "bloody".
strike at the Chrysler plant in De-
troit. There was also news of the
signing and ratification by the So-
viet Union of two United Nations
"international covenants on eco-
nomic, social, and cultural rights
and on civil and political rights." The _ covenants commit nations to
respect each citizen's right to pri-
vacy, freedom of opinion, freedom
to exchange books and newspapers
"regardless of frontiers," freedom of
out. that the covenant on civil and
political rights can, according to its
text, be suspended "for the protec-
tion of national security or of public
order, or of public, health or. mor-
als." In the Soviet Union national
security and public order are well
protected.
The domestic news was. full of
Andrei Sakharov: father of the So-
viet hydrogen bomb, winner of the
Lenin prize, the Stalin prize, the
State prize, three times "Hero of
Socialist Work," full member of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences. Farm-
ers, factory workers, housewives
were seized with., the desire to write
letters denouncing. him. Fellow sci-
entists repudiated him. The satellites
joined in-the Hungarian Commu-
nist Party accused him and author
Alexander Solzhenitsyn of "irre-
sponsible malice." A Kremlin func-.
tionary, the chief deputy. prosecutor
general, ordered Sakharov to cease
all political activity, especially press
conferences. He announced that
Sakharov could' be jailed for '.'clan-
destine meetings with foreigners."
We visited Sakharov. He was de-
pressed and feared for his life and
for those around him. He himself
has been too important for the se-
cret police to eliminate, so far, but
they go after all who associate with
him. His wife has been repeatedly
interrogated by the KGB, his wife's
daughter expelled from Moscow
State University, her husband is
without a job, their seventeen-year-
old son barred from college. Sakha-
rov told us of two friends, both now
in prison, Yuri Shikanovich and Ed-
ward Kuznetsov.
Yuri Shikanovich, a mathemati-
cian, was fired from his job for sign-
ing a statement in defense of an-
other dissident. For a while he was
a construction worker, but on Sep-
tember 28; 1972, he was arrested
and charged with crimes of sub-
religion, and the freedom "to leave version: possession and circulation
any country,. including his own." of an underground newspaper, the
New Times proclaimed that the. So- Chronicle of Current Events. For
viet Union "has again emphasized eight months he was held in-
that it is a consistent struggler for communicado; then in May, 1973,
democratic rights and freedom, and he was declared insane.. According
for social pprogress," and pointed out to Soviet law, a party' charged with
that the United, States had neither insanity is entitled - to-=a hearing, to
signed nor ratified the covenants. defense counsel, and to examination
But no Soviet newspaper printed by a, psychiatrist of his own choos-
the text. of the covenants, or de- ing. Yuri Shikanovich, at the time
scribed them fully. On the other of our. visit, had been imprisoned
hand, the press was careful to point one sear. He had not been seen by,
@tl'TQfl[
CPYRGHT
family .'r friends and bad not been
allowed to speak to a lawyer, nor
had he seen a psychiatrist.
and his wife are in prison for pro-
test activities, he for fifteen years
(commuted from a death sentence),
she for-ten. Kuznetsov kept a secret
diary, a daily account of his. life in
prison, which was smuggled out to
the West by -Mrs. Sakharov and
published, and Kuznetsov is being
punished. To ensure no one knows
of the punishment, the authorities
forbidden to see him because' she
too is imprisoned. Last year Mrs.
Sakharov was permitted to see him
only once. This year, while one of
our group, Edward Stern, was vis-
iting the Sakharovs, they received
notification that "because of repairs
to the prison,". their visit must be
cancelled. They are afraid that next
year there will be no Edward Kuz-
Sakharov also spoke to us about
Evgeny Levich, a son of Benjamin
Levich, a theoretical physicist of
some renown. Tww years ago Ben-
j,amin Levich, his wife, his two sons,
and their wives applied for exit
visas for Israel. They were all fired
from their jobs. Evgeny Levich has
high blood pressure and a chronic
stomach disorder. Last May he was
seized on the street by the military
police and disappeared. In time Ev-
gene wrote from a. work camp in a
forbidden area of the Arctic Sea
near the North Pole,, the Bay of
fined in a military hospital, declared
to be in fine health, and forcibly in-
ducted into the army. His blood
pressure has risen and his nose
bleeds. He has bloody diarrhea. He
is allowed no special diet and no re-
duction in work. He must break ice
and carry heavy loads-. At first. the
camp doctor exempted him from
the heaviest jobs, but now the doc-
that the Levich boy would not sur-
vive. In an open letter to the free
world he called for an international
campaign on Evgeny Levich's be-
half. He denounced the abduction
of Levich as "an action that is
meant to. frighten and to take re-
venge upon those who wish to exer-
cise their right to emigrate from this
country."
A pprovad For Relearn
"Have you heard?
In Moscow the tourist guides ex-
plain to visitors that there is no reli-
gious discrimination in the Soviet
Union. All are free to go to church
or synagogue, as they see fit. If you
ask where the synagogues are, the
.guides tell you that there are many,
and they suggest you visit the one
on Ulitsa Arkhipova, for example.
In fact, the synagogue on Ulitsa Ar-
khipova is the only one in Moscow.
Each Saturday morning, pious.
Muscovites gather in the synagogue.
Each Saturday those Jews who have
applied - to emigrate gather outside
in the square. Who got a visa? Who
has been denied? Who has been
fired? Have you heard who the police
took away? Is he in a mental hospital
or a concentration camp? No doubt
there are undercover agents among
them, for across the street the KGB
stand openly, eavesdropping, aiming
directional microphones at turned-
aside heads, photographing the
crowd, photographing those who en-
ter the synagogue. Perhaps there are
KGB in the synagogue wearing yar-
mulkes.
Saturday, August 25. Several of
us skipped the conference sessions
to attend Sabbath services. The
world youth games were going on
in Moscow that week. The Soviet
Union encourages such events,
which bring foreign exchange, and
last year more than two million vis-
itors came to Moscow. From young-
sters quartered in the Hotel Russiya
we had learned that the Israeli.con-
tingent was being harassed- On the
-streets, at the games, they were
greeted with "Zhid." Today, on the
Sabbath, they planned to come to-
gether to synagogue,. and we timed
our visit to watch them march up,.
straight and proud and tall, in their
bright blue. uniforms. Outside in the.
square, young Israelis greeted pro-
spective Israelis. "Shalom, shalom."
"Next year in Israel." Then the
youths spread through the syna-
gogue. They mingled with the old
men, praying. The cantor chanted
on, but the bearded old ones looked.
up and smiled with a thrill of recog-
nition and pride at the young ath-
letes donning prayer shawls and yar-
mulkes and chanting among them.
The Russian worshippers could
tell we were foreigners. Perhaps
they all know each.other, or maybe
COYRGHT
1999109022 . rin ono7o n44on nnnna nnaannna o
it was our well-made clothes or
something about our manner. They
would glance over and nod or smile.
In the lobby the old ones pressed
up and shook our hands. An an-
cient woman held one of us,. kissed
his cheek, greeted him in Yiddish.
"God bless you. You are our hope.
Here Judaism is dying. Only the old
come to synagogue. The young are
atheists. Or they are afraid. In your
country do the young -Jews still go
to synagogue?' God bless you." She
was crying and we struggled not to
cry with her. ...
That Saturday afternoon.was the
meeting of the International Union
of Pure and Applied Physics Com-
mission on Magnetism. There was a
long agenda, and it went slowly..
The last item was the question of
the exclusion of Azbel, Gitterman,
and Voronel. Several -members ob-
jected that it was a political issue
unsuitable for discussion at an inter-
national conference.. Others argued
that it was purely an internal affair
of the Soviet Union. To discuss the
matter would be a breach of the
Helsinki Amendment, which says
that the "Council shall recognize
and respect the independence of the
internal scientific planning of its
National Members." Physicist
George Rado, U.S. representative
on the IUPAP Commission on Maa
netism and then and now its chair-
man, gave a speech which ended
the discussion.
As he wrote later: "Both before
and during the Moscow conference
I was put under considerable pres-
sure to have IUPAP intervene...
However, as chairman of the
IUPAP Commission on Magnetism,
I must. adhere to the policies of
IUPAP, the international organiza-
tion which elected me, even in cases
where those policies are contrary to
my personal feelings:=To make sure.
that my actions would be ? in
accordance with IUPAP policy, I re-
quested (well before the conference)
the advice of -..: the Secretary-
General of IUPAP` and:. . the.
Secretary of the U.S.-National Com-
mittee for IUPAP.'--They- informed
me that IUPAP cannot. intervene,
and has never intervened, when an
individual scientist is prevented
from proceeding from one part of
his country to another. In view of
this-policy, I considered it inappro-
Magnetism Commissi,
Azbel, Gitterman, or
the Moscow Confer
spite of the fact th
.could not intervene
wanted to do whatever I could
unofficially to help them. Therefore,
I requested and obtained a private
meeting with Academician S. V.
Vonsovsky, the ? cha rman of the
.Magnetism conferee e.. . . In a
friendly and (hopefully) persuasive
manner, I conveyed to Professor
Vonsovsky the intense concern from
many different countries. . . . I
strongly sympathize ith Drs. Az-
bel, Gitterman, and oronel and do
hope that IUPAP's policy on the
Free Circulation of Scientists will be
improved. But until the governing
bodies of IUPAP adopt a different
policy, my continuing efforts to help
are limited by the clear obliga-
tion that I operate, within the con-
fines of the IUPAP
exists at present."
fine distinctions here
hand, the statutes pro
of a. scientist from a
conference on racial,
ical, or citizenship gr
other hand, the . cou
.the independence of t
entific planning of its
bers. Objectivity is
profession. It can als
pational disease.
`Best sons"
n ... to visit
oronel during
t officially I
for [them], I
policy which
ter. There are
On the one
hibit exclusion
international
eligious, polit-
)unds. On the
cil recognizes
e internal sci
national mem-
the scientist's
be his occu-
Sunday, August 2 . There were
twenty more morning and afternoon
sessions, eight sessions in parallel,
one hundred and fift?-two lectures.
Itinerant ferromagnets bubbles, do-
main walls, spin densities and form
factors, polarized neutrons, unpaired
electrons, quasi-tw -dimensional
models, specific heats, magnetic mo-
ments, Knight shifts, Green func-
tions, and Barkhausen noise.
Scientists are the monks of our
time, illuminating -theiPhysical Re-
views. Outside in the world' there is
discord, but in the to ple one hears
only a muted orison : "praseody-
mium, gadolinium, ne dymium, ytt-
rium.". It was Sunday, and fifteen
hundred anchorites led past the
armed guards. Again t ere were dis-
turbing incidents. Sig s were posted
and handwritten announcements
priate. as chairman of the IUPAP were distributed in the lobbies. An
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000100580001-2
CPYRGHT CPYRGHT
announcement was broadcast from
the rostrum: "This afternoon there
will be a special seminar on Critical
Phenomena and Related Topics in
Magnetism. The seminar will be
held in the apartment of Professor
Voronel. Those wishing to attend
will meet in the lobby of the Hotel
Russiya at 1:30." Like the signs, the
scheduling was spontaneous. Vora
nel and his colleagues had hoped
for a few visitors; they were aston-
ished when forty-one conferees
turned up. Not many out of fifteen
hundred, but still, in the Soviet
Union, forty-one persons flouting
authority is a large number. They
went by subway to Professor Voro-
nel's apartment and sat on the floor.
Several Soviet scientists attended,
and of course the KGB. was there.
But Mark Azbel, Moshe Gitterman,
and. Alexander Voronel finally got
to give their talks.
Tuesday, August 28, was the last
day of the conference. The guards
were gone from the entrance to
Moscow State University. Most of
the delegates had already left.
Those of us who still remained
packed up our bags and invited our
new Soviet friends to the Hotel
Russiya to say good-bye: Azbel, Al-
exander Lunts, the Gittermans. Vic-
tor Brailovsky, the Voronels, hus-
bands and wives, brave people.
Back home, we spoke to Mark
Azbel by phone from Moscow. He
said that though he and Voronel
and Gitterman have applied to emi-
grate, they could never "remain in-
different to Russia. . . . If any
.enemy appeared who wanted to de-
stroy everything beautiful in this
country, he would begin with Sol-
zhenitsyn and Sakharov. Any great
country would be proud of these
people, and only Russia carries on
its old traditions of devouring
best sons." .
Iii the United States, -the National
Academy of Sciences wrote to the
Soviet Academy: "It was with con-
sternation and a sense of shame
that we learned of the expression of
censure of Sakharov's contributions
to the cause of continuing human
progress that was signed by forty
members of your academy. .
In Budapest, Hungary, on Sep-
tember 29, 1973, officers of the In-
ternational Union of Pure and Ap-
plied Physics convened. The Soviet
delegate, B. M. Vul, insisted that the
Helsinki Resolution on the 'Free
Circulation of Scientists,.-was merely
a floor resolution of the XIV Gen-
eral Assembly . and had no legal
weight. He further insisted that the
statutory amendment on non-dis-
.crimination explicitly exempted
internal actions by any national
member. This was the same inter-
pretation the Secretary of the U.S.
National. Committee for IUPAP and
the Secretary-General of IUPAP
had stated previously..
The U.S. representatives bowed to
reality. The Soviet delegate sug-
gested that if IUPAP pressed for a
stronger interpretation of the Hel-
sinki Amendment, or voted to cen-
sure the. Soviet Union for the ex-
clusion of the three .scientists, the
Soviet Union was prepared to aban-
don IUPAP. Faced with this threat,
the AmAr-isafts .7 t'.
-EARL CALLEN
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000100580001-2