Cold war or détente? The Soviet viewpoint

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Chapter 4 On Issues of Ideology, Human Rights, and Dissidents

What role does ideology play in relations between Moscow and the Western world in general, and the United States in particular?

Ideological differences between countries with different social systems in our view should not prevent them from having normal political relations. At the same time, the communist parties, while strongly in support of détente and international cooperation, consider ideological differences profound and the struggle of ideas inevitable.

How does one reconcile these two concepts?

The essence of the Leninist concept of peaceful coexistence is that it envisages the parallel and peaceful existence of states belonging to opposite social systems. These systems differ in their economic structures, in the character of their social relations, their values, and their ideals. In today's world the influence of ideologies can't be confined only to those countries where they predominate. Ideologies constantly clash both on the global scale and within many individual countries. This fact of life was not invented by us and it cannot be ignored. To Americans, proud of their pluralist tradition, this should be perfectly clear. But once an ideological struggle is turned into a crusade or a witch hunt, it immediately acquires the potential to arouse and aggravate conflicts. History has presented us with many examples of this kind. Even more numerous are the cases when ideology and ideas in general were only a coverup for actions motivated

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by other things, like greed, lust for power, and so on. One example could be the messianic pretentions of the Spanish conquistadors.

Ideology and propaganda may also be used as instruments of a certain policy, in particular a policy of subversion and destabilization of other societies. It's true both for times of war and times of peace. The Cold War was a good example, with its peculiar type of ideological struggle succinctly called ‘psychological warfare.’ Propaganda of this sort is in our view incompatible with détente and peaceful coexistence. It can only damage relations between countries.

Can it pose a serious threat?

Of course. And this is not only my opinion. International law imposes limitations or bans on certain kinds of propaganda. I can cite quite a few international agreements. One of them, the Roosevelt-Litvinov letters, which served as a formal basis for establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries, was already mentioned.

Then ideology continues to play an important role in international relations?

It certainly does. But we should be very specific regarding these matters. Sometimes an ideological struggle is interpreted so broadly as to include different attitudes toward revolutions and other forms of social change in many countries of the world. Though related to ideology, these attitudes are primarily manifestations of another very fundamental reality, namely the radical social differences between the two systems. And here we are bound to confront very complex problems - political contradictions and even conflicts around many events in different countries. Détente is no guarantee for the status quo. Social and political changes are inevitable. We should learn to live with them so as not to endanger peace and détente.

Shouldn't there be rules of behavior in regard to these changes, particularly for the great powers?

Certain principles and rules already exist. The principle of peaceful coexistence in itself, as was mentioned before, precludes efforts to export revolution, or, for that matter, counterrevolution.

Is it not wishful thinking to try to broaden the framework of cooperation between nations with widely differing systems of values?

No, I consider it a very realistic notion. Certainly, we have differences. But we also have important common interests, the foremost of which is sur-

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vival. We have to coexist peacefully and keep our differences from jeopardizing the survival of the human race. You mentioned the different concepts of human rights that we have. But don't both societies have a common ground on such a basic human right as the right to live, the right to survive? After all, if that particular right is not guaranteed, other rights lose their meaning.

Is it possible to narrow the gap in the East-West understanding of the concept of human rights?

Why not? I think the gap has been artificially widened by those in the West who want to sow distrust between the two systems. In reality, there is some sort of global consensus on human rights embodied in the 1948 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, the more recent United Nations covenants on human rights, and the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on European Security and Cooperation. Most countries of the world are signatories to at least some of these documents.

There may be a consensus all right, but the same principles tend to be interpreted differently by different people.

That's true of any principle. One's interpretation of human rights depends on one's social position, on the body of cultural tradition one belongs to, on the overall historical setting. But before we speak about these differences, I want to make clear one fundamental point. The United States tries to make the following case out of the overall situation in the field of human rights: Americans are the staunchest and almost the only champions of human rights, whereas the Soviet Union and other socialist countries are against them, doing nothing but violating these rights. Both these images are a far cry from reality.

Could you be more specific on this point? It is very important.

Certainly. How can one be against human rights nowadays? It's the same as to be against motherhood. So to do more than repeat political platitudes you have to be concrete and specific. Speaking about the USSR, I would like to stress our deep and long-standing commitment to human rights. It's for human rights that we made our Revolution and then defended it against foreign intervention and a Nazi invasion. More than that - it fell to the Soviet Union to develop a new, broader approach to human rights by including social rights largely neglected before that time, but vitally important for the overwhelming majority of our people and other peoples as well. It took the world community half a century to recognize the significance of those rights in the form of the U.N. covenants.

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Would you say that in the field of social rights the Soviet Union is more advanced than the West?

Yes, and this is only natural. At the time of the Revolution in Russia, social rights and freedoms were of prime importance for people who were hungry and lived in conditions of abject poverty, and for the illiterate peasants constituting the majority of the population. These were the right to work, the freedom from hunger and starvation, the right to have a shelter, the right to have land to till, the right to be educated, the right to receive medical care, and so on. And for a country devastated first by World War I, then by a civil war and the intervention of Western powers, the right to live in peace was of the greatest importance. These and many other social rights still occupy the highest places in the set of values of our society. Of course, our constitution guarantees the usual political rights just as well, including freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly, although the understanding of these rights and freedoms here differs from, say, the standard American approach. In general, I am sure that, given a serious balanced approach, there could be a thorough and useful dialogue about human rights. Unfortunately, in the United States and in the West as a whole, this very important and complex question was turned into a symbol of a fierce propaganda campaign against the USSR.

But it is inexplicable to Westerners that a large and powerful nation like the Soviet Union should be so petty in not allowing citizens who prefer to leave to obtain a passport and go.

Well, Mr. Oltmans, every state and government acts in accordance with its own understanding of its interests, priorities, and attitudes toward problems. And you cannot escape here from the influence of historic traditions and historic experiences. There is a great difference in this respect between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the exception of the American Indians, who were forced from their land and almost completely annihilated, Americans are a nation of immigrants or descendants of immigrants, and it is quite logical that other peoples' freedom to emigrate has become sort of a natural right in their minds. But in this country, attitudes and sentiments are different. During its history the Soviet Union witnessed two waves of large-scale emigration. The first wave occurred right after the Revolution and the civil war. These emigrés were, for the most part, bitter enemies of our new society. They had participated in an armed struggle against the new Soviet power, hand in hand with foreign invading forces. Among those who emigrated in the second wave - during and after World War II - were a lot of collaborators with the Nazis and war criminals. As a result, a very definite attitude was formed against those who wanted to

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leave the country. And the word emigrant became almost synonymous to the word traitor.

Is this still a widespread attitude?

The situation began to change gradually, first as a result of migration across the borders shared with socialist countries, then through mixed marriages and family reunions and changes in the political atmosphere due to détente. Later, as you know, there was increased emigration to Israel, or, under that pretext, to the West. But this doesn't mean that the traditional attitude has disappeared completely. Speaking frankly, those who emigrate are still far from being regarded as exemplary citizens and patriots. And I think you wouldn't dispute that there are good reasons for such an attitude.

What do you mean?

Emigrating from here to the United States is not like leaving, say, Holland for the United States or the United Kingdom. When somebody leaves this country for the West, it means that he or she rejects the whole set of social values and ideals of the Soviet nation, which were born, developed, and defended through many hardships and ordeals. This also creates certain emotions at the grass roots. The same could be true, to a certain extent, of America. I am sure that a decision to emigrate to a Western European country or Canada would be treated with tolerance. But imagine the reaction of a sheriff from Texas or even an ordinary law-abiding and churchgoing citizen in a small midwestern town to the news of a neighbor planning to leave for the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, or the German Democratic Republic.

On the whole, whether we like it or not, certain restrictions on emigration and immigration exist in practically every country. The United States, for instance, has severe restrictions on immigration, which is no less a humanitarian problem than emigration.

Only in Utopia will all restrictions cease to exist someday.

Of course, everything is on the move, things change. I firmly believe that the time will come when all restrictions on international migration of people will be lifted. But until then we obviously should treat this matter with a lot of understanding, realizing that it involves some serious problems, which should be reckoned with and not turned into a propaganda trump card. At the same time, I'm sure that our relations and rules concerning emigration are really not the heart of the matter in the campaign for human rights launched a few years ago by the United States.

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What do you mean?

I mean that this human-rights campaign has different purposes: to put pressure on the USSR, to arouse anti-Sovietism, to improve the American image around the world, and to restore the foreign policy consensus inside the United States. Human rights themselves were not what the Carter administration cared about very much. The United States often turns out to be the staunchest supporter of authoritarian regimes. And whenever such a regime is toppled - in Kampuchea, Iran, Nicaragua, or Afghanistan - why is Washington so enraged and vengeful?

But no matter how Washington interprets human rights, the problem itself remains vital.

Of course it's important We in the Soviet Union are for safeguarding and broadening human rights. It's part of our ideology, our laws, our entire outlook. But when the human rights rhetoric is deliberately used to foment distrust and hostility in Soviet-American relations, to undermine détente, it has nothing to do with human rights as such. The noble idea is perverted and abused.

I think Americans should try to understand that if they are so strongly for human rights, this implies they must also be for détente. War and preparation for war, international tensions and crises - these are the factors most detrimental to democracy and social progress. The McCarthyist witch-hunts of the late forties and early fifties would not have been possible without the cold-war atmosphere.

I think it was Harvard University sociologist Daniel Bell who once said that, during the heyday of the Cold War, America was a ‘mobilized society.’ By the same token, the CIA and the FBI were set up in periods of tensions to fight an ‘external enemy.’ All their methods of operation, subversive activities, and psychological warfare, developed for cold-war purposes, were then turned against Americans themselves, including, as Watergate revealed, even political opponents within the elite. It may be remembered, by the way, that the Watergate ‘plumbers,’ when asked in the court about their profession, replied after some hesitation that they were ‘anticommunists.’ The same logic is unfurling now that the second edition of the Cold War is being issued from the White House. In a cold war-type situation, governments like those of Chile, South Korea, Pakistan, or El Salvador can afford to do whatever they please with civil liberties and still get American aid and support.

Even if American concern about human rights should be thoroughly political and self-serving, why wouldn't the Soviet Union try to outmaneuver

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Washington, ‘disarm’ it, if you will, by changing its mind on some of the sore points that Americans keep pointing to?

To change our minds on some of the sore points would change nothing. One has to realize that in this human rights campaign we deal with an attempt to modify through constant, ever-increasing pressure our domestic order according to Western liking, and at the same time to discredit the USSR before the world public. Specific demands might sometimes look rather modest - to let N or M out of jail (though they were convicted strictly according to the Soviet law), to permit X or Y to emigrate (the reason of refusal being, as a rule, that their former jobs involved access to classified information), to change a procedure of importation and sales of some Western periodicals, and so on. But we have learned through hard experience that with every concession grows an appetite for further demands and pressures. This is quite understandable, because for many organizers of this campaign these demands do not reflect a sincere concern over human rights, but serve as a pretext for stepping up an attack against our institutions and values. There were times when a real war was waged to crush this system. Then came the Cold War, and now other devices, including the human rights campaign, are being utilized.

Are you not exaggerating? Could it be a manifestation of the Soviet paranoid attitude to the West?

Not at all, I assure you, Mr. Oltmans, and, please, don't think that I attach a great importance to this campaign as such; but the point is it can't be viewed in isolation. It should be seen against the background of certain military efforts, foreign policy maneuvers, and other propaganda campaigns. It would be proper to recall, for instance, that in some key American foreign policy documents, like NSC-68, basic changes in our internal structure were put forward as a sine qua non for peaceful coexistence. Many actions in U.S. foreign policy in recent years reflect those guidelines. More than that - somewhere deep in the American political conscience there still lives the thought that we are something illegitimate, created not by God but by the Devil, and that our existence in its present form should be ended somehow.

This is too intangible.

Well, take a specific example - ‘Captive Nations' Week,’ celebrated every July by the U.S. Congress. As if this were not enough, the president personally signs a solemn declaration, which has been a routine practice for many years now. But what is its real message? It means, as explained in many U.S. commentaries, that, in the opinion of the United States, the Soviet Union lawlessly holds in its grip fourteen republics, which, there-

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fore, should be ‘liberated.’ These include vast territories in Siberia - called DVR - the ‘Cherkessia,’ ‘Idel-Urals,’ and ‘Kazakia.’ I really don't know what all these crazy names mean, but my feeling is that they include the Urals, the Lower Volga basin, the Kuban River region, Don, Northern Caucasus, and some other regions. In other words, we are left with an area extending approximately from Moscow to Leningrad, north to south, and from Smolensk to Vladimir, west to east. I wonder how Americans would react if our Supreme Soviet and President Brezhnev issued solemn proclamations supporting a campaign questioning U.S. sovereignty beyond, say, an area from Boston to Washington and from Baltimore to Detroit, declaring that all the rest should be ‘liberated’? One could argue that the southern states were kept in the union only by means of war, that others were taken by force from France and Mexico, and that the whole territory originally had been stolen from the most captive nation of all - the American Indians.

But most Americans ignore ‘Captive Nations' Week.’ Why do you take it so seriously?

We far from exaggerate its importance. But neither can we completely ignore such things. To finish this theme I'd like to summarize:

We consider the matter of human rights very important. A lot has been and will be done in this area in our country. We know that we haven't reached an ideal situation yet. Who has? The continued progress of democracy remains our basic goal.

Another point: the propaganda campaign launched in connection with human rights by the United States has in fact nothing to do with those rights. We see it as one of the instruments of anti-Soviet policy, and let there be no illusions about our yielding to it. What the West really wants from us in this field is that we help with our own hands to organize anticommunist, anti-Soviet activities aimed at undermining our own social and political system. We aren't going to cooperate in destabilizing our social institutions, just as we would not expect the American government to do so if we were to make such demands on them.

A third point: what makes this campaign look particularly dubious to us is that the United States, in our view, has no right whatsoever to teach others the basics of human rights, because, as is true with many other problems, this one begins at home. It is very difficult for us, for instance, to believe in the value of the American system of free speech when the American news media have become such huge private enterprises, strongly motivated by profit, and catering to the tastes of their owners and the interests of corporate advertisers rather than to the interests of the public.

Denied access to the mass media, you can scream almost anything you want in America without being heard, though sometimes at the risk of

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being spied upon by the FBI or the CIA, like those young people who were persecuted for their opposition to the war in Southeast Asia. We in the Soviet Union have read about congressional inquiries into the illegal activities of the CIA regarding the Watergate scandal. We know that President Lyndon Johnson used J. Edgar Hoover to spy not only on communists and other radicals, but on respected congressmen as well. Richard Nixon even had a list of enemies drawn up. We know that if the authorities in the United States deem it necessary, they not only harass people, but even kill them. This happened, for example, to leaders of the Black Panthers, a number of whom were murdered in cold blood by the police. Not to speak of assassins who killed or wounded dozens of civil rights leaders from Martin Luther King to Vernon Jordan. And those responsible seldom get punished. Remember Kent State University? And what happened to the American Indian movement? What about numerous black activists sentenced and kept in prison for years on trumped-up charges? You would agree that this can only make us more skeptical toward the United States as a mentor on the subject of human rights.

Yes, but in spite of these alarming examples it is still possible for a dissident CIA agent like Frank Snepp to publish a book on the crimes perpetrated by Americans in Vietnam and elsewhere. Such a publication in the Soviet Union would be unthinkable.

Publication of Frank Snepp's book was possible a couple of years ago. Whether it would be possible now is doubtful. By the way, while Frank Snepp did get his book published, the CIA retaliated through the courts, and he's been severely punished financially. As a result of the legislation passed by Congress in 1980, I'm afraid that he and others like him may suffer much greater hardships. There are numerous indications that the wave of revelations has come to an end. The recent changes in the status of the intelligence bodies and secret police are a throwback to the status quo ante. On the other hand, when you talk about the Soviet Union, you forget that the practices of our security organs underwent very critical scrutiny and revision at a time when the CIA and the FBI were still considered sacred cows. In the fifties, the Soviet Communist Party openly stated that the security organs had violated laws and abused power. There were court proceedings against high officials of those bodies, and those found guilty were severely punished, in some cases with the death penalty. The organs were restructured and put under effective party control. Whenever these matters are discussed by the big Western media, there is a clear double standard applied. No matter what changes occur in our country, no matter what we do, we are accused of being undemocratic. At the same time, violations of human rights in the West are always minimized and regarded as exceptions to the rule.

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Without defending the violence in American society, Americans have never experienced anything close to the Gulag Archipelago.

I do not consider it proper, Mr. Oltmans, or in good taste, to refer to the tragic events of our past, so painfully remembered by the Soviet people, using a term that has become a cliché of anti-Soviet propaganda. As I've mentioned earlier, the party took strong measures to correct the situation and to punish those who were guilty. But since you've touched upon this problem, I would like to emphasize that one of the main conditions that made possible the repressions in Stalin's time was the very hostile environment that our country then had to deal with.

The threat from Nazi Germany?

The Nazi threat was perhaps the high point. But the situation was pretty rough even before that. You see, our country lived through a period of intense political struggles after the 1917 Revolution. The counterrevolution would not give up. It was fighting dirty, and it was assisted from the outside on a large scale. Some of our leaders and ambassadors were assassinated. There were repeated military incursions into our territory, Foreign intelligence services were actively operating within the country. We were expecting a big war to erupt sooner or later, and, of course, after Hitler came to power on an anticommunist and anti-Soviet platform, the external situation deteriorated dramatically. Those were the special historical external conditions that made mass repression and crimes against our constitution and ideals possible.

We have not forgotten those tragic events and do not expect others to do so. What we are against are the attempts to interpret our whole history in the light of those events. For us, their meaning even back in those hard times was quite different. We have a lot of truly historic achievements on our record, achievements of worldwide significance. We have made economic, social, and cultural progress at a speed unknown to man before. There has been a rebirth of a people who used to be among the most oppressed and exploited of all the civilized nations. There was the victory over Nazi Germany and the removal of that threat to humanity. There have been a number of tremendously important firsts - economic planning, social developments such as equality of nationalities, equal rights of women, making medical care and education available to the whole population, and many, many other things. There is a lot in our history we can be proud of.

Have you ever tried to compare the costs of progress in different societies?

Well, this is an extremely difficult task. Human history is too complex and multidimensional to quantify. There is hardly any developed methodology for such comparisons. But I have no doubt that the costs of progress in a

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capitalist society were higher. First, you have to take into account the wars under capitalism. It was only capitalism, with its inherent drive for technology, first of all military technology, coupled with insatiable lust for markets and sources of raw materials, that made wars both worldwide and unprecedentedly devastating. This alone accounts for the loss of millions of human lives. Second, there was colonialism, which preceded capitalism, but which became a worldwide phenomenon and a precondition for rapid development and accumulation of the wealth of most capitalist countries. The cost again was many millions of human lives, as well as brutal exploitation, colonial wars, and political oppression, keeping a majority of mankind in a condition of backwardness. Third, capitalism has not always been associated with liberal democracy. In many countries this social system has taken the most oppressive political form - fascism with its bloody terror, military dictatorships, and other features of ruthless totalitarianism.

But most capitalist countries, including the United States, avoided fascist ways.

It does not mean that they completely avoided terror, cruel repression, and exploitation. The human cost of the United States turning from a small settlement in Massachusetts to one of the two most powerful countries in the world is very substantial. Take the crimes against the black people, beginning with the slave trade and the horrors of southern plantations and ending with the nightmare of life in today's ghettoes. Or the genocide against the Indians. You know, it's still hard for me to understand how the Americans have been able to anaesthetize themselves against any pains of conscience in connection with what they did to the native inhabitants of the continent. I recall these pages of American history not in order to insult Americans. These events should just be remembered in order to help Americans correct what is still possible to correct and to cool down the moralizing passion of some American politicians.

How would you account for the shift of emphasis by the Reagan administration from the human rights issue to that of international terrorism?

One reason is strictly political. It amounts to an admission that the previous human rights policy backfired in the relations of the United States with some of its authoritarian partners. The present administration set upon a course of putting up a global anti-Soviet alliance and had to downgrade all the other criteria for allied relations except the strict loyalty to the cause of the U.S.-led anti-Soviet crusade. They are following an old maxim - ‘He may be a scoundrel, but he is our scoundrel.’ It is especially applicable to the recently intensified American ties with cruel authoritarian

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regimes that nowadays are being urgently, if not too tastefully, rebaptized as ‘moderately repressive.’

So the reasons are purely pragmatic?

I would say that there is also an ideological element involved - namely, a revitalization of the primitive view of the Soviet Union as the Devil's headquarters on Earth, causing all the trouble and manipulating all the anti-imperialist social change in the world by means of terrorism and subversion. The conservatives now in power do not put much soul into their human rights policy since they apparently never really believed in those rights in the first place. But this does not prevent them from conducting a fierce, if hollow, propaganda campaign on the subject.

I'm sure you are aware of the differences between Western Sovietologists in assessing the scope and meaning of changes that took place in your country in recent decades. Scholars like George Kennan and Jerry Hough maintain that the Soviet Union has undergone tremendous changes in the last quarter century, andthat the West should alter its traditional perceptions of it. Others, like Richard Pipes or Adam Ulam, say quite the opposite, namely, that the Soviet Union is basically the same as it was back in the days of Stalin: no meaningful institutional changes have occurred.

Well, every country has changed in the last twenty-five years, our dynamic society particularly so. But the heart of the matter is how you define these changes. What is meant by ‘institutional changes’? We remain a socialist country with an increasingly mature political system in which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union plays a leading role. If it isn't to the liking of Mr. Pipes and some others, they are entitled to their own opinions, just as we are entitled to ours about American political institutions; but there's hardly anything we can do to please them. Domestically, there has been a lot of change in our country in connection with the eradication of the consequences of the personality cult, and as a result of the further development of democracy. In our foreign policy, contrary to allegations of some Sovietologists, there has been much more continuity in the basic goals and methods. And whatever your attitude toward Stalin, you can hardly deny that his foreign policy was prudent, that he was not an adventurist. I think that more serious and knowledgeable American Sovietologists recognize that.

Walter Laqueur argues eloquently that ‘no intelligent discussion of modern history is possible without a knowledge of the Marxist method. ‘But to many people in Western Europe, societies established on Marxist principles are not very attractive examples. And the same goes for developing lands.

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After twenty years of Marxism-Leninism in practice in Cuba, for instance, perhaps only Nicaragua is now partly following Fidel Castro's lead.

Well, the Nicaraguan revolution, as I see it, is taking its own shape. Walter Laqueur may argue for a knowledge of the Marxist method, but as far as he is concerned, he's a violent antagonist of the societies established on Marxist principles. As to the attractiveness of our example, a number of Western European countries have very strong Communist Parties that advocate establishment of a society based on Marxist principles. I mean France, Italy, Spain, and Finland. Communist Parties also exist in other countries, and though they do not yet have large memberships, a considerable part of the population of Western European countries supports the idea of organizing society on Marxist principles.

There is another aspect here. It so happened that countries where Marxist parties came to victory and began building a new society very often faced rather difficult objective conditions. As a rule these were countries that had suffered greatly in the war, like Russia, Yugoslavia, and Poland. Many of them were countries with a backward economy - again like Russia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and others, to say nothing of such underdeveloped countries as Vietnam, China, and Albania. Besides, the West exerted every possible effort to hamper the building of new Marxist societies: pressing the arms race on them, engaging in subversion, economic blockade, etc. Finally, there are inevitable difficulties for those who pave a new way. In such a complicated undertaking there will always be mistakes, and sometimes serious ones. Taking all this into consideration, I'd say that socialism has done the best it could, and it has great attractive power, which will grow. And you will hardly deny that the attractive power of capitalism has declined.

What about Cuba? The 1980 exodus of many Cubans to the United States was portrayed as evidence that the Cuban model of socialism pales before U.S. capitalism.

No matter how it was portrayed by Cuba's enemies, the whole episode, I think, worked in the final analysis not against Cuba but against those in the West who make a business of ‘defending human rights’ in socialist countries. Isn't it indicative that a significant number of those who left Cuba were criminals and malcontents whose absence will only be welcomed by the Cuban people? It is difficult to say what this story has more of, the tragic or the ridiculous. But what it definitely does not amount to is any indictment of Cuban socialism, especially if you take into account the undeniable fact that the United States made a lot of difficulties for Cuba after the revolution, including an economic blockade and attempts to intervene. True, Cuba is still suffering many economic difficulties. But what do you compare her with? Sweden or Switzerland? The true frame

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of reference here should be Guatemala, Salvador, the Dominican Republic, or Cuba itself before its revolution. Then you will see the picture in a completely different light. Throughout Latin America, respect for Cuba is great and her standing is high.

Whatever else might be said about the achievements of socialism, including its Soviet model, you still lag behind the West in many ways.

Well, in some ways we do. We still have shortages of some goods, and the choice in the stores is more limited than in the West. Services leave much to be desired, and overall living standards are as yet lower than in some other countries. I am not ashamed to admit it.

Your candor is appreciated. Could you elaborate?

I'm not ashamed to admit these deficiencies because they are explained mainly by our difficult history, throughout most of which our people have lived under incredibly hard conditions, having had to limit themselves to bare necessities. This wasn't our fault, for we inherited a backward country and had to go through foreign intervention and an economic blockade after the revolution, then the large-scale preparation for the impending war with Hitler, and the war itself, with its incalculable losses and calamities, and then the Cold War and the arms race forced on us from the outside. As a result of all this, we were faced not only with an inadequately developed consumer goods industry and the consequences of chronic underinvestment in agriculture, housing, retail trade, and services, but also with a specific public attitude toward these spheres as matters of secondary importance. Only recently have we begun to overcome this tradition, and this, by the way, has not turned out to be an easy job.

But services are still rather poor.

Well, what would you expect if it is only in the last decade or two that we have begun to enjoy, for the first time in our history, some luxuries of life?

What luxuries?

Whenever one compares the living standards of the Soviet Union and Western countries, one should keep in mind that the Soviet people have enjoyed for decades many of those things that still remain hard to obtain for the average Westerner. I mean free education and health care, guaranteed employment, and so on. Our people are so used to these things that they often forget about them - and for many a person emigrating from this country to the West, the absence of these things comes as a great shock.

At the same time, it is only rather recently that a separate apartment for

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a single family ceased to be an unheard-of luxury. I'll give you an example that I'm most familiar with - my own. I received a two-room apartment for the first time in 1958, being already a well-established journalist. Before that I lived with my wife, small son, and mother-in-law in a single room thirteen by thirteen feet. In the other nine rooms of that apartment lived more than thirty people, with whom we shared kitchen and bathroom facilities. I wouldn't claim that it was very comfortable. But I can say for sure that we felt no deprivation or unhappiness since everyone around us lived the same way.

You should realize that almost all the people of my generation came to know from their own experience what hunger means - not just the lack of protein or vitamins, but real hunger. And such hardships, which really were shared by almost everyone, created certain modes of behavior. From my childhood years I remember the moral of predominant asceticism: at times it would have been considered improper to put on a golden wedding ring or a tie, even if you had one.

During the Nazi occupation of Holland, we, too, were eating tulip bulbs one at a time. What emotions do these memories bring to you?

I recollect all this with pain, sometimes with a smile, but also with pride, because we were able to bear everything with dignity and live with dignity through a tremendously difficult history. Times have changed, and now it has become a favorite pastime of old people to grumble about youngsters who don't remember the past or properly appreciate what they have. The same is probably true of old-timers everywhere, though. Our people are demanding more luxuries of life now, which is only natural and proper, in my view. It speaks a lot about the changes for the better, and it also means that we'll achieve the goals we have set before ourselves.

Don't you think that some of your problems are not products of a painful history, but have to do with the socialist organization of production?

No, I am sure this is not the case. At the same time, you have to keep in mind that there can be deep differences in values. Every nation must make its choice and, having made it, should not complain about the consequences. For instance, one choice of ours was to have as complete social and economic security as possible, including guaranteed full employment and such employee's rights as to make it almost impossible to dismiss a worker. Naturally, this couldn't help having some impact on the intensity of work, and thus on general productivity. Then, the fact that all our enterprises are practically bankruptcy-proof is probably reflected in the work of the managers. I'm not going to attribute everything to this, and we do our best, while retaining these benefits, to increase the productivity of labor, to develop better moral and material incentives. But the things I

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mentioned still do have an impact. People do not have to struggle for sheer survival. Is that good or bad? I am sure the overwhelming majority of people in the USSR think it's good.

Is it not too great a price for social security?

We think the price is reasonable. We made this choice and are ready to pay for it. Others are entitled to their own opinions, and we aren't going to try and force them to change their minds.

Such attitudes must have some ideological roots in your country.

That's correct. Communist ideology emphasizes collectivism, which means that there can and should be harmony between individual and collective interests, the latter being just as natural and necessary for individual freedom and development as the immediate interests of the individual. This, by the way, contrasts with the extreme individualism typical of many Americans.

Americans think that individualism helps them keep their freedom.

Well, that's a big philosophical issue that would take us too far away from our topic. Without going into the basic definitions of freedom, I'd confine myself to this observation: individualism has been a potent incentive in American history, but its balance sheet is getting heavier and heavier on the debit side. Americans are paying for their extreme individualism with widespread alienation; social atomization; increasing anarchic patterns in economic, social, and political organization; and escalation of antisocial behavior like crime, drug addiction, violence, and so forth.

Comparing the two social systems, you would conclude that the overall cost-benefit balance is in favor of socialism?

Right. We believe that there can be no real individual freedom without a rational organization of society. The ultimate ideal of communism is the free and comprehensive development of the personality of each individual. This goal can be achieved only in a society organized for the common good rather than for private interest.

But hasn't capitalism achieved some magnificent results, especially in the economic field?

It certainly has. At the same time, assessing the overall economic performance of the two systems, we have to take into account a lot of things: past achievements, rates of progress, capability to perform under duress; and

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we must also put both systems to the test of solving the complicated problems of the present and future.

Capitalism has shown its ability to produce a lot of things quickly and efficiently, to saturate markets with consumer goods - though I am certain that a system based on central planning and the public ownership of production facilities can and must match capitalism in this respect. But social needs are not limited to cars and pantyhose and chewing gum. Modern society puts an ever-increasing emphasis on education, medical care, environmental protection, conservation of energy and natural resources, public transportation, organizing life in big cities, and so forth. Here, traditional capitalism falters, whereas our system, with all its problems, performs better and more efficiently. And these social needs are becoming more and more important nowadays.

Returning to the eternal topic of perceptions, you don't seem to think much of the average American level of knowledge of the USSR.

Oh, there's still tremendous ignorance. I would refer to what I have seen myself. For example, even among university audiences in the United States, people really know very little of contemporary Soviet literature.

They probably mention Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Of course, that is almost a must, though going a little out of style lately. But I have also heard the names Dostoevski, Tolstoi, and once even Chekhov, who were great writers, of course, but not Soviet ones, strictly speaking.

Gorki?

No, not even once. But if you ask any high school boy or girl in the USSR about American literature, you'll get dozens of names. I am not talking only about classics like Edgar Allan Poe or Mark Twain, or such famous figures of the past as Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Upton Sinclair, and others. Here our youths are very much aware of contemporary American writers, like Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and many others. They have been properly translated and are widely read and known. And this is so not only for American literature, but also for German, French, and British literature, Third World literature, anything of value published abroad. I think the average awareness about America, its national character and history, is higher here than the other way around.

Victor Afanasyev, the editor-in-chief of Pravda, assured me that the Soviet press prints three times more information about the United States

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than the other way around. In Hungary it seems to be fourteen times as much. Only when Leonid Brezhnev journeyed to Budapest did the Hungarian capital become swamped with hundreds of Western journalists.

This is also one of the deep differences between our two systems - the way the press and the media operate. Perhaps we do not always provide immediate responses to political questions or events. But I do feel we offer our readers a rather substantial amount of background, including extensive information on how to interpret or understand the present situation in the United States.

But in the West the Soviet way of journalism and news reporting is often considered unfair and boring.

Well, let us differentiate. Both here and in the West there are good and bad journalists, good and bad news reporting. In this sense, a lot depends on personal abilities and other individual qualities of reporters, editors, and publishers. But there is also a general style, and here the differences are more systemic. Western, and especially American, journalism is skewed toward sensations, particularly negative ones. Normal relations between countries or, for that matter, between individuals, are always much less newsworthy than conflicts and quarrels. In this respect, American journalists obviously have a rough time here when major attention is given to the way our plans for industry and agriculture are fulfilled, cultural events, and so on. Our press does not give much space to catastrophes, incidents, murders, or sex scandals.

I am even ready to sympathize with American journalists in Moscow who by their habitual standards do not find much to report. Perhaps this makes them even more persistent in their morbid interest in dissidents, and in rumors of ‘what is going on at the top.’

But they are really in a predicament. If they produce only what is considered news in the Soviet Union, hardly anybody will publish it.

I understand that, but here there are certain objective complexities. I must also say that there were many attempts on our part to make it easier for Western journalists to organize trips to places of interest, to meet with the heads of some ministries whose work may be particularly interesting for the West, like those dealing with energy. Sometimes it brought good results, sometimes not.

To sum it up, the mission of Western journalists in the USSR is very important, since they are the channel for a great share of information about the Soviet Union that reaches the West. There are still some problems here, some of them rather serious. In my view they can be solved, provided

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there is goodwill on all sides, including the West and its press. And not only goodwill, but a deep sense of responsibility.

What is your impression of U.S. congressmen when they visit Moscow?

Well, they are persons of different views, backgrounds, and tastes. By itself the development of parliamentary contacts between our countries in recent years has been very important. In general, in spite of all the difficulties we have had during the past few years, these mutual visits have been one of the areas where, in my view, we have succeeded. These exchanges of ideas and opinions during visits have developed to a significant degree. They have almost become an institution, and if they wither now because of the shift in U.S. policy, the resulting deterioration of our relations would be a real loss to both sides.

American lawmakers coming to Moscow seem to make a point of meeting with Soviet dissidents. Some journalists even seem to consider this their first order of business.

It has become almost a routine, a favorite pastime, for U.S. congressmen and many others to meet with dissidents.

A member of the Dutch Parliament visiting Moscow even climbed over a gate in the middle of the night to leave his guest house in order to meet such a person.

I have met with many delegations of the United States and other Western parliamentarians. But frankly, I have not observed their behavior during the night. Sometimes U.S. congressional delegations are preceded by advance men sent by some American organizations to prepare meetings with certain dissidents both in Leningrad and Moscow. When asked by American visitors about the propriety of such meetings, I usually direct them to the head of their own delegation. But sometimes I ask them in return how they would react if an official Soviet parliamentarian delegation visiting the United States set up unscheduled, sometimes almost clandestine, meetings with such groups we might in fact sympathize with, like the Black Panthers, Puerto Rican militants, or Indian activists persecuted by the U.S. government.

What is their answer?

Nothing intelligible, though they proceed with such practices all the same. From those and other conversations I get the impression that many American politicians take part in these activities not because they are truly interested in dissidents or ‘refuseniks’ (which means people denied visas

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to leave the country), but simply for the record, especially those who have a significant number of immigrants in their constituency.

Anyway, delegations from the Supreme Soviet do visit Washington?

Yes, there were two official delegations, one in 1974 and the other in 1978, headed by the chairman of our Foreign Relations Commission, Boris Ponomarev. There were also smaller groups, the last of them sent in the autumn of 1979.

The question of dissidents continues to cause considerable difficulties in East-West relations. What is your opinion of those people?

The so-called ‘dissidents’ are a small group.

How small exactly?

To the best of my knowledge, in the last decade there have appeared a few hundred such people, including not only strictly political dissidents but also the most active refuseniks, leading members of extreme nationalist groups, and of those religious sects that operate illegally. These are people with diverse demands, programs, and grievances. If and when they become the subject of court or administrative action, it is not as a result of their holding views that differ from the national consensus, as it is often thought in the West. They don't come into conflict with the state because they think differently or ‘sit apart,’ which is the exact meaning of the Latin word dissident. The problems begin when they choose to break the Soviet law. If and when they do it, the state takes action against them.

A typical feature of these groups in recent years has been their close ties with foreign citizens and organizations. They have relied on foreign media, often actually worked for them, and received various kinds of assistance from abroad, including financial aid in some cases. No matter how the dissidents' motives are pictured in the West, they are perceived here by broad public opinion as people working for foreign interests.

What about the group that monitors Soviet compliance with the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference?

Some people have chosen this cover for their activities. Their real primary aim is to provide foreign media with materials designed to create an impression in the West that there exists in the USSR a widespread political movement opposing the Soviet state and the Soviet society, to arouse and mislead the Soviet public by rumors and messages transmitted via Western media to the USSR. These people are continuously defying our law. Some people in the West might like it. But they, as well as

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the Soviet citizens engaged in such activities, must realize that they directly challenge the government and the political system as a whole, and they must reckon with the fact that this conflict can't continue without consequences.

What bothers people in the West is that these people are often arrested, tried, sentenced to long terms or sent into exile.

The behavior of these people sometimes becomes criminal according to Soviet law, and crime always leads to punishment. As the head of the State Security Committee said not so long ago, the number of those sentenced in connection with their illegal political activity is now lower than ever in our history. It would undoubtedly be even better if there were no such cases at all. But if the West is moved by humanitarian motives, as it asserts, it must examine, first of all, what it does itself. I am quite convinced, for example, that without the systematic Western support and publicity, without the creation of a kind of halo around the dissidents by the West, as a result of which those people have developed a martyrdom complex and regard themselves as replicas of Saint Joan going to the stake - without all this publicity, most of them would not challenge the law and would not find themselves in trouble.

In other words, you find the West partly responsible for the dissidents' troubles.

The West bears a heavy responsibility. It is Western encouragement and support that make a dissident sure that his every step will get worldwide publicity, and if he goes far enough, may even win him a Nobel Prize. This has pushed some people, perhaps already not quite stable emotionally, toward a test of will with the government, toward brinkmanship with the law. Finally, they cross the legal brink. Sooner or later it ends in human tragedy. That might be exactly the result the Western anti-Sovieteers need so that they can wring their hands, bemoan the ‘martyrs,’ and further denounce the Soviet Union.

If the West is truly concerned about the humanitarian aspect, about the fate of some of our citizens, why exploit them in such a way? If, however, the aim of the whole campaign is to do maximum damage to the USSR, why not call a spade a spade and stop shedding crocodile tears? Those running the prodissident campaigns are simply trying to create endless problems for the Soviet authorities, to foster an ersatz opposition inside our country, to create the image of the USSR as a police state, and, finally, to sow seeds of hostility toward the USSR in the West, so as to wreck attempts at lessening international tensions and curbing the arms race. Those activities are actively sponsored by Western intelligence services, as well as by emigré groups and other private organizations.

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But if you look at this situation from an American vantage point, the picture would be quite different.

Then I would advise Americans to put themselves into our shoes. How would Americans have reacted if Soviet journalists in the United States had begun to cooperate with members of some clandestine groups like the Weather Underground? Would Daniel Ellsberg have been cleared in the U.S. courts if he had had contacts with Soviet representatives in the United States? What if we had established close contacts with Indians at the particular moment when they were up in arms against the government? We sympathize with them deeply, but would it not have been looked upon as interference in your internal affairs? And would not these people and organizations in such a case have looked like agents of a foreign power?

If the dissidents are so few in number, as you said, wouldn't it be more practical either to disregard them completely or just let them leave the country?

In many cases, this is exactly what is done. But we have found out something, particularly in the case of refuseniks. If we make a step toward such a solution, it is taken as an invitation to greater pressure: new names appear, the noise gets louder. Some refuseniks are apparently incited to act. The Western media take up some cases as ‘newsworthy,’ and the whole thing starts anew, but with double or triple the intensity.

What would you say to conclude this discussion of human rights?

I would emphasize again that the issue of human rights, important as it is, should be used for constructive and not destructive purposes. Is it not the most important single right for everyone to live in peace? Given the correct, conscientious approach, debates about human rights should be conducted in ways that do not damage détente. After all, peace and détente are indispensable tools for securing human rights in their broadest meaning all over the world.