"Turn to the people, to the are no concrete results in daily life, because in the media the reform can easily be seen by the workers as a threat to their interests, since if it consistently applied it would mean a deterioration of their situation.
Novotny also tried to play on against the initiators of the Prague Spring.
A. There are probably elements of a crisis coming simultaneously at the top and in the society. The crisis in the society will be all the more WE HAVE translated the following interview with the leading Soviet powerful inasmuch as the population is being encouraged to mobilize (in dissident Yurii Orlov from the October 31 issue of Russkaya Mysl, a
"controlled" "responsible" Russian paper published in Paris. The interview took place in New way of course, but not without some York City. It has been slightly abridged. reality), even against the apparatus. The process of limited democratization can get out of control.
Without a real democratization (which is out of the question for the present leaders of the social basis for any large-scale reform very scanty. There are real contradictions, in the sense you cannot get off scot free talking about democracy, self-management forces hostile to democracy and self-management and so forth. This sort of talk tends to get out of the control there is a phenomenon of initiatives developing at the base that is not much reflected in the press.
Q. For example?
A. In various cities, quasi-autonomous groups have been set up, looked on ambivalently by the authorities the Robin Hood's Children I talked about, study groups. There is a social dynamic, which is possible in the present situation, but it is not on the authorities' wavelength. That is what is important.
"Gorbachevian" talk can be compared to the play by Shatrov that created a sensation in Moscow last year. All the burning questions were taken up. There was a lot of sharp repartee. At the same time, everything was done to get the spectators to applaud, of course, but to stay in their seats. I would play with another that also aroused a furore in the last theater season, but which shows up both the limitations of the renewal and the stakes in the present situation.
about the play, "Speak!" In it, it is shown that there is no difference between good and bad leaders, that the crucial problem is those below speaking out, those who (I am quoting part of the repartee), "for fifty years they have been trying to get to forget that they are the mobilization of those below that we watch very carefully in the International Viewpoint 23 March 1987
Question. What about the conditions you faced in the camp?
I spent half my term in the camp prison and in the punishment cell. In the they give you 450 grams of black bread per day, and every other day the other food, which is sparce. They give you only the lightest don't give you any bedclothes. I suffered from bed was laid out - boards with steel connectors - I spent five to ten minutes adjusting the planks, then I lay down for five to ten minutes until the boards got warm, then I got up and planks again. That is how the night
Early in the morning, bed was fasted to the wall. You could sit on the cement post, but you could not close your eyes. If the guards noticed that I closed my eyes or that I opened them but my eyes were red, they put me on report, and I got extra punishment.
What is a punishment cell? It is 1 meter, 20 centimeters by 3 meters.
La corner stands the parasha (chamber pot). The first time I was put in the punishment cell, I asked for a newspaper for the parasha. The "inspector" (that is what they davs) said: "I'll call the duty officer, who came and said that I could not have any paper. There were a lot of little things like that.
They generally gave me six months in the camp prison at one go. There the conditions were a bit They gave you bedclothes and slightly better food. But the work was very hard. I rolled barbed wire by hand.
When I was in the camp not the prison, what bothered most was the hard work. I worked on the lathe on which generally younger
30) worked most of them did not meet the [production] norm. But for those who collaborated with the administration, that was overlooked. In my case, it was not overlooked. They took my visits away. For five years straight, I
The camp left you terribly exhausted. But you wrote a of scholarly articles there (some of have already been published in the West). In the camp one of the most extensive of the documents of the Helsinki group on the situation of the political prisoners was drawn up. It was published six years ago in KonHow did you manage to do that? Where did you find the time to think?
I am always thinking. Whether I'm sitting, walking or working, I'm I'm thinking. In penal exile, it became easier to write. It was not necessary to ask for paper. But over time, everything did become difficult.
A lot of people have told about today's prison almost no reminisences, in particular "fresh ones," about penal exile.
The hardest thing of all was to find a place to live, l mean buy. The peasants agreed, but then prosecutor's office would not permit it, or the KGB intimidated them, or the police frightened turned down by everyone.
At first I lived in a trailer, along with building workers. gave me a room in the airport area. When I had made some contacts, I managed to move into a house, but it ended badly. They took the woman away from the village and criminal proceedings against her, for other reasons, of course. But at least I did manage to buy a house.
"Where did the money come from?" an interrogator asked me in Lefortov.
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workers" USSR
I answered. "Friends collected money for me. I have a lot of friends are academics with good salaries, that money I bought a
I planted and harvested potatoes. I had a greenhouse, that some physicist friends helped me build. (You can't greenhouse.) cucumbers. I bought cabbage at the Sovkhoz [state farm]. I caught carp in the pool (they are very tasty food).
I managed live on my pension of 60 rubles. But in order to do that I had to spend 80 per cent of my time on providing for myself.
summer of 1985, we learned that you were beaten up in penal exile. What do you remember about that?
When I came to Kobyai, they "explained" village that I was a spy.
when I lived in the trailer, me. Afterthe people normal, and they started getting more
They beat me up, as I explained, under the influence of the propaganda in N. Yakovlev's pamphlet The CIA to Kobyai. As I later learned, were a few copies of the pamphlet in the village, and everyone had read it. I took it to read myself. I had not seen it before then.
After the beating, a good deal
Those who toward me talked to the fellow. He that he had beaten me up, but he brought me a bottle of cognac. I did not take the cognac but showed him all my documents, showing him that I was a professor, that I was 60 years old, that I had been in the war. He asked if it was true that I had been
"That's true," I said, "is it a crime?" "No," he isn't." Afterwards everything changed. The young people especially started to take a better attitude toward me.
Q. Did police investigation, trial, prison camp and penal exile change
Physically, of course they did. Otherwise no. My outlook on things was formed basically 40 years ago. It later became filled out. I underlearned more I know more than I did ten years ago, but the principles remained the same. I do not feel any bitterness. That is my character, ness is a bad counsellor, isn't that so? A bad counsellor.
Q. What do you think about the human rights movement, its present and future?
A. It seems to me that repres sion has greatly weakened it in its old form. What is the old form? It has been a movement without its own means to disseminate ideas and information. Printing presses, let's say, there is no such thing And influencing Soviet citizens through the Western mass media, the use of the Western information media for purposes of propaganda within the country, that method, I think, is entirely excluded for the future.
That is one side of it. On the other, I think that this stage is more or less concluded, and that the next stage will be work among the workers the methods will be different, per haps in the conditions in the Soviet
Union, illegal.
In the camp, I met people who had organized a "Communist Party of a different type." That may be
I am certain that no bour-
Against the
USSR.
Besides that, don't think that there was anything else. Wow,
"the spy Orlov" had come
Official Soviet demonstration for peace (DR)
HE
КОЙН
16 the way I think. I am not interested in bitterness. I am interested in the goal, which is democratization. Bitter-
:
now among Soviet workers.
If you remember, in the history of Russia there was the "Movement to the People." It was an illegal
People were arrested and others took their place.
The people not understand at first, turned them in to the police.
convinced that a similar thing will in the Soviet Union.
something will come of it. At first, will turn them into the KGB, and later they will start to think about inform on them at the person must propagandist."
They might write about them to the
KGB, and then think it over, all that they said might happen."
I am well aware of the attitudes of ordinary Soviet people. In penal exile I talked with a lot of them.
remember that I used to visit the
And there was a working people there, and they about so and so." They were ready to listen to people who criticized the economic management and policy authorities.
people in general understand
What they do not understand, do not and condemn is the Western media. They all condemn
I haven't met a single ordinary person who that we should take problems to foreigners. That is the psychology of Soviet
International Viewpoint 23 March 1987
the result of long-term work by the entire Soviet system. And we ourselves? Were we anxious to do that? So whoever wants to make headway within the country, among ordinary people, cannot lean on the West. And if they do use the West, they have to explain at length and carefully why that was unavoidable, why there was no other way, that we are not relying on the Western governments stations. We use them, but we don't
We might accept support from the Socialist International, if the situation in Russia concerned it, or the unions. That is easy to understand. The rest is a lot harder. They listen respectfully because they see that there are a lot of inadequacies. And they are prepared to discuss. They are even ready to accept the idea of party. I mean, the workers are. The peasant population is much enlightened. basically, are like the workers. and in general the center differs sharply from all the rest of the counincluding in this respect. they have sort of become foreigners. There a part the people (even a considerable one) readily associate with foreigners. It is quite a different thing in the rest of the Soviet Union. I came to understand that the only objection to the dissidents was their attitude to the West. The people can understand any fundamental criticism, although they do not necessarily accept it.
Q. Do you think democratization
I consider that capitalism not impossible in Russia, in particular the part of this people (this people, not any other) would mean national destruction. If, suddenly, God sent
"capitalism," national destruction. I consider that the most suitable thing for this coun try (for this one) would be democratic socialism, with all the freedoms.
I would like there to be a legal opposition, of any type, fascist. For this country the existence of any sort of opposition would be helpful. I am talking about an opposiof a social democratic type, which would be supported by the masses. I think that it would be the understandable for the workers. Or even of a communist type, say like the Italian Communist Party. That would also be met with understanding.
In the first stage for Russia, probably, a lot of parties would not be necessary. Our people are on a level where they don't International Viewpoint 23 March 1987 national today.
But the in euver other
They have
And they sector, in agriculture.
There should all
Yugoslav system suited, or, say,
Q. Why not?
time ago.
Their
Slav period, hired with on directors
That's already
Polish varient syndicalism.
The possible, thing is work.
Only one
If there ples. In to private push any scale kind.
of course,
And free and is.
discussing
Because if there is the other details.
the people freedom of discussion, it out later, themselves will work and do it better.
road can these
By what
Q.
changes be achieved?
We realize how difficult it
A.
would be for the Communist Party to agree to this. But if you look at gradually developed. give up their power, the bourgeoisie relinquishes categorically that such a thing is impossible. In under Nasser,
La one-party system. Sadat system would have been more introduced another two parties and four. Because there are people top levels too who consider the interests of the state. siders the interests of the country, will only move the country forward a little bit. But others will come forward. They will think. Of course, and by the structure that holds them. But if they are strive for reforms, and I am sure that such reforms will lead faster technological development of we are a strong military and that's all. In everything else, we are a second-class or third-
And we only live by the does not compare with it. In science, we are not the first. But if free, we would overtake
I don't think that those who stand at the head of the state are necessarily in their hearts enemies of the state. Maybe they are also patriots. But they are bound by dogmas.
If we are in conflict bachev, it is primarily over tempos and the final results. But in the short run we are not even in conflict with him. I think that he is moving in the right direction now. In the last year or two, a certain freedom of the press has started to appear. It is very little in comparison to my ideal, but nonedirection and not the other.
There is also a certain liberalization in the management of industry. There is not yet freedom in planning, but there is more freedom in financing. I also approve steps as the fight against corruption and drunkeness I think good, because people will think more and not pickle their brains in alcohol.
But Gorbachev is very much to the KGB. And they are resolutely opposed to being deprived of power to exercize thought control. While Gorbachev is tied to the KGB, he cannot move in the necessary direction. Russia will develop overtake America only when there is freedom of thought.
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