Word: sakharovs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Exiled Soviet Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been sharply challenged by one of his admirers in the U.S.S.R. The critic is Physicist Andrei Sakharov, spokesman for Russia's "human-rights movement." In a 3,500-word statement issued last week, Sakharov sorrowfully takes issue with many of the views that the Nobel-prizewinning writer outlined in his apocalyptic "Letter to Soviet Leaders" (TIME, March 11), which summed up his program for the future of Russia. Reflecting dismay among Soviet dissidents over Solzhenitsyn's conservative manifesto, Sakharov strongly disagrees with the writer's "utopian and potentially dangerous proposals...
...Sakharov takes exception to Solzhenitsyn's emphasis on the suffering of the Russian people, as distinguished from other Soviet nationalities that have been victimized by the Kremlin. As a Russian, Solzhenitsyn was writing about what he knows best, Sakharov concedes. Yet, the physicist points out ironically, "it has been the special privilege of non-Russians to suffer forcible deportation and genocide, suppression of their national-liberation movements and oppression of their national cultures...
...letter, Solzhenitsyn asked the Kremlin leaders to abandon Marxist ideology, as the root of all Soviet society's evils. Sakharov believes that this plea shows a misunderstanding of modern power politics. He argues that a dominant characteristic of Soviet society is an indifference to ideology, which is used only as a "fagade" to preserve the power of the leadership and a totalitarian regime. Solzhenitsyn, he contends, makes the same mistake in attributing ideological motives to the leaders of Communist China, whom Sakharov regards as "no less pragmatic than our own." He also thinks that Solzhenitsyn has "overdramatized" the threat...
Merely possessing a copy of Gulag has become a dangerous offense for ordinary Soviet citizens, and dissidents who have defended Gulag may soon be punished. Western experts believe that Physicist Andrei Sakharov and Historian Roy Medvedev may be forced into exile for their praise of the book. One of Solzhenitsyn's more obscure defenders, Writer Vladimir Voinovich, a former railway worker, has been expelled from the Soviet Writers Union...
Nonetheless, Solzhenitsyn's example may in fact hearten rather than discourage Russia's libertarians. Last week Sakharov and nine other prominent dissenters issued an impassioned defense of Solzhenitsyn's actions: "His so-called 'treason' consists of his disclosure to the whole world, with shattering force, of the monstrous crimes committed in the U.S.S.R. not very long ago." They demanded the publication of Gulag in the Soviet Union and called for an international investigation of the crimes against innocent Soviet citizens...