Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Westerners like R.Z. Sheppard, in his review of Vladimir Bukovsky's book [March 26], seem to be absolutely unable to grasp the fundamental difference between Western and Soviet political thought. To Marxists, socialism and Communism (or Sovietism, for that matter) are not freely chosen or choosable political stances but scientifically established laws of history. Dissenting, like disputing physics or logic, therefore must be a symptom of mental illness. Thus, in good conscience, the Soviets have no other place for dissenters but the nuthouse...
From a super-secret missile test base at Tyuratam, near the Aral Sea, a Soviet SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile roars from its silo, hurtling its ten warheads 5,000 miles toward a target area in the western Pacific. The heat of the rocket's blast triggers infrared sensors aboard a U.S. spy satellite 22,000 miles above Tyuratam. Within seconds, other U.S. facilities are alerted and computer-run electronic equipment on land, planes and ships locks onto the SS-18, monitoring its flight and performance...
...silently hope they will eventually win the right to emigrate to the West. All of them-Pyotr and Augustina Vashchenko, their three adult daughters, and a mother and son, Mariya and Timofei Chmykhalov-are Pentecostalists, a handful of the millions of Christians who have suffered religious persecution in the Soviet Union. For the Vashchenkos, the struggle to emigrate began 16 years ago in the grim mining town of Chernogorsk after the government seized children from supposedly "unfit" Pentecostal parents and sent them to be reared by state agencies. As a result, five of the Vashchenkos, attempting to leave the Soviet...
This time, distrustful of Soviet promises that they will not be arrested, all seven are holding out for guaranteed emigration for their entire families. For the Vashchenkos, that means 13 children. As a further complication, one son is already in prison for pacifist defiance of the army draft. Another will reach draft age next month and faces possible imprisonment...
Though the Soviets allowed about 30,000 Jews to emigrate last year and are now increasing that rate, there is minimal support from Western Christians for Protestants who want to leave. That may change. Amnesty International has launched a major campaign on behalf of imprisoned Protestants, calling for protest letters to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev at the Kremlin. Among the many prisoners: the oft-jailed leader of a breakaway Seventh-day Adventist group, who has just been sentenced to five years of hard labor...