---
title: 'Solzhenitsyn: The Voice of Freedom'
url: 'https://samisdat.in/books/solzhenitsyn-the-voice-of-freedom-1975/read'
markdown: 'https://samisdat.in/books/solzhenitsyn-the-voice-of-freedom-1975/read.md'
lang: eng
date: '1975-10-06'
description: 'Two Addresses by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, the Russian novelist who won the Nobel Prize for 1970 and was deported by the Soviet Union in February 1974. On his first visit to the United States, Solzhenitsyn made two addresses under AFL-CIO sponsorship. This pamphlet is the translation of those two…'
---

![](https://samisdat.in/user/pages/03.books/1975%20-%20Solzhenitsyn%20-%20The%20Voice%20of%20Freedom/read/_page_0_Figure_0.jpeg?g-16018011)

# Two Addresses by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, the Russian novelist who won the Nobel Prize for 1970 and was deported by the Soviet Union in February 1974. On his first visit to the United States, Solzhenitsyn made two addresses under AFL-CIO sponsorship. This pamphlet is the translation of those two speeches, the first in Washington, D. C., on June 30, 1975, where he was introduced by AFL-CIO President George Meany (next page), the second in New York City on July 9, 1975, where he was introduced by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Lane Kirkland (Page 26)

#### THE LIBRARY

Emithwest Texas State University

San Marcos, Texas

### 'We Need Echoes of His Voice'

George Meany

When we think of the historic struggles and conflicts of this century, we naturally think of famous leaders: men who governed nations, commanded armies and inspired movements in the defense of liberty, or in the service of ideologies which have obliterated liberty.

Yet, today, in this grave hour in human history, when the forces arrayed against the free spirit of man are more powerful, more brutal and more lethal than ever before, the single figure who has raised highest the flame of liberty heads no state, commands no army, and leads no movement that our eyes can see.

But there is a movement—a hidden movement of human beings who have no offices and have no headquarters, who are not represented in the great halls where nations meet, who every day risk or suffer more for the right to speak, to think and to be themselves than any of us here are likely to risk in our entire lifetime.

Where are the members of this invisible movement? As we prepare tonight to honor the presence of one of them among us, let us give some thought to the rest: to the millions who are trapped in Soviet slave labor camps; to the countless thousands drugged and strait-jacketed in so-called "insane asylums;" to the multi-

tudes of voiceless workers who slave in the factories of the commissars; to all those who strain for bits and pieces of truth through the jammed frequencies of forbidden broadcasts, and who record and pass outlawed thoughts from hand-to-hand in the shadows of tyranny.

But if they remain invisible to us, we can hear them now, for there has come forth from under the rubble of oppression a voice that demands to be heard, a voice that will not be denied.

We heed this voice not because it speaks for the left or the right or for any faction, but because it hurls truth and courage into the teeth of total power when it would be so much easier and more comfortable to submit and to embrace the lies by which that power lives.

What is the strength of this voice? How has it broken through to us when others have been stilled? Its strength is art.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is not a crusader. He is not a politician. He is not a general. He is an artist.

Solzhenitsyn's art illuminates the truth. It is, in a seuse, subversive: Subversive of hypocrisy, subversive of delusion, subversive of the Big Lie.

No man in modern times and very few in all of

history have demonstrated as drastically as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn the power of the pen coupled with courage to free men's minds.

We need that power today desperately. We need it to teach the new and the forgetful generations in our midst what it means not to be free. Freedom is not an abstraction; neither is the absence of freedom. Solzhenitsyn has helped us to see that, thanks to his art and his courage.

His art is a unique gift. It cannot be transmitted to another. But let us pray that his courage is contagious.

We need echoes of his voice. We need to hear the echoes in the White House. We need to hear the echoes in the Congress and in the State Department and in the universities and in the media, and if you please, Mr. UN Ambassador Patrick Moynihan, in the United Nations.

The American trade union movement, from its beginnings to the present, has been dedicated to the firm, unyielding belief in freedom. Freedom for all mankind, as well as for ourselves. It is in that spirit that we are honored to present Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

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#### 'America: You Must Think About the World'

Most of those present here today are workers. Creative workers. And I myself, having spent many years of my life as a stone cutter, as a foundryman, as a manual worker, in the name of all who have shared this forced labor with me, like the two Gulag prisoners whom you just saw, and on behalf of those who are doing forced labor in our country. I can start my speech today with the greeting: "Brothers!" "Brothers in Labor."

And not to forget, also, the many honored guests present here tonight, let me add: "Ladies and Gentlemen."

"Workers of the world unite!" Who of us has not heard this slogan, which has been sounding through the world for 125 years? Today you can find it in any Soviet pamphlet as well as in every issue of Pravda. But never have the leaders of the Communist revolution in the Soviet Union made application of these words sincerely and in their full meaning. When many lies have accumulated over the decades, we forget the radical and basic lie which is not on the leaves of the tree, but at its very roots.

Now, it's almost impossible to remember or to believe . . . For instance, I recently published—had reprinted—a pamphlet from the year 1918. This was a precise record of a meeting of all representatives of the Petrograd factories, that being the city known in our country as the "cradle of the Revolution."

I repeat, this was March 1918—only four months after the October Revolution—and all the representatives of the Petrograd factories were cursing the Communists, who had deceived them in all of their promises. What is more, not only had they abandoned Petrograd to cold and hunger, themselves having fled from Petrograd to Moscow, but had given orders to machinegun the crowds of workers in the courtyards of the factories who were demanding the election of independent factory committees.

Let me remind you, this was March 1918. Scarcely anyone now can recall the crushing of the Petrograd strikes in 1921, or the shooting of workers in Kolpino in the same year.

Among the leadership, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, at the beginning of the Revolution, all were emigre intellectuals who had returned after the uprisings had already broken out in Russia, in order to carry through the Communist Revolution. One of them was a genuine worker, a highly skilled lathe operator until the last day of his life. This was Alexander Shliapnikov. Who knows that name today? Precisely because he expressed the true interests of the workers within the Communist leadership. In the

years before the Revolution it was Shliapnikov who ran the whole Communist Party in Russia—not Lenin, who was an emigre. In 1921, he headed the Workers' Opposition which was charging the Communist leadership with betraying the workers' interests, with crushing and oppressing the proletariat and transforming itself into a bureaucracy.

Shliapnikov disappeared from sight. He was arrested somewhat later and since he firmly stood his ground he was shot in prison and his name is perhaps unknown to most people here today. But I remind you: before the Revolution the head of the Communist Party of Russia was Shliapnikov—not Lenin.

Since that time, the working class has never been able to stand up for its rights, and in distinction from all the western countries our working class only receives what they hand out to it. It only gets handouts. It cannot defend its simplest, everyday interests, and the least strike for pay or for better living conditions is viewed as counter-revolutionary. Thanks to the closed nature of the Soviet system, you have probably never heard of the textile strikes in 1930 in Ivanovo, or of the 1961 worker unrest in Murom and Alexandrovo, or of the major workers' uprising in Novocherkassk in 1962—this in the time of Khrushchev, after the thaw

This story will shortly be published in detail in your country in Gulag Archipelago, volume 3. It is a story of how workers went in a peaceful demonstration to the Party City Committee, carrying portraits of Lenin, to request a change in economic conditions. They fired at them with machine guns and dispersed the crowds with tanks. No family dared even to collect its wounded and dead, but all were taken away in secret by the authorities.

Precisely to those present here I don't have to explain that in our country, since the Revolution, there's never been such a thing as a free trade union.

The leaders of the British trade unions are free to play the unworthy game of visiting Russia's so-called trade unions and receiving visits in return. But the AFL-CIO has never given in to these illusions.

The American workers' movement has never allowed itself to be blinded and to mistake slavery for freedom. And 1, today, on behalf of all of our oppressed people, thank you for this!

When liberal thinkers and wise men of the West, who had forgotten the meaning of the word "liberty," were swearing that in the Soviet Union there were no concentration camps at all, the American Federation of Labor, published in 1947, a map of our concentration camps, and on behalf of all of the prisoners of those times, I want to thank the American workers' movement for this.

But just as we feel ourselves your allies here, there also exists another alliance—at first glance a strange one, a surprising one—but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well-grounded and easy to under-

stand; this is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists.

This alliance is not new. The very famous Armand Hammer, who is flourishing here today, laid the basis for this when he made the first exploratory trip into Russia, still in Lenin's time, in the very first years of the Revolution. He was extremely successful in this intelligence mission and since that time for all these 50 years, we observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders.

Their clumsy and awkward economy, which could never overcome its own difficulties by itself, is continually getting material and technological assistance. The major construction projects in the initial five-year plan were built exclusively with American technology and materials. Even Stalin recognized that two-thirds of what was needed was obtained from the West. And if today the Soviet Union has powerful military and police forces—in a country which is by contemporary standards poor—they are used to crush our movement for freedom in the Soviet Union—and we have western capital to thank for this also.

Let me remind you of a recent incident which some of you may have seen in the newspapers, although others might have missed it: Certain of your businessmen, on their own initiative, established an exhibition of criminological technology in Moscow. This was the most recent and elaborate technology, which here, in your country, is used to catch criminals, to bug them, to spy on them, to photograph them, to tail them, to identify criminals. This was taken to Moscow to an exhibition in order that the Soviet KGB agents could study it, as if not understanding what sort of criminals, who would be hunted by the KGB.

The Soviet government was extremely interested in this technology, and decided to purchase it. And your businessmen were quite willing to sell it. Only when a few sober voices here raised an uproar against it was this deal blocked. Only for this reason it didn't take place. But you have to realize how clever the KGB is. This technology didn't have to stay two or three weeks in a Soviet building under Soviet guard. Two or three nights were enough for the KGB there to look through it and copy it. And if today, persons are being hunted down by the best and most advanced technology, for this, I can also thank your western capitalists.

This is something which is almost incomprehensible to the human mind; that burning greed for profit which goes beyond all reason, all self-control, all conscience, only to get money.

I must say that Lenin foretold this whole process. Lenin, who spent most of his life in the West and not in Russia, who knew the West much better than Russia, always wrote and said that the western capitalists would do anything to strengthen the economy of the USSR. They will compete with each other to sell us goods cheaper and sell them quicker, so that the Soviets will buy from one rather than from the other. He said: They will bring it themselves without thinking about their future. And, in a difficult moment, at a party meeting in Moscow, he said: "Comrades, don't panic, when things go very hard for us, we will give a rope to the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie will hang itself."

Then, Karl Radek, whom you may have heard of, who was a very resourceful wit, said: "Vladimir Ilyich, but where are we going to get enough rope to hang the whole bourgeoisie?"

Lenin effortlessly replied, "They'll supply us with it."

**Through the decades** of the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s, the whole Soviet press wrote: Western capitalism, your end is near.

But it was as if the capitalists had not heard, could not understand, could not believe this.

Nikita Khrushchev came here and said, "We will bury you!" They didn't believe that, either. They took it as a joke.

Now, of course, they have become more clever in our country. Now they don't say "we are going to bury you" anymore, now they say "detente."

Nothing has changed in Communist ideology. The goals are the same as they were, but instead of the

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artless Khrushchev, who couldn't hold his tongue, now they say "detente."

In order to understand this, I will take the liberty of making a short historic survey—the history of such relations, which in different periods have been called "trade," "stabilization of the situation," "recognition of realities," and now "detente." These relations now are at least 40 years old.

Let me remind you with what sort of system they started.

The system was installed by armed uprising.

It dispersed the Constituent Assembly.

It capitulated to Germany—the common enemy.

It introduced execution without trial

It crushed workers' strikes.

It plundered the villagers to such an unbelievable extent that the peasants revolted, and when this happened it crushed the peasants in the bloodiest possible way.

It shattered the Church.

It reduced 20 provinces of our country to a condition of famine.

This was in 1921, the famous Volga famine. A very typical Communist technique: To seize power without thinking of the fact that the productive forces will collapse, that the fields will not be sown, the factories will stop, that the country will decline into poverty and famine—but when poverty and hunger come, then they request the humanitarian world to help them.

We see this in North Vietnam today, perhaps Portugal is approaching this also. And the same thing happened in Russia in 1921. When the three-year civil war, started by the Communists—and "civil war" was a slogan of the Communists, civil war was Lenin's purpose; read Lenin, this was his aim and his slogan—when they had ruined Russia by this civil war, then they asked America, "America, feed our hungry." And indeed, generous and magnanimous America did feed our hungry.

The so-called American Relief Administration was set up, headed by your future President Hoover, and indeed many millions of Russian lives were saved by this organization of yours.

But what sort of gratitude did you receive for this? In the USSR not only did they try to erase this whole event from the popular memory—it's almost impossible today in the Soviet press to find any reference to the American Relief Administration—but they even denounce it as a clever spy organization, a clever scheme of American imperialism to set up a spy network in Russia. I repeat, it was a system that introduced concentration camps for the first time in the history of the world.

A system that, in the 20th Century, was the first to introduce the use of hostages, that is to say, not to seize the person whom they were seeking, but rather a member of his family or someone at random, and

shoot that person.

This system of hostages and persecution of the family exists to this day. It is still the most powerful weapon of persecution, because the bravest person, who is not afraid for himself, still shivers at the threat to his family.

It is a system which was the first—long before Hitler—to employ false registration, that is, to say: "Such and such people have to come in to register." People would comply and then they were taken away to be annihilated.

We didn't have gas chambers in those days. We used barges. A hundred or a thousand persons were put into a barge and then it was sunk.

It was a system which deceived the workers in all of its decrees—the decree on land, the decree on peace, the decree on factories, the decree on freedom of the press.

It was a system which exterminated all additional parties, and let me make it clear to you that it not only disbanded the party itself, but destroyed its members. All members of every other party were exterminated. It was a system which carried out genocide of the peasantry; 15 million peasants were sent off to extermination.

It was a system which introduced serfdom, the socalled "passport system."

It was a system which, in time of peace, artificially created a famine, causing 6 million persons to die in

the Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. They died on the very edge of Europe. And Europe didn't even notice it. The world didn't even notice it—6 million persons!

I could keep on enumerating these endlessly, but I have to stop because I have come to the year 1933 when, with all I have enumerated behind us, your President Roosevelt and your Congress recognized this system as one worthy of diplomatic recognition, of friendship and of assistance.

Let me remind you that the great Washington did not agree to recognize the French Convention because of its savagery. Let me remind you that in 1933, voices were raised in your country objecting to recognition of the Soviet Union. However, the recognition took place and this was the beginning of friendship and ultimately of a military alliance.

Let us remember that in 1904, the American press was delighted at the Japanese victorics and everyone wanted Russia's defeat because it was a conservative country. I want to remind you that in 1914 reproaches were directed at France and England for having entered into an alliance with such a conservative country as Russia.

The scope and the direction of my speech today do not permit me to say more about pre-revolutionary Russia. I will just say that information about pre-revolutionary Russia was obtained by the West from persons who were either not sufficiently competent or

not sufficiently conscientious. I will just cite for the sake of comparison a number of figures which you can read for yourself in Gulag Archipelago, volume I, which has been published in the United States, and perhaps many of you may have read it. These are the figures:

At the height of Stalin's terror in 1937-38, if we divide the number of persons executed by the number of months, we get more than 40,000 persons shot permonth! Here are the figures: 17 a year, 10 a month more than 1,000 a month, more than 40,000 a month? Thus, that which had made it difficult for the demo-

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Russia had, by 1941, grown to such an extent and still did not prevent the entire united democracy of the world—England, France, the United States, Canada, Australia and small countries—from entering into a military alliance with the Soviet Union. How is this to be explained? How can we understand it? Here we can offer a few explanations. The first, I think, is that the entire united democracy of the world was too weak to fight against Hitler's Germany alone. If this is the case, then it is a terrible sign. It is a terrible portent for the present day. If all these countries together could not defeat Hitler's little Germany, what are they going to do today, when more than half the globe is flooded with totalitarianism? I don't want to accept this explanation.

The second explanation is perhaps that there was simply an attack of panic—of fear—among the statesmen of the day. They simply didn't have sufficient confidence in themselves, they simply had no strength of spirit, and in this confused state decided to enter into an alliance with Soviet totalitarianism. This is also not flattering to the West.

Finally, the third explanation is that it was a deliberate device. Democracy did not want to defend itself. For defense it wanted to use another totalitarian system, the Soviet totalitarian system.

I'm not talking now about the moral evaluation of this, I'm going to talk about that later. But in terms of simple calculation, how shortsighted, what profound self-deception!

We have a Russian proverb: "Do not call a wolf to help you against the dogs." If dogs are attacking and tearing at you, fight against the dogs, but do not call a wolf for help. Because when the wolves come, they will destroy the dogs, but they will also tear you apart.

World democracy could have defeated one totalitarian regime after another, the German, then the Soviet. Instead, it strengthened Soviet totalitarianism, helped bring into existence a third totalitarianism, that of China, and all this finally precipitated the present world situation.

Roosevelt, in Teheran, during one of his last toasts, said the following: "I do not doubt that the three of us"—meaning Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin—"lead our peoples in accordance with their desires, in accordance with their aims." How are we to explain this? Let the historians worry about that. At the time, we listened and were astonished. We thought, "when we reach Europe, we will meet the Americans, and we will tell them." I was among the troops that were marching towards the Elbe. A little bit more and I would have reached the Elbe and would have shaken the hands of your American soldiers. But just before that happened, I was taken off to prison and my meeting did not take place.

But now, after all this great delay, the same hand

zen understood that this was a sly device which made it possible for North Vietnam to take over South Vietnam when it so chose. And suddenly, this was rewarded by the Nobel Prize for Peace—a tragic and ironic prize.

A very dangerous state of mind can arise as a result of this 30 years of retreat: give in as quickly as possible, give up as quickly as possible, peace and quiet at any cost.

This is what many western papers wrote: "Let's harry up an end the bloodshed in Vietnam and have national unity there." But at the Berlin Wall no one talked of national unity. One of your leading newspapers, after the end of Vietnam, had a full headline: "The Blessed Silence." I would not wish that kind of "blessed silence" on my worst enemy. I would not wish that kind of national unity on my worst enemy.

I spent 11 years in the Archipelago, and for half of my lifetime I have studied this question. Looking at this terrible tragedy in Vietnam from a distance, I can tell you, a million persons will be simply exterminated, while 4 to 5 million (in accordance with the scale of Vietnam) will find themselves in concentration camps and will be rebuilding Vietnam. And what is happening in Cambodia you already know. It is genocide. It is full and complete destruction but in a new form. Once again their technology is not up to building gas chambers. So, in a few hours, the entire

capital city—the guilty capital city—is emptied out: old people, women, children are driven out without belongings, without food. "Go and die!"

This is very dangerous for one's view of the world when this feeling comes on: "Go ahead, give it up." We already hear voices in your country and in the West—"Give up Korea and we will live quietly. Give up Portugal, of course; give up Japan, give up Israel, give up Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, give up 10 more African countries. Just let us live in peace and quiet. Just let us drive our big cars on our splendid highways; just let us play tennis and golf, in peace and quiet; just let us mix our cocktails in peace and quiet as we are accustomed to doing; just let us see the beautiful toothy smile with a glass in hand on every advertisement page of our magazines."

But look how things have turned out: Now in the West this has all turned into an accusation against the United States. Now, in the West, we hear very many voices saying, "It's your fault, America." And, here, I must decisively defend the United States against these accusations.

I have to say that the United States, of all the countries of the West, is the least guilty in all this and has done the most in order to prevent it. The United States has helped Europe to win the First and the Second World Wars. It twice raised Europe from post-war destruction—twice—for 10, 20, 30 years

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it has stood as a shield protecting Europe while European countries were counting their nickels, to avoid paying for their armies (better yet to have none at all) to avoid paying for armaments, thinking about how to leave NATO, knowing that in any case America will protect them anyway. These countries started it all, despite their thousands of years of civilization and culture, even though they are closer and should have known better.

I came to your continent—for two months I have been travelling in its wide open spaces and I agree; here you do not feel the nearness of it all, the immediacy of it all. And here it is possible to miscalculate. Here you must make a spiritual effort to understand the acuteness of the world situation. The United States of America has long shown itself to be the most magnanimous, the most generous country in the world. Wherever there is a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a natural disaster, disease, who is the first to help? The United States. Who helps the most and unselfishly? The United States.

And what do we hear in reply? Reproaches, curses, "Yankee Go Home." American cultural centers are burned, and the representatives of the Third World jump on tables to vote against the United States.

But this does not take the load off America's shoulders. The course of history—whether you like it or not—has made you the leaders of the world. Your country can no longer think provincially. Your politi-

cal leaders can no longer think only of their own states, of their parties, of petty arrangements which may or may not lead to promotion. You must think about the whole world, and when the new political crisis in the world will arise (I think we have just come to the end of a very acute crisis and the next one will come any moment) the main decisions will fall anyway on the shoulders of the United States of America.

And while already here, I have heard some explanations of the situation. Let me quote some of them: "It is impossible to protect those who do not have the will to defend themselves." I agree with that, but this was said about South Vietnam. In one-half of today's Europe and in three-quarters of today's world the will to defend oneself is even less than it was in South Vietnam.

We are told: "We cannot defend those who are unable to defend themselves with their own human resources." But against the overwhilming powers of totalitarianism, when all of this power is thrown against a country—no country can defend itself with its own resources. For instance, Japan doesn't have a standing army.

We are told, "We should not protect those who do not have full democracy." This is the most remarkable argument of the lot. This is the Leitmotif I hear in your newspapers and in the speeches of some of your political leaders. Who in the world, ever, on the front line of defense against totalitarianism has been able to sustain full democracy? You, the united democracies of the world, were not able to sustain it. America, England, France, Canada, Australia together did not sustain it. At the first threat of Hitlerism, you stretched out your hands to Stalin. You call that sustaining democracy?

And there is more of the same (there were many of these speeches in a row): "If the Soviet Union is going to use detente for its own ends, then we. . . ." But what will happen then? The Soviet Union has used detente in its own interests, is using it now and will continue to use it in its own interests! For example, China and the Soviet Union, both actively participating in detente, have quietly grabbed three countries of Indochina. True, perhaps as a consolation, China will send you a ping-pong team. And just as the Soviet Union once sent you the pilots who once crossed the North Pole, in a few days you're flying into space together.

A typical diversion. I remember very well the year, this was June of 1937, when Chkalov, Baidukov and Beliakov heroically flew over the North Pole and landed in the state of Washington. This was the very year when Stalin was executing more than 40,000 persons a month. And Stalin knew what he was doing. He sent those pilots and aroused in you a naive delight—the friendship of two countries across the North Pole. The pilots were heroic, nobody will say

anything against them. But this was a show—a show to divert you from the real events of 1937. And what is the occasion now? Is it an anniversary—38 years? Is 38 years some kind of an anniversary? No, it is simply necessary to cover up Vietnam. And, once again, those pilots were sent here. The Chkalov Memorial was unveiled in the State of Washington. Chkalov was a hero and is worthy of a memorial. But, to present the true picture, behind the memorial there should have been a wall and on it there should have been a bas relief showing the executions, showing the skulls and bones.

We are also told (I apologize for so many quotes, but there are many more in your press and radio): "We cannot ignore the fact that North Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge have violated the agreement, but we're ready to look into the future." What does that mean? It means: let them exterminate people. But if these murderers, who live by violence, these executioners, offer us detente we will be happy to go along with them. As Willy Brandt once said: "I would even be willing to have detente with Stalin." At a time when Stalin was executing 40,000 a month he would have been willing to have detente with Stalin?

Look into the future. This is how they looked into the future in 1933 and 1941, but it was a shortsighted look into the future. This is how they looked into the future two years ago when a senseless, incomprehensible, non-guaranteed truce in Vietnam was arranged, and it was a shortsighted view. There was such a hurry to make this truce that they forgot to liberate your own Americans from captivity. They were in such a hurry to sign this document that some 1,300 Americans, "Well, they have vanished; we can get by without them." How is that done? How can this be? Part of them, indeed, can be missing in action, but the leaders of North Vietnam themselves have admitted that some of them are still being kept in prison. And do they give you back your countrymen? No, they are not giving them back, and they are always raising new conditions. At first they said, "Remove Thieu from power." Now, they say, "Have the United States restore Vietnam, otherwise it's very difficult for us to find these people."

If the government of North Vietnam has difficulty explaining to you what happened with your brothers, with your American POWs who have not yet returned. I, on the basis of my experience in the Archipelago, can explain this quite clearly. There is a law in the Archipelago that those who have been treated the most harshly and who have withstood the most bravely, the most honest, the most courageous, the most unbending, never again come out into the world. They are never again shown to the world because they will tell such tales as the human mind cannot accept. A part of your returned POWs told you that they were tortured. This means that those who have remained were tortured even more, but did not yield an inch.

These are your best people. These are your first heroes, who, in a solitary combat, have stood the test. And today, unfortunately, they cannot take conrage from our applause. They can't hear it from their solitary cells where they may either die or sit 30 years, like Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who was seized in 1945 in the Soviet Union. He has been imprisoned for 30 years and they will not yield him up.

And you have some hysterical public figure who said: "I will go to North Vietnam. I will stand on my knees and beg them to release our prisoners of war." This isn't a political act—this is masochism.

To understand properly what detente has meant all these 40 years—friendships, stabilization of the situation, trade, etc. I would have to tell you something, which you have never seen or heard, of how it looked from the other side. Let me tell you how it looked. Mere acquaintance with an American, and God forbid that you should sit with him in a cafe or restaurant, meant a 10-year term for suspicion of espionage.

In the lirst volume of Archipelago I tell of an event which was not told me by some arrested person, but by all of the members of the Supreme Court of the USSR during those short days when I was in the limelight under Khrushchev. One Soviet citizen was in the United States and on his return said that in the United States they have wonderful automobile roads. The KGB arrested him and demanded a term of 10 years, But the judge said; "I don't object, but

there is not enough evidence. Couldn't you find something else against him?" So the judge was exiled to Sakhalin because he dared to argue and they gave the other man 10 years. Can you imagine what a lie he told? And what sort of praise this was of American imperialism—in America there are good roads? Ten years.

In 1945-46 through our prison cells passed a lot of persons—and these were not ones who were cooperating with Hitler, although there were some of those, too. These were not guilty of anything, but rather persons who had just been in the West and had been liberated from German prison camps by the Americans. This was considered a criminal act: liberated by the Americans. That means he has seen the good life. If he comes back he will talk about it. The most terrible thing is not what he did but what he would talk about. And all such persons got 10-year terms.

During Nixon's last visit to Moscow your American correspondents were reporting in the western way from the streets of Moscow. I am going down a Russian street with a microphone and asking the ordinary Soviet citizen: "Tell me please, what do you think about the meeting between Nixon and Brezhnev?" And, amazingly, every last person answered: "Wonderful? I'm delighted. I'm absolutely overjoyed!"

What does this mean? If I'm going down a street in Moscow and some American comes up to me with a microphone and asks me something, then I know

that on the other side of him is a member of the state security, also with a microphone who is recording everything I say. You think that I'm going to say something that is going to put me in prison immediately? Of course I say: "It's wonderful: I'm overjoyed."

But what is the value of such correspondents if they simply transfer western techniques over there without thinking things through?

You helped us for many years with Lend Lease, but we've now done everything to forget this, to erase it from our minds, not to remember it if at all possible. And now, before I came into this hall, I delayed my visit to Washington a little in order to first take a look at some ordinary parts of America, going to various states and simply talking with people. I was told, and I learned this for the first time, that in every state during the war years there were Soviet-American friendship societies which collected assistance for Soviet people—warm clothes, canned food, gifts and sent them to the Soviet Union. But we not only never saw these; we not only never received them (they were distributed somewhere among the privileged circles) no one ever even told us that this was being done. I only learned about it for the first time here, this month, in the United States.

Everything poisonous which could be said about the United States was said in Stalin's days. And all of this is a heavy sediment which can be stirred up

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anytime. Any day the newspapers can come out with the headlines: "Bloodthirsty American imperialism wants to seize control of the world," and this poison will rise up from the sediment and many people in our country will believe this, and will be poisoned by it, and will consider you as aggressors. This is how detente has been managed on our side.

The Soviet system is so closed that it is almost impossible for you to understand from here. Your theoreticians and scholars write works trying to understand and explain how things occur there. Here are some naive explanations which are simply funny to Soviet citizens. Some say that the Soviet leaders have now given up their inhumane ideology. Not at all. They haven't given it up one bit.

Some say that in the Kremlin there are some on the left, some on the right. And they are fighting with each other, and we've got to behave in such a way as not to interfere with those on the left side. This is all fantasy: left . . . right. There is some sort of a struggle for power, but they all agree on the essentials.

There also exists the following theory, that now, thanks to the growth of technology, there is a technocracy in the Soviet Union, a growing number of engineers and the engineers are now running the economy and will soon determine the fate of the country, rather than the party. I will tell you, though, that the engineers determine the fate of the economy just as much as our generals determine the fate of the

Army. That means zero. Everything is done the way the party demands. That's our system. Judge it for yourself.

It's a system where for 40 years there haven't been genuine elections but simply a comedy, a farce. Thus a system which has no legislative organs. It's a system without an independent press; a system without an independent judiciary; where the people have no influence either on external or internal policy; where any thought which is different from what the state thinks is crushed.

And let me tell you that electronic bugging in our country is such a simple thing that it's a matter of everyday life. You had an instance in the United States where a bugging caused an uproar which lasted for a year and a half. For us it's an everyday matter. Almost every apartment, every institution has got its bug and it doesn't surprise us in the least—we are used to it.

It's a system where unmasked butchers of millions like Molotov and others smaller than him have never been tried in the courts but retire on tremendous pensions in the greatest comfort. It's a system where the show still goes on today and to which every foreigner is introduced surrounded by a couple of planted agents working according to a set scenario. It's a system where the very constitution has never been carried out for one single day; where all the

decisions mature in secrecy, high up in a small irresponsible group and then are released on us and on you like a bolt of lightning.

And what are the signatures of such persons worth? How could one rely on their signatures to documents of detente? You yourselves might ask your specialists now and they'll tell you that precisely in recent years the Soviet Union has succeeded in creating wonderful chemical weapons, missiles, which are even better than those used by the United States.

So what are we to conclude from that? Is detente needed or not? Not only is it needed, it's as necessary as air. It's the only way of saving the earth—instead of a world war to have detente, but a true detente, and if it has already been ruined by the bad word which we use for it—"detente"—then we should find another word for it.

I would say that there are very few, only three, main characteristics of such a true detente.

In the first place, there would be disarmament not only disarmament from the use of war but also from the use of violence. We must stop using not only the sort of arms which are used to destroy one's neighbors, but the sort of arms which are used to oppress one's fellow countrymen. It is not detente if we here with you today can spend our time agreeably while over there people are groaning and dying and in psychiatric hospitals. Doctors are making their evening rounds, for the third time injecting people with drugs which destroy their brain cells.

The second sign of detente, I would say, is the following: that it be not one based on smiles, not on verbal concessions, but it has to be based on a firm foundation. You know the words from the Bible: "Build not on sand, but on rock." There has to be a guarantee that this will not be broken overnight and for this the other side—the other party to the agreement—must have its acts subject to public opinion, to the press, and to a freely elected parliament. And until such control exists there is absolutely no guarantee.

The third simple condition—what sort of detente is it when they employ the sort of inhumane propaganda which is proudly called in the Soviet Union "ideological warfare." Let us not have that. If we're going to be friends, let's be friends, if we're going to have detente, then let's have detente, and an end to ideological warfare.

The Soviet Union and the Communist countries can conduct negotiations. They know how to do this. For a long time they don't make any concessions and then they give in a little bit. Then everyone says triumphantly, "Look, they've made a concession; it's time to sign." The European negotiators of the 35 countries for two years now have painfully been negotiating and their nerves were stretched to the breaking point and they finally gave in. A few women from the Commu-

nist countries can now marry foreigners. And a few newspapermen are now going to be permitted to travel a little more than before. They give 1/1,000th of what natural law should provide. Matters which people should be able to do even before such negotiations are undertaken. And already there is joy. And here in the West we hear many voices, saying: "Look, they're making concessions; it's time to sign."

During these two years of negotiations, in all the countries of eastern Europe, the pressure has increased, the oppression intensified, even in Yugoslavia and Romania, leaving aside the other countries. And it is precisely now that the Austrian chancellor says, "We've got to sign this agreement as rapidly as possible."

What sort of an agreement would this be? The proposed agreement is the funeral of castern Europe. It means that western Europe would finally, once and for all, sign away eastern Europe, stating that it is perfectly willing to see eastern Europe be crushed and overwhelmed once and for all, but please don't bother us. And the Austrian chancellor thinks that if all these countries are pushed into a mass grave, Austria at the very edge of this grave will survive and not fall into it also.

And we, from our lives there, have concluded that violence can only be withstood by firmness.

You have to understand the nature of communism. The very ideology of communism, all of Lenin's teachings, are that anyone is considered to be a fool who doesn't take what's lying in front of him. If you can take it, take it. If you can attack, attack. But if there's a wall, then go back. And the Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt and laugh at persons who continually give in to them. Your people are now saying—and this is the last quotation I am going to give you from the statements of your leaders—"Power, without any attempt at conciliation, will lead to a world conflict." But I would say that power with continual subservience is no power at all.

But from our experience I can tell you that only firmness will make it possible to withstand the assaults of Communist totalitarianism. We see many historic examples, and let me give you some of them. Look at little Finland in 1939, which by its own forces withstood the attack. You, in 1948, defended Berlin only by your firmness of spirit, and there was no world conflict. In Korea in 1950 you stood up against the Communists, only by your firmness, and there was no world conflict. In 1962 you compelled the rockets to be removed from Cuba. Again it was only firmness, and there was no world conflict. And the late Konrad Adenauer conducted firm negotiations with Khrushchev and thus started a genuine detente with Khrushchev. Khrushchev started to make concessions and if he hadn't been removed, that winter he was planning

to go to Germany and to continue the genuine detente

Let me remind you of the weakness of a man whose name is rarely associated with weakness—the weakness of Lenin. Lenin, when he came to power, in panic gave up to Germany everything Germany wanted. Just what it wanted. Germany took as much as it wanted and said, "Give Armenia to Turkey." And Lenin said, "Fine." It's almost an unknown fact but Lenin petitioned the Kaiser to act as intermediary to persuade the Ukraine and, thus, to make possible a boundary between the Communist part of Russia and the Ukraine. It wasn't a question of seizing the Ukraine but rather of making a boundary with the Ukraine.

We, we the dissidents of the USSR, don't have any tanks, we don't have any weapons, we have no organization. We don't have anything. Our hands are empty. We have only a heart and what we have lived through in the half century of this system. And when we have found the firmness within ourselves to stand up for our rights, we have done so. It's only by firmness of spirit that we have withstood. And if I am standing here before you, it's not because of the kindness or the good will of communism, not thanks to detente, but thanks to my own firmness and your firm support. They knew that I would not yield one inch, not one hair. And when they couldn't do more they themselves fell back.

This is not easy. In our conditions this was taught

Finally, to evaluate everything that I have said to you, I would say we need not have had our conversation on the level of business calculations. Why did such and such a country act in such and such a way? What were they counting on? We should rather rise above this to the moral level and, say: "In 1933 and in 1941 your leaders and the whole western world, in an unprincipled way, made a deal with totalitarian-

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ism." We will have to pay for this, some day this deal will come back to haunt us. For 30 years we have been paying for it and we're still paying for it. And we're going to pay for it in a worse way.

One cannot think only in the low level of political calculations. It's necessary to think also of what is noble, and what is honorable—not only what is profitable. Resourceful western legal scholars have now introduced the term "legal realism." By legal realism, they want to push aside any moral evaluation of affairs. They say, "Recognize realities; if such and such laws have been established in such and such countries by violence, these laws still must be recognized and respected."

At the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality—law is something which is worked out and developed, whereas morality is something inchoate and amorphous. That isn't the case. The opposite is rather true! Morality is higher than law! While law is our human attempt to embody in rules a part of that moral sphere which is above us. We try to understand this morality, bring it down to earth and present it in a form of laws. Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes you actually have a caricature of morality, but morality is always higher than law. This view must never be abandoned. We must accept it with heart and soul.

It is almost a joke now in the western world, in the

20th century, to use words like "good" and "evil." They have become almost old-fashioned concepts, but they are very real and genuine concepts. These are concepts from a sphere which is higher than us. And instead of getting involved in base, petty, short-sighted political calculations and games we have to recognize that the concentration of World Evil and the tremendous force of hatred is there and it's flowing from there throughout the world. And we have to stand up against it and not hasten to give to it, give to it, give to it, everything that it wants to swallow.

Today there are two major processes occurring in the world. One is the one which I have just described to you which has been in progress more than 30 years. It is a process of shortsighted concessions; a process of giving up, and giving up and giving up and hoping that perhaps at some point the wolf will have eaten enough.

The second process is one which I consider the key to everything and which, I will say now, will bring all of us our future; under the cast-iron shell of communism — for 20 years in the Soviet Union and a shorter time in other Communist countries—there is occurring a liberation of the human spirit. New generations are growing up which are steadfast in their struggle with evil; which are not willing to accept unprincipled compromises; which prefer to lose everything—salary, conditions of existence and life itself—but are not willing to sacrifice conscience; not willing

to make deals with evil.

This process has now gone so far that in the Soviet Union today, Marxism has fallen so low that it has become an ancedote, it's simply an object of contempt. No scrious person in our country today, not even university and high school students, can talk about Marxism without smiling, without laughing. But this whole process of our liberation, which obviously will entail social transformations, is slower than the first one—the process of concessions. Over there, when we see these concessions, we are frightened. Why so quickly? Why so precipitously? Why yield several countries a year?

I started by saying that you are the allies of our liberation movement in the Communist countries. And I call upon you: let us think together and try to see how we can adjust the relationship between these two processes. Whenever you help the persons persecuted in the Soviet Union, you not only display magnanimity and nobility, you're defending not only them buy yourselves as well. You're defending your own future

So let us try and see how far we can go to stop this senseless and immoral process of endless concessions to the aggressor—these clever legal arguments for why we should give up one country after another. Why must we hand over to Communist totalitarianism more and more technology—complex, delicate, developed technology which it needs for armaments and for crushing its own citizens? If we can at least slow down

that process of concessions, if not stop it all together—and make it possible for the process of liberation to continue in the Communist countries—ultimately these two processes will yield us our future.

On our crowded planet there are no longer any internal affairs. The Communist leaders say, "Don't interfere in our internal affairs. Let us strangle our citizens in peace and quiet." But I tell you: Interfere more and more. Interfere as much as you can. We beg you to come and interfere.

Understanding my own task in the same way I have perhaps interferred today in your internal affairs, or at least touched upon them, and I apologize for it. I have traveled a lot around the United States and this has been added to my earlier understanding of it; what I have heard from listening to the radio, from talking to experienced persons.

America—in mc and among my friends and among people who think the way I do over there, among all ordinary Soviet citizens—evokes a sort of mixture of feelings of admiration and of compassion. Admiration at the fact of your own tremendous forces which you perhaps don't even recognize yourselves. You're a country of the future; a young country; a country of still untapped possibilities; a country of tremendous geographical distances; a country of tremendous breadth of spirit; a country of generosity; a country of magnanimity. But these qualities—strength, generosity and magnanimity—usually make a man and

even a whole country trusting, and this already several times has done you a disservice.

I would like to call upon America to be more careful with its trust and prevent those wise persons who are attempting to establish even finer degrees of justice and even finer legal shades of equality—some because of their distorted outlook, others because of short-sightedness and still others out of self-interest—from falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road. Because they are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat—one which has never been seen before in the history of the world. Not only in the history of your country, but in the history of the world.

And I call upon you: ordinary working men of America—as represented here by your trade union

movement—do not let yourselves become weak. Do not let yourselves be taken in the wrong direction. Let us try to slow down the process of concessions and help the process of liberation!

May I express our deep appreciation to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for his inspiring address, for the thoughts that he left with us at a time when, God knows, the world needs to think more about human freedom. The world needs to think more about those who are losing their freedom every day.

America must, in my opinion, shape up to this challenge as the leader of the free world, because if America doesn't lead the free world, the free world, I'm afraid, has no leader.

—George Meany

# 'We Are Proud and Honored to Stand With Him'

#### Lane Kirkland

A principle of mechanics tells us that, given a long-enough lever, one man can move the entire world. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a living test of that principle.

His lever is his pen, extended far beyond his reach by his mind, his talent, his courage and his unshakable integrity.

He seeks to move a world that today seems far gone in madness and in cowardice. A world where terror, murder and oppression are welcomed and are exalted in the glass and marble temples of universal peace and justice that were built by a highly optimistic generation after World War II.

He stands as a living, monumental reproach to

all of those statesmen and leaders who today raise the practice of abstention on basic moral issues to the level of high national policy and who flee from any test of the good will, the graces and the kindly disposition of the most deadly enemies of mankind.

His work is not devoted to the advancement of any political doctrine or fashion in political discourse or any passing notion of expediency—but to the most elemental values of human dignity, human justice, and human freedom.

The AFL-CIO is proud and honored to stand with him in that cause. I am privileged now to introduce Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

## Communism: A Legacy of Terror

Is it then possible or impossible to transmit the experience of those who have suffered to those who have yet to suffer? Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience of another or can it not? Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger?

How many witnesses have been sent to the West in the last 60 years? How many waves of immigrants? How many millions of persons? They are all here. You meet them every day. You know who they are: if not by their spiritual disorientation, their grief, their melancholy, then you can distinguish them by their accents by their external appearance. Coming from different countries and without consulting with one another, they have brought to you exactly the same experience; they tell you exactly the same thing: they warn you of what is already happening, what has happened in the past. But the proud skyscrapers stand on, point to the sky and say: it will never happen here. This will never come to us. It's not possible here.

It can happen. It is possible. As a Russian proverb says: "When it happens to you, you'll know it's true."

But do we really have to wait for the moment when the knife is at our throats? Couldn't it be possible, ahead of time, soberly to assess the worldwide menace that threatens to swallow the whole world? I was swallowed myself. I have been in the dragon's belly, in the red burning belly of the dragon. He wasn't able to digest me. He threw me up. I have come to you as a witness to what it's like there, in the dragon's belly.

It's an astonishing phenomenon that communism has been writing about itself in the most open way—in black and white—for 125 years. And even more openly, more candidly in the beginning. The Communist Manifesto, for instance, which everyone knows by name, and which almost no one ever takes the trouble to read, contains even more terrible things than what has actually been done. It's perfectly amazing. The whole world can read, everyone is literate, but somehow no one wants to understand. Humanity acts in such a way as if it didn't understand what communism is, and doesn't want to understand is not capable of understanding.

I think it isn't only a question of the disguises

which communism has assumed in the last decades. It's rather that the essence of communism is quite beyond the limits of human understanding. It's hard to believe that people could actually plan such things and carry them out. And precisely because its essence is beyond comprehension, communism is so difficult to understand.

In my last address in Washington I spoke a great deal about the Soviet state system, how it was created and what it is today. But it's perhaps more important to discuss with you the ideology that inspired the system, that created it, and that still governs it. It's much more important to understand the essence of this ideology, and above all its legacy which hasn't changed at all in 125 years. It hasn't changed since the day it was born.

That Marxism is not a science is something which is entirely clear to intelligent people in the Soviet Union. It would be a joke to call it some sort of science. Leaving aside the exact sciences, such as physics, mathematics, and the natural sciences, even the social sciences can predict an event—when in what way and how the event might occur. Communism has never made any such forecasts. It has never said where, when, and precisely what is going to happen. Nothing but declamations. Declamations to the effect that the world proletariat will overthrow the world bourgeoisie and the most happy and radiant society will then arise. The fantasies of Marx,

Engels and Lenin break off at this point, not one of them goes any further to describe what the society would be like. They simply said: the most radiant, most happy society. Everything for the sake of man.

I wouldn't want to enumerate for you all the unsuccessful predictions of Marxism, but I can give a couple. For example, it was claimed that the conditions of the working class in the West would deteriorate steadily, get more and more unbearable until the workers would be reduced to total poverty. (If only in our country we could feed and clothe our working class, provide it with everything and give it as much leisure as you do!)

Or the famous prediction Communist revolutions would all begin in such advanced industrial countries as England, France, America, Germany—that's where communism will begin. (But it worked out exactly the other way, as you know.) Or the prediction that the socialist state wouldn't even exist. As soon as capitalism would be overthrown, the state would at once wither away. (Look about you: where can you see states as powerful as in the so-called socialist or Communist countries?) Or the prediction that wars are inherent only to capitalism. Wars are said to arise only because of capitalism; as soon as communism is introduced, all wars will come to an end. (We have seen enough of this also: in Budapest, in Prague, on the Soviet-Chinese border, in the occu-

pation of the Baltic countries, and when Poland was stabbed in the back. We have seen enough of this already, and we will surely see more yet.)

Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perform his delicate operations with a meat-ax. All that is subtle in human psychology and in the structure of society (which is even more delicate); all of this is reduced to crude economic processes. This whole created being—man—is reduced to matter. It's characteristic that communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks arguments and hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement.

Marxism has always opposed freedom. I will quote just a few words from the founding fathers of communism, Marx and Engels (I quote from the first Soviet edition of 1929): "Reforms are a sign of weakness" (vol. 23, p. 339); "Democracy is more to be feared than monarchy and aristocracy," (vol. 2, p. 369); "Political liberty is a false liberty, worse than the most abject slavery" (vol. 2, p. 394). In their correspondence Marx and Engels frequently said that after achieving power, terror would be indispensable, that "it will be necessary to repeat the year 1793. After achieving power, we'll be con-

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sidered monsters, but we couldn't care less" (vol. 25, p. 187).

Both the theory and practice of communism are completely inhuman for that reason. There is a word very commonly used these days: "anti-communism." It's a very stupid word, badly put together.

It makes it appear as though communism were something original, something basic, something fundamental. Therefore, it is taken as the point of departure, and anti-communism is defined in relation to communism. Here is why I say that this word was poorly selected, that it was put together by people who do not understand etymology: the primary, the eternal concept is humanity. And communism is anti-humanity. Whoever says "anti-communism" is saying, in effect, anti-anti-humanity. A poor construction. So we should say: that which is against communism is for humanity. Not to accept, to reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. It isn't being a member of a party. It's a protest of our souls against those who tell us to forget the concepts of good and evil.

But what is amazing is that apart from all their books, communism has offered a multitude of examples for modern man to see. The tanks have rumbled through Budapest. It is nothing. The tanks roar into Czechoslovakia. It is nothing. No one else would have been forgiven, but communism can be excused. With some kind of strange deliberation, as though God wanted to punish them by taking away their reason, the Communists erected the Berlin wall. It is indeed a monstrous symbol that demonstrates the true meaning of communism. For 14 years people have been machine gunned there, and not only those who wanted to leave the happy Communist society.

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Recently some foreign boy from the western side fell into the Spree River. Some people wanted to pull him out, but the East German border guards opened fire. "No, no, don't save him." And so he drowned; this innocent boy.

Has the Berlin wall convinced anyone? No again. It's being ignored. It's there, but it doesn't affect us. We'll never have a wall like that. And the tanks in Budapest and Prague, they won't come here either. On all the borders of the Communist countries, the European ones in any case, you can find electronic killing devices. These are automatic devices for killing anyone who goes across. But people here say: "That doesn't threaten us either, we are not afraid of that." In the Communist countries they have a developed system of forced treatment in insane asylums. That's nothing. We're living quietly. Three times a day—right at this very moment—the doctors are making their rounds and injecting substances into peoples' arms that destroy their brains. Pay no attention to it. We'll continue to live in peace and quiet here.

There's a certain woman here named Angela Davis. I don't know if you are familiar with her in this country, but in our country, literally for one whole year, we heard of nothing at all except about Angela Davis. There was only Angela Davis in the whole world and she was suffering. We had our ears stuffed with Angela Davis. Little children in school were

told to sign petitions in defense of Angela Davis. Little boys and girls, 8 and 9 years old in schools, were asked to do this. Well, they set her free. Although she didn't have a rough time in this country, she came to recuperate in Soviet resorts. Some Soviet dissidents—but more important, a group of Czech dissidents—addressed an appeal to her: "Comrade Davis, you were in prison. You know how unpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when you consider yourself innocent. You now have such authority. Could you help our Czech prisoners? Could you stand up for those persons in Czechoslovakia who are being persecuted by the state?" Angela Davis answered: "They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison." That is the face of communism. That's the heart of communism for you.

I would particularly want to remind you today that communism develops in a straight line and as a single entity, without altering as people now like to say. Lenin did indeed develop Marxism, but primarily along the lines of ideological intolerance. If you read Lenin, you will be astonished at how much hatred there was in him at the least deviation, whenever some view differed from his by so much as a hair's breadth. Lenin also developed Marxism in the direction of inhumanity. Before the October Revolution in Russia, Lenin wrote a book called "The Lessons of the Paris Commune." There he analyzed why the Paris Commune was defeated in

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1871. And his principal conclusion was that the Commune had not shot, had not killed enough of its enemies. It had destroyed too few people, when it was necessary to kill entire classes and groups. And when he came to power, Lenin did just this.

The only new thing that Stalin did was based on mistrust. Where it would have been enough—in order to instill general fear—to jail two people, he would arrest a hundred. And those who followed Stalin

have merely returned to the previous tactic: if it is necessary to send two off to jail, then send two, not a hundred. In the eyes of the party, Stalin's entire guilt lay elsewhere: he did not trust his own Communist Party. Due to this alone the concept of Stalinism was devised. But Stalin had never deviated from the same basic line. They used to sculpt a bas relief of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin all together; to this one could add Mao Tse-tung, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh; they are all in the same line of development.

What's worst in the world Communist system is

day when they will be in the position that (Portugal's Mario) Soares is in today.

Soares' situation today, by the way, is not yet at its worst. An even more terrible future awaits him and his party. Only the Russian socialists—the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries—could have told them of the fate that awaits them. But they cannot tell of it; they are all dead; they've all been killed. Read the Gulag Archipelago for that.

Of course in the present situation the Communists have to assume various disguises. Sometimes we hear words like the "popular front," at other times "dialogue with Christianity" is brought up. For Communists to have a dialogue with Christianity! In the Soviet Union this dialogue was a simple matter: they used machine guns and revolvers. And today, in Portugal, unarmed Catholics are stoned by the Communists. This happens today. This is dialogue. . And when the French and the Italian Communists say that they are going to have a dialogue, let them only achieve power and we shall see what this dialogue will look like.

When I traveled to Italy this past April, I was amazed to see hammers and sickles painted on the doors of churches, insults to priests scrawled on the doors of their houses. In general, offensive Communist graffiti cover the walls of Italian cities. This is today, at a time before they have achieved power. This is

today . . . When their leaders were in Moscow, Palmiro Togliatti agreed to all of Stalin's executions. Just let them reach power in Italy and we shall see what the dialogue will look like then.

All of the Communist parties, upon achieving power, have become completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve power, it's necessary to adopt disguises.

We Russians who have had experience with this, find it tragic to see what is going on in Portugal. We were always told, "Well, this happened to you Russians. It's just that you couldn't maintain democracy in your country. You had it for eight months and then it was throttled. That's eastern Europe for you." But look at Portugal, at the very western-most edge of Europe, you can't go further West than Portugal. And what do we see there? We see a sort of caricature, a slightly altered version of what happened in Russia. For us it sounds like a repetition. We recognize what's going on and can make the proper substitutions, placing our socialist in Soares' position.

Or another familiar note: in Russia the Bolsheviks also pursued power under the slogan "All Power to the Constituent Assembly." But when the elections took place, they got 25 percent of the vote. So they dispersed the Constituent Assembly. The Communists in Portugal got 12 percent of the vote. So they made their parliament entirely powerless. What irony: the

socialists have won the elections. Soares is the leader of the victorious party. And he has been deprived of his own newspaper. Just imagine: the leader of a victorious party has been stripped of his own newspaper! And the fact that there an assembly has been elected and that it will sit in session has no significance whatever. Yet the western press writes seriously that the first free elections took place in Portugal. Lord save us from such free elections!

Specific instances of duplicity, of trickery, can of course change from one set of circumstances to another. But we recognize the Communist character in the episode when the Portuguese military leaders, who are allegedly not Communists, decided to settle the dispute within the newspaper "Republica" in the following manner. "Come at 12 o'clock tomorrow," they said, "we'll open the doors for you and you settle it all as you see fit." But they opened the doors at 10 o'clock and for some reason only the Communists knew of this, but not the socialists. The Communists entered, burned all the incriminating documents and then the socialists arrived. Ah, yes, it was of course only an error. An accident, they didn't check the time . . .

These are the sort of tricks—and there are thousands—which make up the history of our revolution. There will be many more such incidents in Portugal. Or take the following example: the current military leadership of Portugal, in order not to lose the assistance.

there is nothing to eat, so they need help), have declared, "Yes, we shall keep our multi-party system." And the unfortunate Soares, the leader of the victorious party, now has to demonstrate that he is pleased with this declaration in favor of a multi-party system. But on the same day the same source declared that the construction of a classless society will begin immediately. Anyone who is the least bit familiar with Marxism knows that "classless society" implies that there won't be any parties. That is to say, on the very same day they said: there will be a multi-party system and we shall strangle every party. But the former is heard while the latter is inaudible. And everybody repeats only that there will be a multi-party system. This is a typical Communist technique.

Portugal has, in effect, fallen out of NATO today. I hate to be a prophet of doom but these events are irreversible. Very shortly Portugal will already be considered a member of the Warsaw Pact. It is painful to look at this tragic and ironic repetition of Communist techniques at the far ends of Europe, 60 years apart. In the same few months we see the throttling of a democracy which had only just begun to get on its feet

The question of war is also well elucidated in Communist and Marxist literature. Let me show you how communism regards the question of war. I quote Lenin: "We cannot support the slogan 'Peace' since

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we regard it as a totally muddled one and a hindrance to the revolutionary struggle." (Letter to Alexandra Kollontai, July 1915) "To reject war in principle is un-Marxist. Who objectively stands to gain from the slogan 'Peace"? In any case not the revolutionary proletariat." (Letter to Alexander G. Shliapnikov, November 1914). "There's no point in proposing a benign program of pious wishes for peace without at the same time placing at the forefront the call for illegal organization and the summons to Civil War." This is communism's view of war. War is necessary. War is an instrument for achieving a goal.

But unfortunately for communism, this policy ran up against your atomic bomb in 1945. The American atomic bomb. Then the Communists changed their tactics. Then they suddenly became advocates of peace at any cost. They started to convoke peace congresses, to circulate petitions for peace, and the western world fell for this deceit. But the goal, the ideology, remained the same. To destroy your society. To destroy the way of life known in the West.

But with your nuclear superiority, it wasn't possible to do this then. Hence they replaced one concept with another. They said: what is not war is peace. That is to say, they opposed war to peace. But this was a mistake. Only a part of the antithesis opposed to the thesis. Although an open war could not be conducted, they could still carry out their oppressions behind the

scene—terrorism. Partisan war, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: is this peace?

The diametric opposite of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world, but also violence. If there is no open war, but there is still violence, that is not peace.

As long as in the Soviet Union, in China, and in other Communist countries there's no limit to the use of violence—and now we find India joining in (it appears that Indira Ghandi has learned a lot from her trip to Moscow; she has mastered these methods very well, and is now adding another 400 million persons to this continent of tyranny)—as long as there is no limit to this use of violence, as long as nothing restrains the use of violence over this tremendous land mass (more than half of humanity), how can you consider yourselves secure?

America and Europe together are not yet, I agree, an island in the ocean—I won't go so far as to say that. But America together with Europe is now a minority, and the process is still continuing. Until society in those Communist countries can keep a check on the government and can have an opinion on what the government does—now it doesn't even have the least idea of what the government is up to—until that time comes the West, and the world generally, has no guarantee at all.

We have another proverb in Russia: "Catch on you will when you're tumbling downhill."

I understand that you love freedom, but in our crowded world you have to pay a tax for freedom. You cannot love freedom just for yourself and quietly agree to a situation where the majority of humanity over the greater part of the globe is being subjected to violence and oppression.

The Communist ideology is to destroy your society. This has been their aim for 125 years and has never changed; only the methods have changed a little. When there is detente, peaceful co-existence, and trade, they will still insist: the ideological war must continue! And what is ideological war? It is a focus of hatred, this is continued repetition of the oath to destroy the western world. Just as, once upon a time in the Roman Senate, a famous speaker ended every speech with the statement: "Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed," so today, with every act—detente, trade, or whatever—the Communist press, acting on secret instructions, sends out thousands of speakers who repeat: "Furthermore, capitalism must be destroyed."

I understand, it's only human that persons living in prosperity have difficulty understanding the necessity of taking steps—here and now, in a state of prosperity—to defend themselves. That even in prosperity one must be on guard.

But if I were to enumerate all the treaties that have

been violated by the Soviet Union, it would take me another whole speech. I understand that when your statesmen sign some treaty with the Soviet Union or China you want to believe that it will be carried out. But the Poles who signed a treaty in Riga in 1921 with the Communists also wanted to believe that the treaty would be carried out, and they were stabbed in the back. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who signed treaties of friendship with the Soviet Union, also wanted to believe that they would be carried out, but these countries were all swallowed.

And the persons who sign these treaties with you now—these very men and no others—at the same time give orders for persons to be confined in mental hospitals and prisons. Why should they be different? Do they have any love for you? Why should they act honorably and nobly toward you while they crush their own people? The advocates of detente have never yet explained this.

You want to believe and you cut down on your armies. You cut down on your research. There used to be an Institute for the Study of the Soviet Union—at least there was one. (You know nothing about the Soviet Union. It's dark over there. These searchlights don't penetrate that far.) Knowing nothing, you eliminated the last genuine institute which actually could study this Soviet society, because there wasn't enough money to support it. But the Soviet Union is studying

you. You are all wide open here, through the press and Congress. And they study you even more, increasing the size of their staffs. They follow what's going on in your institutions. They visit the buildings when they can; they even visit congressional committees; they study everything.

Of course, peace treaties are very attractive to those who sign them. They strengthen one's prestige with the electorate. But the time will come when the names of these public figures will be erased from history. Nobody will remember them any longer, but the western peoples will have to pay heavily for these over-trusting agreements.

Is it only a question of showing that detente is needed today, here and now? No. We have theoreticians who look very far into the future. The director of the Russian Institute of Columbia University, Marshall Shulman, at a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, depicted a radiant long-range future, stating that detente would ultimately lead to cooperation between the United States and the USSR in the establishment of a world order. But what sort of new order, in cooperation with insatiable totalitarianism, does this professor want to see established? It won't be your order in any case.

But the principal argument of the advocates of detente is well-known: all of this must be done to avoid a nuclear war. But after all that has happened in recent years, I think I can set their minds at ease, and your minds at ease as well: there will not be any nuclear war. What for? Why should there be a nuclear war if for the last 30 years they have been breaking off as much of the West as they wanted—piece after piece, country after country and the process keeps going on. In 1975 alone four countries were broken off. Four—three in Indochina plus India, the process keeps going on, and very rapidly, too. One should be aware of how rapid the tempo is. But let us assume that ultimately the western world will understand and say, "No, not one step further." What will happen then?

Let me direct your attention to the following fact. You have theoreticians who say: "The U.S. must stop the process of nuclear armament. We have enough already. Today America has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other half of the world. Why should we need more than that?" Let the American nuclear specialists reason this way if they want, but for some reason the nuclear specialists of the Soviet Union—and for some reason the leaders of the Soviet Union—think differently. Ask your specialists! Leave aside their superiority in tanks and airplanes—where they surpass you by a factor of four, five or seven. Take the SALT talks alone: in these negotiations your opponent is continually deceiving you. Either he is testing radar in a way which is forbidden by the agreement; or he is violating the limitations on the dimensions of missiles; or he is violating the

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limitations on their destructive force; or else he is violating the conditions on multiple warheads.

As the proverb says, "Look before you leap, or you will have bruises to keep."

At one time there was no comparison between the strength of the USSR and yours. Then it became equal to yours. Now, as all recognize, it is becoming superior to yours. Perhaps today the ratio is just greater than equal, but soon it will be 2 to 1. Then 3 to 1. Finally it will be 5 to 1. I'm not a specialist in this area, and you're not specialists either, I suppose, but this can hardly be accidental. I think that if the armaments they had before were enough, they would not have driven things further. There must be some reason for it. With such a nuclear superiority it will be possible to block the use of your weapons, and on some unlucky morning they will declare: "Attention. We're marching our troops to Europe, and if you make a move, we will annihilate you." And this ratio of 3 to 1, or 5 to 1 will have its effect: you will not make a move. Indeed, theoreticians will be found to say, "If only we can have that blessed silence..."

To make a comparison with chess, this is like two players who are sitting at a chess board, one of whom has a tremendously high opinion of himself and a rather low opinion of his opponent. He thinks that he will, of course, outplay his opponent. He thinks

he is so clever, so calculating, so inventive, that he will certainly win. He sits there, he calculates his moves. With these two knights he will make four forks. He can hardly wait for his opponent to move. He's squirming on his chair out of happiness. He takes off his glasses, wipes them, and puts them back on again. He doesn't even admit the possibility that his opponent may be more clever. He doesn't even see that his pawns are being taken one after the other and that his castle is under threat. It all seems to him, "Aha, that's what we'll do. We'll set Moscow, Peking, Pyongyang, Hanoi one against the other."

But what a joke! No one will do any such thing! In the meantime, you've been outplayed in West Berlin, you've been very skillfully outplayed in Portugal. In the Near East you're being outplayed. One shouldn't have such a low opinion of one's opponent.

But even if this chess player were able to win the game on the board, carried away by the play, he forgets to raise his eyes; he forgets to look at his opponent and doesn't see that he has the eyes of a killer. And if the opponent cannot win the game on the board, he will take a club from behind his back and shatter the skull of the other chess player, winning the game in that way. This very calculating chess player also forgets to raise his eyes to the barometer. It has fallen. He doesn't see that it's already dark outside, that the clouds are coming on,

that a hurricane is rising. That's what it means to be too self-confident in chess.

And these two crises: the political crisis of today's world and the outcoming spiritual crisis, are occurring at the same time. It is our generation that will have to confront them. The leadership of your country, which is entering the third century of your national existence, will perhaps have to bear a burden greater than ever before seen in the whole of American his-

tory. Your leaders during this time (which is so near) will need profound intuition, spiritual foresight, high qualities of mind and soul. May God grant that in those times you will have at the helm in this country personalities as great as those who created your country.

In recent weeks, when traveling through various of your states, I of course felt that these two cities in which I have made my addresses—Washington and New York—arc far from reflecting your country as a whole, with its tremendous diversity and all of its possibilities. Just as old St. Petersburg did not express the whole of Russia, just as Moscow does not reflect the Soviet Union of today, and just as Paris more than once abused its claim to represent all of France.

I was profoundly impressed by my contact with those places which are, and have always been, the wellsprings of your history. It really makes one think: the men who created your country never lost sight of their moral bearings. They did not laugh at the absolute nature of the concepts of "good" and "evil." Their practical policies were checked against that moral compass. And how surprising it is that a practical policy computed on the basis of moral considerations turned out to be the most far-sighted and the most salutary. Even though in the very short term one wonders: why all this morality? Let's just get on with the immediate job.

The leaders who created your country never said

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"Let slavery reign right next door, and we will enter into detente with this slavery, so long as it doesn't come over to us."

I have traveled enough through the different states of your country and in its various regions to have become convinced that the American heartland is healthy, strong and broad in its outlook. I am convinced that these healthy, generous and inexhaustible forces will help you to elevate the whole style of your government leadership.

Yet, when one travels in your country and sees your free and independent life, all the dangers which I talked about today indeed seem imaginary. I've come and talked to people, and I see this is so. In your wide open spaces even I get a little infected. The dangers seem a little imaginary. On this continent it is hard to believe all the things which are happening in the world. But, gentlemen, this carefree life cannot continue in your country or in ours. The fates of our two countries are going to be extremely difficult, and it is better to prepare for this beforehand.

I understand, I sense that you're tired. You're fatigued, but you have not yet really suffered the terrible trials of the 20th century which have rained down on the old continent. You're tired, but not as tired as we are, lying crushed to the ground for 60 years. You're tired, but the Communists who want to destroy your system aren't tired; they're not tired at all.

I understand that this is the most unfavorable time to come to this country and to make this sort of address. But if it were a favorable time, if it were an appropriate time, there wouldn't be any need for me to speak.

Precisely because this is the worst possible time I have come to tell you about our experience over there. If our experience in the East could flow over to you by itself, it wouldn't be necessary for me to assume the unpleasant and inappropriate role of orator. I am a writer, and I would prefer to sit and write books.

But a concentration of world evil, of hatred for humanity is taking place and it is fully determined to destroy your society. Must you wait until it comes with a crowbar to break through your borders, until the young men of America have to fall defending the borders of their continent?

After my first address, as always, there were some superficial comments in the newspapers which did not really get to the essence. One of them was as follows: that I came here with an appeal to the United States to liberate us from communism. Anyone who has at all followed what I have said and written these many years, first in the Soviet Union and now in the West, will know that I've always said the exact opposite. I have appealed to my own countrymen—those whose courage has failed at difficult moments, and who have looked imploringly to the West—and

For it: we must stand on our own feet. The West has enough troubles without us. If they support us, many thanks. But to ask for it, to appeal for it—never."

I said the last time that two processes are occurring in the world today. One is a process of spiritual liberation in the USSR and in the other Communist countries. The second is the assistance being extended by the West to the Communist rulers, a process of concessions, of detente, of yielding whole countries. And I only said: "Remember, we have to pull ourselves up—but if you defend us you also defend your own future."

We are slaves there from birth. We are born slaves. I'm not young anymore, and I myself was born a slave; this is even more true for those who are younger. We are slaves, but we are striving for freedom. You, however, were born free. If so, then why do you help our slave owners?

In my last address I only requested one thing and I make the same request now: when they bury us in the ground alive—I compared the forthcoming European agreement with a mass grave for all the conntries of East Europe—as you know, this is a very unpleasant sensation: your mouth gets filled with earth while you're still alive—please do not send them shovels. Please do not send them the most modern earth-moving equipment.

rectly you are helping them to rearm. You're helping the Soviet police state.

To get an idea how clumsy the Soviet economy is, I'll give you the following example: What kind of country is it, what kind of great power, which has tremendous military potential, which conquers outer space, but has nothing to sell? All heavy equipment, all complex and delicate technology, is purchased abroad. Then it must be an agricultural country? Not at all; it also has to buy grain. What then can we sell? What kind of economy is it? Can we sell anything which has been created by socialism? No! Only that which God put in the Russian ground at the very beginning, that's what we squander and that's what we sell. What we got from God in the first place. And when all this will come to an end, there won't be anything left to sell.

The president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, has quite rightly said that it is not loans which the United States gives to the Soviet Union, it is economic assistance. It's foreign aid, It's given at a level of interest that is lower than what American workers can get for their home mortgages. That is direct aid

But this is not all. I said in my last address and would like to repeat it again, that we have to look at every event from the other point of view—from the point of view of the Soviet Union. Our country is taking your assistance, but in the schools they're

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Thus, all I ask you is that as long as this Soviet economy is so proud, so flourishing, and yours is so rotten and so moribund—stop helping it then. Where has a cripple ever helped along an athlete?

Another distortion appeared in your press with

But can the free and varied western system follow this policy? Can all the western countries together say: "It's true, let us stop competing. Let us stop playing up to them. Let us stop elbowing each other and clamoring, 'Me, me, let me have a concession, please give it to me'..." It's very possible that this could not be done. And if this sort of unity cannot be achieved in the West, if, in the frenzied competition of one company with another they will continue to rush in loans and advanced technology, if they will present earth-moving equipment to our grave-diggers, then I'm afraid that Lenin will turn out to have been right. He had said: "The bourgeoisie will sell us rope, and then we shall let the bourgeoisie hang itself."

In ancient times trade would begin with the meeting of two persons who had come out of a forest or had arrived by sea. They would show one another that they didn't have a stone or club in their hand, that they were unarmed. And as a sign of this each extended an open hand. This was the beginning of the hand clasp. Today's word "detente" literally means a reduction in the tension of a taut rope. (What an ominous coincidence: A rope again!)

So "detente" means a relaxation of tension. But I would say that what we need is rather this image of

the open hand. Relations between the Soviet Union and the United States of America should be such that there would be no deceit in the question of armaments, that there would be no concentration camps, no psychiatric wards for healthy people. Relations should be such that the throats of our women would no longer be constricted with tears, that there would be an end to the incessant ideological warfare waged against you, and that an address such as mine today would in no way be an exception.

People would simply be able to come to you from the Soviet Union, from China, and from other Communist countries and would be able to talk freely, without any tutoring from the KGB, without any special approval from the Central Committee of the Party. Rather, they would simply come of their own accord and would tell you the truth about what is going on in these countries.

This would be, I say, a period in which we would be able to present "open hands" to each other.

#### Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn left Russia on Feb. 12, 1974, when he was arrested, stripped of his Soviet citizenship and exiled with his wife and children. He settled in Zurich and visited the U.S. for the first time in mid-1975.

His exile started four years after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, which the Soviet government denied him permission to accept in person.

Born Dec. 11, 1918, Solzhenitsyn was raised by his mother after his father was killed in World War I. He studied science at Rostov University—but his literary bent showed even then in a correspondence course he took from 1939 to 1941 from Moscow's Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature.

When World War II broke out, he became first a wagon train driver and then commander, rising to the rank of captain. Highly decorated, he remained in that position until February 1945, when he was arrested for "disrespectful remarks" about Stalin in a letter he wrote.

Solzhenitsyn spent the next eight years in several Siberian labor camps. In one such camp in Kazakhstan, he developed cancer. Upon completion of his eight-year sentence, he was exiled to southern Kazakhstan, where he spent three years teaching mathematics and physics, and writing secretly. But

by the end of 1953, on the verge of death from cancer, he was allowed to go to Tashkent for treatment.

On April 18, 1956, Solzhenitsyn was released from prison, "rehabilitated," and returned to his profession as a physics teacher. He continued writing secretly, describing his experience in the prison eamps. Then, in 1962 he was permitted to publish his first book, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch."

His book "For the Good of the Cause" was excerpted in Soviet literary journals, but it and his earlier work came under attack as the Khrushchev "thaw" ended and he was expelled by the Soviet Writers Union. He was free to teach physics, but he did not exist as a writer.

But he continued to write. His later works—
"Cancer Ward." "First Circle," "August 1914,"
"Candle in the Wind," "We Never Make Mistakes" and "The Gulag Archipelago"—were published and widely acclaimed abroad, while seen in Russia only in typescript form.

Although he was denied permission to accept the Nobel Prize in person when it was awarded to him in October 1970, his acceptance text was released by the Nobel Foundation in August 1972.

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# AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS

815

GEORGE MEANY President

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LANE KIRKLAND Secretary-Treasurer

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