A Letter to Anatoly Kuznetsov

WHILE Soviet authorities threatened Alexander Solzhenitsyn with exile, Anatoly Kuznetsov, a voluntary defector to Britain, was facing criticism from fellow authors in the West. In the U.S., Playwright Lillian Hellman has accused Kuznetsov of cowardice for waiting until he was abroad before protesting against Soviet censorship. Novelist William Styron has reproached Kuznetsov for not remaining silent after his defection. Kuznetsov's own publisher in Britain observed that "decisions taken in states of emotion are generally the wrong ones." Kuznetsov replied to one of his critics that his old apartment in the city of Tula was now vacant. "Let him go and try it," he said.

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Kuznetsov's detractors, enjoying the safety of New York and London, are scarcely in a position to demand that a Soviet writer risk his liberty, and perhaps his life, by making open protests on Soviet soil.

A number of Russian writers have vilified Kuznetsov--most of them party hacks. Last week a voice was raised in the Soviet Union which, for the first time, had the ring of legitimate reproach. Andrei Amalric, 31, is no hack, but one of Russia's most promising young writers. In an open letter to Kuznetsov, Amalric criticized his fellow writer not for defecting but for paying the price of being a KGB informer in order to obtain permission to go abroad. By his own admission, Kuznetsov told the KGB "a pure fiction"--that Evgeny Evtushenko, Vasily Aksyonov and other liberal Russian writers were planning to publish "a frightful underground magazine." Though full of remorse for his denunciation, which could have cost the innocent writers seven years of hard labor, Kuznetsov justified it on the ground that the Soviet system requires writers to work with the KGB in order to publish, let alone go abroad. Excerpts from Amalric's letter to Kuznetsov:

"You speak of freedom, but only of external freedom. You say nothing of inner freedom. To have to struggle against the KGB is a terrible thing, but what, in effect, threatened a Russian writer if, before his first visit abroad, he had refused to collaborate with the KGB? The writer would not have gone abroad but he would have remained an honest man. In refusing to collaborate, he would have lost a part, perhaps a considerable part, of his external freedom, but would have achieved greater inner freedom.

"In 1961, I was courteously invited by the KGB to write a general account of the mood of the intelligentsia, and I equally courteously refused, upon which the matter ended. In 1963, I was taken by night to the Lubyanka prison and ordered to write a report against an American diplomat to the effect that he had subjected me, and other Soviet citizens, to malicious ideological brainwashing. I again refused, although they then threatened me with criminal proceedings. In 1965, I refused outright to talk with them, which cost me exile in Siberia. That is why I think I have the personal right to reproach you.

"It seems to me that no oppression can be effective without those who are willing to submit to it. It sometimes appears to me that the Soviet 'creative intelligentsia'--that is, people accustomed to thinking one thing, saying another, and doing a third--is, as a whole, an even more unpleasant phenomenon than the regime that formed it.

"Gradually, however, we are beginning to find strength within ourselves, and this means that sooner or later much can change. Judging by his books, it is impossible to say that Solzhenitsyn is 'persecuted and tormented.' He gives the impression of a man capable of standing up against persecution. He has already once preserved his inner freedom in prison, and will evidently do so again if he is once more put in jail. From this we can all derive strength.

"I warmly and sincerely congratulate you on being now in a free country, and I hope this will be an important step for you on your path to inner freedom."

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Amalric's entire argument is in line with the very Russian attitude that the best man is the one who stands and fights --or suffers. Two of his books, both critical of Soviet policy--Involuntary Journey to Siberia and Can the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?--will be published in the West next year, but without the approval of official Soviet organizations. As a result, Amalric has been denied his hard-currency royalties. That, in turn, prompted him last week to send a second open letter to six Western newspapers: "Stalin would have executed me for the fact that my books had been published abroad. His wretched successors only dare to embezzle a part of my money. It only reaffirms my opinion of the degradation and decrepitude of this regime."

Would Amalric go unpunished for such bold talk? Whatever his ultimate fate, it seemed certain that he would retain his "inner freedom."

* A dated but still pertinent case in point is Lillian Hellman, who signed a statement in the Daily Worker supporting the 1938 Great Purge trials in Moscow. The trials brought about the execution of Russia's greatest writers, together with millions of other innocent Soviet people.

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