Blueprint for a Better System

The Soviets have traditionally found it difficult to talk realistically about the faults and failings of their society. In the past two years, a courageous new voice has arisen to question the official pretensions of infallibility. It belongs to Physicist Andrei Sakharov, 48, a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, whose own views are believed to mirror those of many Russian intellectuals. In 1968 Sakharov wrote a 10,000-word essay, studied with great interest in the West, that called for a rapprochement of the capitalist and Communist systems and for greater personal freedoms in the Soviet Union.

Last week a new Sakharov essay was circulating in Moscow.* In it, Sakharov warned that unless the Soviet Union changes drastically, it will be unable to solve its grave problems. Citing such signs as a rise in alcoholism and drug addiction as symptoms of Russia's malaise, Sakharov wrote: "At the end of the '50s our country was first in the world to have launched the Sputnik and send a man into space. At the end of the '60s we have lost our leadership, and the Americans have become the first to land on the moon. Now, at the start of the '70s, we see that having failed to catch up with America, we lag further and further behind."

Essential Freedom. Does this prove the superiority of capitalism over socialism? "Of course not," declared Sakharov. The problem, as he sees it, is that the Soviet system is still laboring under autocratic practices left over from the Stalin era. Freedom of ideas and information, he declared, are essential to the growth and success of a modern economy. He criticized the present regime's handling of intellectual dissenters, who seek to reform the Communist system from within. As Sakharov asked in the essay: "How can one justify the detention in prisons, camps and psychiatric clinics of persons who, although in opposition, act entirely within the framework of law?"

As a remedy for the country's ills, Sakharov proposed a 14-point program of gradual democratization. It would begin with such measures as the accessibility of information about the state, the sale of foreign books and periodicals, and the creation of a public opinion institute. Eventually his program would lead to amnesty for political prisoners, reform of legal and educational systems, and direct elections offering a choice of candidates for party and state posts. Sakharov warned that unless the Soviet Union moves in this direction, it will decline to a second-class power. "Tightening the screws," he wrote, will not solve any problems, "but on the contrary will lead the country into a tragic dead end."

-It was also signed by two lesser-known scholars, Historian Roy Medvedev and Physicist Valentin Turchin.

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