A Dissident Disagrees

Exiled Soviet Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been sharply challenged by one of his admirers in the U.S.S.R. The critic is Physicist Andrei Sakharov, spokesman for Russia's "human-rights movement." In a 3,500-word statement issued last week, Sakharov sorrowfully takes issue with many of the views that the Nobel-prizewinning writer outlined in his apocalyptic "Letter to Soviet Leaders" (TIME, March 11), which summed up his program for the future of Russia. Reflecting dismay among Soviet dissidents over Solzhenitsyn's conservative manifesto, Sakharov strongly disagrees with the writer's "utopian and potentially dangerous proposals."

Sakharov takes exception to Solzhenitsyn's emphasis on the suffering of the Russian people, as distinguished from other Soviet nationalities that have been victimized by the Kremlin. As a Russian, Solzhenitsyn was writing about what he knows best, Sakharov concedes. Yet, the physicist points out ironically, "it has been the special privilege of non-Russians to suffer forcible deportation and genocide, suppression of their national-liberation movements and oppression of their national cultures."

In his letter, Solzhenitsyn asked the Kremlin leaders to abandon Marxist ideology, as the root of all Soviet society's evils. Sakharov believes that this plea shows a misunderstanding of modern power politics. He argues that a dominant characteristic of Soviet society is an indifference to ideology, which is used only as a "fagade" to preserve the power of the leadership and a totalitarian regime. Solzhenitsyn, he contends, makes the same mistake in attributing ideological motives to the leaders of Communist China, whom Sakharov regards as "no less pragmatic than our own." He also thinks that Solzhenitsyn has "overdramatized" the threat of China to Russia, since for some time to come Peking is unlikely to acquire the military capability for a war of aggression against the U.S.S.R.

"One may even suppose," Sakharov writes, "that exaggerating the Chinese menace is one of the elements in the game of the Soviet leaders"--meaning the government's efforts to keep citizens in line out of fear of an invasion. "Overstatement of the Chinese threat," Sakharov argues, "ill serves the cause of democratization and demilitarization, which we and the rest of the world need so badly."

Socialist Messianism. Sakharov criticizes Solzhenitsyn for proposing that Russia follow its own national traditions by turning its back on Western notions of political, industrial and scientific development. "I object," he writes, "to the impulse to fence off our country from the allegedly pernicious influence of the West, from trade and from what is termed 'exchange of people and ideas.' The only reasonable form of isolation for us is to refrain from socialist messianism in other countries, stop our secret but obvious support of trouble on other continents, and cease exporting deadly weapons. Disarmament in particular--so vital if we are to avoid the danger of war--is evidently impossible without parallel action on the part of all the great powers on the basis of treaties and mutual trust. Our country cannot live in economic, scientific and technological isolation. Rapprochement in science and technology is the only real chance of saving mankind."

The scientist reserved his strongest disapproval for Solzhenitsyn's view that Czarist authoritarianism, based on the "moral foundation" of the Russian Orthodox Church, offers a model for Russia today. "1 regard the democratic way as the only beneficial path of development for any country," Sakharov writes. "For me, the spirit of slavery, accompanied by contempt for peoples of different faiths and origins, that prevailed in Russia for centuries was not a sign of national 'well being' but the greatest of misfortunes. Only under conditions of democracy can a national character develop that is capable of living in reasonable fashion in a world of ever-growing complexity."

Although Sakharov praises Solzhenitsyn as "a giant in the struggle for human dignity," he compares some of the writer's ideas with those of Stalin. He points out that the dictator reintroduced a form of "domesticated" religious Orthodoxy during World War II. "This and other similarities with the proposals of Solzhenitsyn are not only astonishing, but should put one on guard. Among a significant number of Russians and among a part of the Soviet leadership, there exists today a mood of Russian nationalism, associated with a fear of becoming dependent upon the West and of democratic change. Falling on such fertile ground, Solzhenitsyn's mistakes may become dangerous."

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