A Voice Silenced, A Voice Raised

"When I was writing my books," Andrei Amalric said last February, "I realized I was risking prison." Risk became reality last week. In Sverdlovsk, 850 miles from Amalric's home in Moscow and well out of bounds to nosy Western correspondents, the Russian social critic, 32, was sentenced to three years at hard labor for having "distributed fabrications defaming the Soviet state." Among his "fabrications" were two books published only in the West: Involuntary Journey to Siberia, an account of the 18 months he served in exile, and Will The Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?, a grim, apocalyptic view of Russia's future (TIME, Dec. 19).

Even though the trial was deliberately held far away in the Ural Mountains, details leaked out. It was learned that Amalric, frail and hollow-cheeked, had pleaded not guilty and declared the trial illegal in a one-hour statement to the court. Amalric's friends fear he may not survive his harsh sentence, for he suffers from heart disease. His wife Giselle, in a statement given to Western correspondents, said: "I know that my husband is strong in spirit and that neither the indictment nor the sentence can break him spiritually. But I also know how weak his health is. I fear for him."

Suffering for Truth. On the day of Amalric's trial in Sverdlovsk, the voice of another brave and gifted Russian was heard in Moscow. In a 1,000-word open letter, the world-renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich asked: "Is it really possible that the past has not taught us to be careful not to crush talented peopleor anyone for that matter?" Rostropovich continued: "Every man should have the right to think and express himself independently, and without fear, about the things he knows, believes personally and has lived through." The cellist was speaking of his beleaguered friend Novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whom he has been harboring in his dacha near Moscow while a vitriolic press campaign rages against him.

Evidently fearing that Solzhenitsyn will be prevented from journeying to Stockholm on Dec. 10 to accept his Nobel Prize, Rostropovich ridiculed the Kremlin's wildly fluctuating attitudes toward the award. He noted that when it was given to Boris Pasternak in 1958, and to Solzhenitsyn this year, it was regarded as "a dirty political game." But when Stalinist Novelist Mikhail Sholokhov was honored in 1965, it was seen as "a just recognition of the world significance of our literature." About Solzhenitsyn's banned novels, Rostropovich said: "He has suffered for the right to write the truth as he sees it."

Rostropovich's letter, now circulating from hand to hand in Russia, was addressed to four major Soviet newspapers. All refused to print it. By writing and distributing it, in fact, the cellist risked being forbidden to perform.

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