An Exile's Plea

While thousands of Jews struggle for the right to leave the Soviet Union, one celebrated Russian Jew was heard last week pleading for the right to return. He was Poet Joseph Brodsky, who was expelled from the U.S.S.R. last month (TIME, June 19), and is presently in Ann Arbor, Mich. In a letter to Leonid Brezhnev that was leaked by the Soviet secret police last week, Brodsky begged the party chief "for an opportunity to continue to exist in Russian literature and on Russian soil."

Written on the eve of his departure from Moscow, Brodsky's letter expressed bitterness at having to leave his country. Although his poetry has consistently been banned in Russia and he served 18 months of forced labor in 1964-65 as a "parasite," Brodsky expressed a measure of gratitude: "I owe everything I have in the world to Russia. Everything bad that I have suffered has been more than compensated for by the good, and I have never felt hurt by my homeland."

In a lyrical digression, Brodsky added: "Poets always return, in the flesh or on paper. I want to believe that both are possible. Mankind has left behind the age when the strong were the right, for there are too many in the world who are weak. The only truth is kindness. Nobody has ever benefited from cruelty, wrath and hatred ... If my people do not need my body, my soul may still be useful."

Reaction in Moscow was mixed --and often heated. Some intellectuals felt that Brodsky's letter strikingly underlined the contrast between the harshness of official policy and the moderate, reasoning attitude of some Soviet writers. But many were angry. Said one dissident: "One simply doesn't write such letters to people like Brezhnev." Others contended that "the tone of supplication" in Brodsky's appeal was "entirely inappropriate" in view of the rigorous Soviet campaign against Jews who have applied to leave for Israel. Stung by such criticism, Brodsky replied: "I am not begging Brezhnev for anything. My letter was simply a way of saying goodbye to him." --

At the same time, one deeply committed activist in the cause of Soviet Jews--and of freedom in Russia--was being subjected to increasingly ominous pressure. Physicist Valery Chalidze, a leader of the unauthorized "Human Rights Committee," has twice been summoned by the KGB and threatened with "repression"--secret-police jargon for imprisonment. This action, in the wake of the arrest of Dissident Pyotr Yakir (TIME, July 3), suggested that the next target would be the leading member of the committee, the world-famous nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov.

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