Sakharov: A Dissident Warns Against D

Ever since the Kremlin exiled Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the West 17 months ago, Russia's leading resident political dissenter has been Andrei Sakharov. A world-renowned nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the development of the U.S.S.R.'s hydrogen bomb, Sakharov, during the past decade, has emerged as a leader of the human rights movement within the Soviet Union.

Last month Sakharov completed a 20,000-word essay titled My Country and the World, which will be published in the U.S. by Alfred A. Knopf later this year. In his introduction, Sakharov describes this new book as an updating of his widely publicized 1968 manifesto, Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, in which he called for rapprochement between the Communist and capitalist systems. The physicist writes that he decided to undertake the new project largely as a result of a discussion about detente in his Moscow apartment last November with New York's Conservative Senator James Buckley ("the first U.S. Government figure who considered it possible to meet with me"). In sending the typescript of the essay to the West, Sakharov asked that excerpts be published before the opening of the European Security Conference in Helsinki this week.

Describing himself as "a confirmed evolutionist and reformist," Sakharov begins his essay with a stinging, detailed indictment of Soviet domestic and foreign policy. He decries average living and working conditions, the "lumpenization" of the Russian proletariat ("Per capita consumption of alcohol is twice what it was in tsarist Russia"). He also chastises the government for its "Russification" of ethnic minorities in the U.S.S.R., its support of dictatorships in Libya and Uganda, and genocide against the Kurds in Iraq. In a highly technical chapter on disarmament, he draws upon his own scientific expertise to discuss the problems posed by "heavy" missiles, "dirty" weapons and "throwweight."

My Country and the World concludes with a 12-point program for reform of the Soviet system. Among his recommendations: the institution of a multiparty system, a general amnesty for political and religious prisoners, the legalization of labor strikes, and open borders. His sweeping criticism of U.S. policy shows that he does not really know the U.S. very well; he speaks simplistically of the American "working class" and suggests that every critic of Senator Henry Jackson's anti-detente stand is politically motivated. But Sakharov's is nonetheless a compelling voice, more measured than Solzhenitsyn's. Excerpts from the essay, as edited by TIME'S State Department Correspondent Strobe Talbott:

THE MILITARIZED SOCIETY

Contemporary Soviet society is based on "state capitalism," a total party-government monopoly over economy, culture, ideology and the other basic spheres of life. In periods of crisis, such a system engenders rule by terror; in quieter periods, it engenders the dominance of bungling bureaucracy, mediocrity, apathy and dissipation among the people, and the permanent militarization of our economy. The last is burdensome for our own population and dangerous for the whole world. The state has at its disposal huge sums, thanks to artificially depressed wages, and a large portion of this money goes toward gigantic military expenditures. The secretive and totalitarian nature of the system has important consequences for foreign policy. Ours is government behind closed doors. Vast, unaccounted-for funds go toward covert and overt expansion in all parts of the world.

Much of our financial resources provide, a high standard of living for the privileged strata of society that [Yugoslav Author Milovan] Djilas called "the new class." Every day radio loudspeakers tell the ordinary Soviet citizen that he is the master of his country, but he knows perfectly well that the real masters are "the bosses," who, morning and evening, are whisked along quiet, closed off streets in their armored limousines.

The diversion of resources to the military and the party-bureaucratic elite has had a devastating effect on art and the humanities and an indirect, though no less destructive impact on science as well. It is no accident that the great scientific discoveries of recent years--in quantum mechanics, antibiotics, transistors, computers, the Green Revolution in agriculture--have all occurred outside our country. [Soviet] achievements in the first decade of the Space Age constitute an exception that does not disprove the general law. And certain successes in military technology are the result of a monstrous concentration of resources in that sphere.

There is no question that the economic system of our country is tremendously weighted down by military expenditures and that it is in the interests of the majority of the population to reallocate millions of rubles to peaceful purposes. It is also very significant that thanks to the continued supermilitarization, it is precisely the U.S.S.R. which is necessitating high military expenditures throughout the world. But any genuine, fundamental change in our country's militarized economy is impossible without sweeping political reforms.

INJUSTICE AND REPRESSION

The world press is full of articles about inflation, the fuel crisis, growing unemployment. But I would like to say: you [in the West] do not have your backs to the wall; even if you reduced your standard of living to one-fifth of what it is, you would still be better off than people in the world's wealthiest socialist country.

Workers in the Soviet Union have the right neither to strike nor to appeal to higher authorities. For years, fishermen in the Murmansk area have been ruthlessly shortchanged on their pay and forced to pay bribes for permits to put out to sea. They have been fighting back, but so far the only result is that many of the protesters have been fired or confined to psychiatric hospitals. This year Easter Sunday was declared a working day. No one dared protest except two priests, one of whom was arrested.

The average apartment building in this country resembles a low-income housing project in America, though ours has fewer conveniences and is more crowded. In most parts of the country, one has to stand in line for hours to get meat, and even then it is sometimes not fit for a dog.

There are a million and a half prisoners [in Soviet jails and camps]; victims of a corrupt judicial machinery that is run by state authorities and local "mafias," they did not bribe the right officials at the right time. There are as many as 10,000 political prisoners in the U.S.S.R. and even more people persecuted for their religious convictions. At the same time, only a small number of people, mostly concentrated in two or three cities, make up what may be called "the democratic movement." But their very existence within the monolith of Soviet society is of great ethical significance.

I am convinced that the defense of Soviet dissenters--like my good friends Andrei Tverdokhlebov and Sergei Kovalyov--* is not only a moral duty for honest people around the world but is also a direct defense of human rights in their own nations.

The salvation of our country--in its interdependence with all the rest of the world--is impossible without saving all of humanity. We must have democratic reforms affecting all aspects of life. The future of the country lies in an orientation toward progress, science and a personal and social moral regeneration. But we must not call upon our people, our youth, to make sacrifices. As for victims, we have already had more than enough of them.

THE JACKSON AMENDMENT

The freedom to emigrate is guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 13) and has been both confirmed by the U.N. General Assembly in 1968 and ratified by the Soviet government in 1973. In December 1974 the U.S. Congress passed a trade bill with an amendment that made the granting of credits and most-favored-nation status to the U.S.S.R. contingent upon the fulfillment of guarantees concerning the right to emigrate.

American businessmen, who had counted on reaping huge profits from trade with the U.S.S.R. (chiefly, let it be noted, at the expense of the American taxpayer), were disillusioned. The authors of the amendment to the trade bill, especially Senator [Henry] Jackson, were sharply, and in my view unjustly, criticized. Unfortunately, President Ford joined these critics. Of course, not all Americans condemn the amendment. I was particularly glad to hear on the radio a report of a speech by George Meany which reflected the viewpoint of the U.S. working class--and a better perspective on the problem than that of the businessmen and the political enemies of Senator Jackson.

I feel that the Congress, in passing the amendment, performed an act of historic significance in the best democratic and humanitarian traditions of the American people. I reject the argument that the amendment constitutes intervention in the internal affairs of the U.S.S.R., which has ratified the right to emigrate. The freedom to leave is important to those citizens who remain behind since [the option to emigrate] serves as a guarantee of their civil rights.

A delegation from the U.S. Senate was in Moscow from June 29 to July 2 [led by Hubert Humphrey and Hugh Scott]. Reportedly, some of the Senators proposed a compromise whereby the Soviet leaders would promise to raise the emigration quota in exchange for the repeal of the [Jackson] amendment. This deal would be an inadmissible retreat on the part of Congress; indeed, it would be a capitulation because the right to emigrate has to be backed up by law if it is not going to be violated.

The freedom to choose one's country of residence has become a touchstone for the entire process of detente. Therefore I trust that the defense of that freedom will become a leitmotiv of the European Security Conference. It is being decided right now whether detente is to be a comprehensive, profound process of historic significance involving the democratization and opening up of Soviet society, or whether it is to be a cynical political game serving only the short-term political and economic interests of some individuals, a plot behind the backs of the people at large.

Surely the West can bring itself to make some small, temporary sacrifices by putting pressure on the two Achilles' heels of the Soviet system--its pocketbook and its prestige. I hope that all Western European countries and international humanitarian organizations (not just Jewish ones) will close ranks and offer a common front to Soviet countermaneuvers on this issue.

ARMS CONTROL

The problems of disarmament cannot be separated from other basic goals of detente--those of overcoming the secretiveness and weakening the totalitarian nature of Soviet society. The Nixon-Brezhnev agreement [of 1972] limiting antimissile defenses and the Ford-Brezhnev agreement [of 1974] limiting offensive strategic weapons are important but in my opinion incomplete and even dangerous.

The Soviet side has rigidly resisted verification. There are many reasons: the traditional, and today senseless, spy-mania, the tendency to bluff and the desire to gain the advantage of surprise. The West must insist, with great firmness, on a better system of verification, including on-site inspection.

The fact that the Vladivostok agreement [signed by Ford and Brezhnev last year] seemed to legitimize multiple, independently targetable warheads [MIRVs] is also alarming. MIRVS, which are a new fashion in military rocketry, open up wider possibilities for the arms race and increase the danger of a so-called unstable situation, in which it would be strategically advantageous for either side to deliver a pre-emptive nuclear strike. In the language of human beings, that would mean committing the greatest crime in history.

Thermonuclear warfare is a dark reality of modern tunes. It has become part of our lives, like Auschwitz, the Gulag [the Soviet prison camp system] and famine. Perhaps I feel this more acutely than many people, since for more than 20 years I was in close touch with that fantastically terrifying world. Although for the past seven years I have not had clearance to do secret work, the psychological experience of those tense two decades is still alive in me.

I remember that in November 1955 important tests were being carried out on a thermonuclear weapon. A young soldier was killed when he was blown into a trench, and a two-year-old girl died when a girder collapsed in a bomb shelter. One evening after a test, at a banquet for some officials and scientists, I proposed a toast that "our handiwork would never be used against cities." The director of the project, a high-ranking general, felt obliged to respond that the scientist's job is to improve a weapon, and how it is used is none of his business. But I believed then, as I do now, that no one can shed his share of responsibility.

WESTERN LIBERALS

My attitude toward the foreign intelligentsia is a mixture of fondness, hope and admiration bordering on envy. But there is one disturbing trait common to many Western intellectuals. I call it "leftist-liberal faddishness." Leftist intellectuals entertain illusions about the nature of Soviet society and urge their governments to grant "gifts" in the name of detente and to make unilateral concessions, especially in disarmament. They are often ready to support and defend various extremist and even terrorist groups in their own countries and throughout the world.

The dangers of divisiveness and myopic selfishness in the West have already played a fatal role in the tragedy of Viet Nam and Cambodia. The U.S. should have acted more resolutely and consistently by putting pressure on the U.S.S.R. to prevent deliveries of arms to North Viet Nam. But a large share of the blame must be borne by Western European countries, Japan and nations of the Third World that did nothing to help their ally oppose the totalitarian threat in Southeast Asia. I attach great importance to the solidarity of the West. I want to believe that the terrible lesson of Indochina will not be lost on the world --and on America. That lesson is not isolationism, but a generous and courageous concern for the fate of all human beings. One should expect as much from the land of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Marshall.

*Until their recent arrests, Physicist Tverdokhlebov (TIME, April 14) and Biologist Kovalyov were leaders of the Soviet chapter of Amnesty International, a human rights organization based in London. Sakharov refers to their-imprisonment repeatedly in this essay.

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