Dual Messages to Washington

In Moscow one night last week, a well-known Russian dissident, Poet Alexander Ginzburg, strolled to a public phone booth near his apartment; his own telephone had been cut off by the KGB. Before he was able to complete his call, however, Ginzburg was seized by several secret policemen and hauled away to a prison in the city of Kaluga, 90 miles southwest of Moscow.

The harassment of Ginzburg was yet another move in the KGB's longstanding and meticulously prepared drive to suppress the self-appointed Helsinki Monitoring Committee, of which Ginzburg was a member. The committee has been an acute embarrassment to the Kremlin. The group watches over Soviet compliance with the 1975 Helsinki agreement's provisions on human rights, often reports to the Western press on instances of violations and, sometimes, of acquiescence. Only last month the KGB had made preparatory raids at the homes of Ginzburg and two of his associates, seizing 5,000 rubles (about $6,650 at the official exchange rate) and --Ginzburg charged--planting some foreign currency behind a toilet.

Ginzburg, 40, has been the bane of the KGB since 1960, when he was arrested for editing a typescript magazine of "unorthodox" poetry. After gathering data for a book on the 1966 trial of Writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, he served a five-year jail term for circulating "anti-Soviet propaganda." Lately Ginzburg has administered a $365,000 fund set up by Nobel Prizewinner Alexander Solzhenitsyn to assist political prisoners and their families. Ginzburg's distribution of some of this money to 630 prisoners and their dependents last year may have been the pretext for his arrest.

Within a few hours of the Ginzburg incident, a resident American correspondent was ordered expelled from the U.S.S.R. He was the A.P.'s George Krimsky, who has been one of the most active of Western newsmen in covering the activities of the Helsinki Eleven and other dissidents. The KGB claimed that Krimsky was a CIA spy and, moreover, that he had been dealing illegally in foreign currency. The former charge was clearly preposterous and the latter ridiculous, since the newsman had merely paid his maid in money "coupons" redeemable in special stores catering to foreigners--a widespread practice in Moscow's foreign community.

The Soviets' crackdown seemed calculated to embarrass the Carter Administration, which only a week earlier had scolded the Kremlin for violations of human rights. "Perhaps the Soviets are sending Washington a dual message," mused a Western diplomat in Moscow. "Maybe they are saying 'Let's go ahead on matters of war and peace, like SALT, but don't mess around with our internal affairs.' "

Jewish Conspiracy. Moscow's actions were certainly disquieting for the new Administration. The State Department's warning to the Soviet Union cautioned against carrying out an official threat to prosecute Andrei Sakharov, the dissident leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Although Cyrus Vance and Jimmy Carter both waffled somewhat on the exact wording of their commitment to take a moral stand in foreign policy, both had ultimately backed State's critique of the Soviets' behavior. In his fireside chat last week, Carter repeated his concern for human rights, stressing, though, that this would not be allowed to upset "our efforts toward friendly relations with other countries."

There was no waffling, however, in the Administration's retaliation against the Krimsky expulsion. Deploring the "step backward from the objective of Helsinki," the State Department gave Washington-based Tass Correspondent Vladimir Alekseyev a week to pack his bags and get out of the U.S.

Earlier in the week, as a sign of the Kremlin's displeasure with Carter's human rights stand, Pravda pointed to a plenitude of starving children, black ghettos, bugging and police surveillance in the U.S. and to other "brazen violations of the rights of American citizens." At the same time, the Soviets sought to blame Washington's criticisms on a Jewish conspiracy. Writing for Tass, Political Commentator Yuri Kornikov charged that "Zionist organizations" in the U.S. were more and more a major source of "anti-Soviet noise about the question of civil liberties in the U.S.S.R."

Among Russian dissidents in Moscow, jubilation over the Carter Administration's statements was tempered by Ginzburg's arrest. Still, the activists were grateful for the U.S. support of Sakharov, whom most dissidents regard as "the captain of our ship." Upon hearing of the State Department admonitions on foreign short-wave radio, "we nearly cried with relief," Dissident Anatoli Shcharansky told TIME Moscow Bureau Chief Marsh Clark last week. "It was what we were waiting for. We think it has saved Sakharov; we're convinced they won't touch him now."

Pavel Litvinov, a thoughtful former dissident who emigrated to the U.S., is optimistic about the Carter stand on human rights because it is balanced by vigorous U.S. proposals on strategic arms control. "The Soviet government will try to show that Washington's attitude is counterproductive and respond harshly, but they will learn to live with it. They want a SALT agreement too. The new American emphasis on human rights may not lead to internal liberalization but it is definitely a containing factor in the long run." In the meantime, Litvinov, who was imprisoned and exiled for his part in the demonstrations against the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, believes that political prisoners in the U.S.S.R. are immeasurably heartened. "Already they must be tapping out the Carter Administration's message on the walls of their cells, passing it along to others."

Far more encouraging was the response from Prague last week to the State Department's support of the Czechoslovak dissidents. After threatening hundreds of critics and arresting three prominent signers of Charter 77, the petition calling for observance of the human rights section of the Helsinki accords (TIME, Jan. 24), the Czechoslovak government suddenly altered its repressive course. Many analysts thought party leaders had become convinced that the damage done to Czechoslovakia's image abroad had finally outweighed the advantages of successfully extinguishing dissidence at home.

In this case, the moderating effect of the Carter Administration's critique was amplified by a chorus of other voices. Not since the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had so much obloquy fallen on a Communist government. Among those who denounced the Czechoslovak campaign against the 500 signers of Charter 77 were the British Foreign Office, the French, Spanish, Italian and British Communist Parties, the European Economic Community and the leaders of the Socialist International. Norway called off the signing of a new trade treaty with Czechoslovakia, and Peking's People's Daily lauded the Czechoslovak people's "unflinching battle for independence." Groups of dissidents in Poland and Hungary expressed solidarity with the beleaguered chartists, and from the Soviet Union came a protest by the irrepressible Sakharov

Backing down, Foreign Minister Bohuslav Chnoupek lamely announced that Prague was of course observing the Helsinki agreement and would continue to do so. Radio, television and the press abruptly ended their denunciations of the chartists. Explaining the turnabout, the party newspaper Rude Pravo declared that the nation had been temporarily "distracted" by a mere handful of "reactionaries" but that the time had come again to go on to "further successes in the building of socialism."

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