The Other Power

To the Editors:

Your special issue "Inside the U.S.S.R." [June 23] sent chills through my spine: the vastness, the power and the capability of this "other" superpower.

Sister Mary Edith Bohan Omaha

Thank you for the revealing look at the Soviet Union. I tried, oh, how I tried to be objective, but God bless America!

Frank A. Russo Utica, N. Y.

It would have been more appropriate

to call your issue "A Surface Glance at

the U.S.S.R." An "inside" look would

have delved much deeper into such areas

as Soviet prisons, mental institutions, the

party machine, etc. Your pictures don't

show people suffering under oppression.

Eugene Y. Dyatlovitsky

Golden Valley, Minn.

"I smiled when I discovered a country with problems like teen-age vandalism, faulty railway systems and an economy in a serious slump, and a place where talent, brains and hard work do bring opportunities. "But so do status, pull, hustling and ruthlessness." We tend to forget that there are real people in that large country with wants and needs like ours.

Steven-John Kopischke Brooklyn Park, Minn.

"Until such time as the free people of the world acknowledge all the gross atrocities committed by the Communists, we shall continue to be threatened by the terror of nuclear holocaust. Ten times ten thousand of your articles explaining the U.S.S.R. add up to nothing but the glorification of Mother Russia.

Andrew Simock Venice, Fla.

"Strobe Talbott states that one aim of the issue is to "help TIME'S readers better understand the Soviets . . . and therefore fear and hate them less.", Instead of trying to deny or deaden our feelings of fear and hatred toward the aggressors, perhaps we should be thankful that our ability to experience those emotions has been restored. They just might be the only stimuli left to make us realize the importance of rebuilding our nation's military strength and selfesteem.

Lynne Tridico Allentown, Pa.

"Our nation is now suffering from a deflated-ego crisis. Having been No. 1 so long, it's damn hard to recognize the fact that we are no longer the supreme power in the world. We can no longer tell nations around the earth: "If you accept our system, we'll feed, clothe and defend you." The Soviet Union has now achieved that dubious faculty. Only time will judge how they handle this new responsibility.

Rocky Miner Scottsdale, Ariz.

"To me, the presence of the two great powers is a blessing to the inhabitants of this planet. If not for the checks and balances of the East-West blocs, the strength, influence and authority of either would have destroyed the less powerful states.

Bode Odejayi Lagos, Nigeria

"Now that the Soviets are within striking distance of the West's oil lifeline, and the U.S. is incapable of a nonnuclear response, TIME readers may have to get used to a lot more "Russian flavored" issues.

Steven Raeside Tulsa

"I was struck how remarkably like Americans the people look. Where are all the cold, tough looking, anti-American, Orwellian robots I've heard about in school, on the news, in the papers and from friends and neighbors?

Paul Fenimore Palos Verdes, Calif.

"TIME'S excellent portrait of life and politics inside the U.S.S.R. provides a double bill of fare for thought. In spite of differences manufactured by man-made ideologies, we people are after all as the leaves of one branch and the fruits of one tree.

Richard Bennett Brockport, N. Y.

"It appears that the men of the two world superpowers can agree on one philosophy: second-class comradeship for Soviet women and second-class citizenship for American women.

Elaine Seibert Detroit

"Americans suffer both unfounded and well-founded fears of the Soviet Union. Distinguishing between them requires familiarity with the history, cultures and attitudes of the peoples of that country. With greater knowledge about the Soviets it is possible that our mindless dread of the U.S.S.R. could be converted into an educated caution.

James E. Fontenot Abbeville, La.

Let repression in the U.S.S.R. continue. If the Soviets were to institute our type of capitalism, with their hard work and abundant resources, they would become ten times the country we are.

Jerry Sturdivant Bishop, Calif.

" I was surprised that you failed to mention anti-Semitism and its effect on Soviet science. I refer not only to the human tragedy suffered by refusenik scientists, but also to the bulk of Jewish scientists struggling within the system. Among the older generation, some of the world's greatest scientists have been denied influence and honor because they are Jewish. And in the generation striving to get training, many find the better universities closed to them because they'are Jewish.

The growing anti-Semitism bodes ill

for the future vitality of Soviet science.

Barry Simon, Professor of Mathematical

Physics, Princeton University

Princeton, N.J.

"Yuri Sherling, director-founder of the U.S.S.R. Jewish Chamber Musical Theater, was given a monumental task: to create a Jewish theater without the basic tools of music and scripts, to perform in Yiddish for a Jewish population that has not been able to study Jewish culture or languages, and to perform "out of town," where the Jewish population is very small.

In making it difficult for Mr. Sherling to find "space and support," and wondering "what to do about him," the Soviet Union is apparently using this musical theater merely to placate those who demand full cultural rights for Soviet Jews.

Myrna Shinbaum, Associate Director

National Conference on Soviet Jewry

New York City

Muslims have always been considered enemies by Russians. In fact, the tragic fate of the Crimean Tatars was essentially based on racism. Today there is a forced assimilation of nationalities that are of the Muslim faith. For example, they often feel they have to change the endings of their names so that they sound Russian. The name of the muezzin you pictured, Gamid Javadov, is surely not his original name.

Joseph Hrvatin San Francisco

The Russification of the Ukraine is a reality. Russian chauvinism exists in every aspect of life, including the preplanned elimination of Ukrainian culture. You refer to a partnership between the

Russians and Ukrainians, and yet you fail to mention that the vast majority of political prisoners in the concentration camps are Ukrainians.

Roman G. Golash Evanston, III.

In recent months Soviet authorities have arrested key Christian leaders and clamped down on the religious activities of believers. Is this the beginning of a purge reminiscent of Stalin's and Khrushchev's antireligious campaigns? If we in the West remain silent, it could be.

Richard Fager Kettering, Ohio History shows that nothing boosts Christian faith like making it subversive.

Howard A. Snyder Winona Lake, Ind.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Soviet Union will preside at our dismemberment, but it could not be said that it was the cause of our illness.

Patrick E. Freeman Great Falls, Mont.

Contrasting the educational achieve ments of the disciplined Soviet classrooms and our own disorderly morass of public school education makes me wonder if Educator John Dewey does not classify as a supertraitor.

Joan M. Forde Chestnut Hill, Pa.

Your article on energy was marred for me by a single statement: "Not hindered by Jane Fonda-like ecology zeal ots, the Soviet Union is moving ahead on nuclear energy." The antinuclear move ment in our own country is not Jane Fonda. It is a broad-based coalition of people who fear irreparable harm to the environment and the totalitarian mea sures that would certainly have to be taken to ensure security -- if that is pos sible -- in a nuclear world.

David B. Konigsberg New York City The photograph of the young Soviet honor guard shows she is about my age (high school). As I was admiring her determined look and stance, a stark realization hit me. Some day, if war comes, I just might have to kill her or her brother.

Marc Mendoza Normal, III.

TIME'S articles convinced me that our Olympic boycott will succeed only in keeping thousands of inquisitive minds from interchanging ideas. Peace and understanding will be the losers.

Danny-Joe Driscoll San Francisco As an Estonian whose parents fled So viet persecution during World War II, I abhor the Soviet government's repression of human rights. Still, its people are hu man beings and deserve to be respected as such, if not by their leaders, then by us. It's high time for Americans to take the trouble to look with interest at life in the U.S.S.R.

Talvi Laev New York City Prostitutes? In a nation that success fully eradicated all vestiges of class exploitation and bourgeois decadence?

Mitchell Winthrop Chicago A New York professor said to me:

"How can you say that there are no civil rights in the U.S.S.R.? After all, you, a known enemy of that system, continue to publish in Pravda. One can only envy such tolerance!" He referred to your in correct identification of me as someone who "sometimes writes for Pravda. " At first I thought that the information was just a very amusing misprint -- I have long stopped contributing to Pravda. Then I thought, thank God, TIME is not published in Moscow. In my days there, some editors of Pravda lost their jobs for far more innocent misprints. During the Stalin era many journalists ended their days in concentration camps.

Arkady Polishchuk New York City Incredible! A whole issue devoted to the Soviet Union without once mentioning chess!

Manfred Zitzman Wyomissing, Pa.

The outbreak of pulmonary anthrax, attributed to the development of biological-warfare weapons in a Sverdlovsk military facility, is, as you say, a revelation that is sure to contaminate further the at mosphere of detente. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn says, "This is the same detente that the West basked in so contentedly while millions were being exterminated in the jungles of Cambodia . . . and at a time when a thousand men, including twelve-year-old boys, were being executed in one Afghan village." We need detente like we need a hole in the head.

Jim Barroll Columbia, S.C.

My husband is a Muscovite, born and bred. Your magazine brought me so much closer to the life he lived until 1976, when he was able to emigrate. His future is American now, a fact for which he is ever thankful. However, the pictures of Mos cow, streets on which he walked, restaurants he visited, Red Square, took him back to a life that he has kept shrouded in the shadows of years gone. For the first time I felt I really began to understand what it means to him and his fellow ref ugees to be Russian.

Mrs. Yevgeni Liberman Columbus

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