Czechs, Ms., and Samizdat
H, I. & Bensman, David
George Moldau, "Inspired by Amalrik," SURVEY, August 1971 Three years after Russian tanks rolled across the border, the "consolidation" of a Sovietcontrolled regime has been accomplished...
...NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, February 24, 1972 A thorough two-part review of the current state of intellectual opposition movements in the Soviet Union, with special emphasis on the recent use of psychiatry to send dissidents to mental hospitals as a form of punishment...
...Some, perhaps a fifth, were then dismissed from their jobs...
...First, All the working people in this country have been required to express agreement with the "consolidation process" and to append their signature to this more or less formal declara tion, usually in front of a commission...
...and it is utterly impervious to what people think...
...She argues further that experimenting with lesbiansim out of ideological motives can be very dangerous...
...But in the Women's Liberation movement, with its multitude of viewpoints and organizations, it is no mean feat to establish such instant orthodoxy...
...most of the things he now says about it other writers have been saying, literally, for decades...
...Significantly, the most complex, creative, and interesting sections of Ms...
...Second, the intellectuals were blackmailed...
...Matins Horner and Eleanor Holmes Norton...
...Moldau argues they are demoralized, believing resistance will do no good...
...I. H. Q BENNET KREMEN'S article, "No Pride in this Dust," which appeared in our last issue, is the first chapter of a book by Mr...
...A tiny Communist party, operating without popular support, has stabilized the Czech economy at a low level of output, silenced the non-Party press, suppressed dissent...
...The common people, not being Marxist, and thus deprived of this basis for optimism, only hope they will be one day rid of "socialism" en tirely...
...Why did the Czechs submit...
...The remark able feature of this regime is that it does not require a consenting people at all in order to govern...
...the past 30 years have shown the Czechs they are too weak to determine their own destiny...
...OF COURSE, Stone might say he doesn't know enough about Communist China to undertake an investigation of this sort...
...Its purpose is to "raise the consciousness" of its readers, not to develop new solutions to the dilemma of the sexes...
...The Czech intelligentsia possess a basic optimism that "things are so bad now they have to get better...
...A Czech using the pseudonym George Moldau describes how the Husak regime, though incapable of collecting rent checks on time, has been able to perform this tour de force...
...So now would be a golden opportunity, when part of the American intellectual community seems to be contracting the "Chinese flu," for Stone to do some investigative reporting about Communist China, and ask precisely the same sort of questions about it that he so rightly asks about Russia...
...They believe the economy is doing so badly, compared to Western European economies, that liberalization will be necessary in order to get it moving again...
...Moldau's last and saddest conclusion is that "today it is possible to govern without open, brutally oppressive terror, and without a gen erally acceptable ideology...
...Anne Koedt interviews a woman who argues that women can learn to love and sleep with women, but that this is only one among many personal solutions to the problem of living within a sexist society...
...Ms.'s tone is didactic and humorless because the magazine's purpose is neither to entertain nor to provide a forum for discussion or debate...
...But that's just the point...
...In his wish to "combine freedom and socialism" (we would say they are inseparable, and where there is no freedom there can be no socialism), Stone retraces ground familiar to the antiStalinist Left: he locates the "excesses" of the Stalin and post-Stalin regimes in the ideology and structure inherited from Leninism, insists that the "perversion" of what the Stalinists have called "a proletarian monopoly of the press" began before Stalin, etc...
...One need not agree with all these points to conclude that Ms...
...The international situation reinforces their helplessness—the Czechs believe the West is indifferent to their plight...
...Stone is excellent in detailing the more "subtle" repressive methods of the Communist regime —more "subtle" than those of Stalin—and in his second article he ventures on an ambitious discussion of the nature of the regime and the possibilities for "democratizing" it...
...Stone could perform a much greater service for the cause of "combining freedom and socialism" if he were to turn to the Chinese regime—for do not all the "perversions" and repressions that he excoriates in regard to the Soviet Union also exist in Communist China...
...In these interviews, one finds new ideas searching for a mode of expression, hesitation, reflection, self-doubt--qualities in short supply in the other articles, trapped in the self-defeat of catechism...
...Al though they ridiculed the proceedings, in the end the overwhelming majority justified them rationally and presented themselves for screen ing, thereby sapping a further moral barrierwithin themselves...
...Over the years, he wasn't quite that alert to the "perversions" of the Russian regime...
...One imagines that the editors and writers of Ms., after endless rap sessions, have consciously tried to steer a moderate course through the myriad tendencies of the movement...
...presents some serious answers to the problems of women...
...has surrendered its elan, individual style, creativity...
...Further, the total blackout of all news but official propaganda has made the people cynical and apathetic...
...DAVID BENSMAN q I. F. Stone, "Betrayed by Psychiatry," NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, February 10, 1972, "Can Russia Change...
...And the articles seemed moderate and sound: • In "On Raising Kids Without Sex Roles," Lotty Pogrebin examines how children learn what is expected of boys and of girls, and suggests ways in which parents can counteract the influence that toys, books, TV, and schools have in teaching boys and girls to do or not do things that all children really could and should do...
...It must also be admitted that the Husak strategy has been brilliant...
...In "The Housewife's Moment of Truth," Jane O'Reilly describes how numerous American women are discovering that they do housework neither appreciated nor considered important, but which prevents them from reaching personal fulfillment...
...Ms...
...This demoralization is partly based on history...
...George Moldau, "Inspired by Amalrik," SURVEY, August 1971 Three years after Russian tanks rolled across the border, the "consolidation" of a Sovietcontrolled regime has been accomplished in Czechoslovakia...
...MS., THE NEW MAGAZINE FOR WOMEN, January 1972 The preview issue of Ms., with its bright red cover, looked exciting—the enormous energy of the Women's movement brought to focus in one place...
...All this is fine, and marks Stone as being apart from the younger Left authoritarians whom one encounters in academic life and some of whom have also appeared in the New York Review of Books...
...But in doing so Ms...
...rather than taking a hard line, Husak's supporters "appealed to the common sense of the Czech intelligentsia, to their appraising the reality of a situation...
...In "Can Women Love Women...
...But right now, attacking the Russian regime takes no special courage for an American leftist intellectual...
...In "The Sexual Revolution Wasn't Our War," Anselma Dell'Olio explains why increased societal acceptance of nonconjugal sex has neither helped most women to enjoy sex more nor helped them resolve their emotional problems...
...are interviews with women unconnected with the magazine, Dr...
...Nevertheless, I am disappointed with it: the articles are drab, solemn, exhortatory...
...is a magazine for sophisticated women activists, for middle-class housewives, and for IN THE MAGAZINES working women who have not been much exposed to the women's liberation movement...
...Kremen, to be published by Dial Press in January 1973...
...Stone has gained the reputation of being a crack investigative reporter, and at least in regard to domestic American scandals he is...
...The rest were told that they could be dismissed at any time if they did not conform—the state had dossiers documenting their deviations...
...Of course, if one is to "raise consciousness," one must begin with an orthodoxy, accepted truths to which women's consciousness is to be raised...
...She offers sensible suggestions for extricating oneself from the predicament, while acknowledging that male aversion to household chores is so deeply ingrained it is not likely to be overcome entirely in the near future...
...Finally, the purge, which forced people to inform on their colleagues, has made people not only loathe themselves, but also distrust each other...
...This, to be sure, would bring him into a head-on collision with many of his younger admirers, but that is just where anyone should be who wishes to "combine freedom and socialism...
...They were required to fill out forms describing their own errors and the errors of their colleagues...
...it is, for the moment, almost fashionable...
Vol. 19 • April 1972 • No. 2
