Dear Editor
Dear Editor 50th Anniversary I have been a regular reader of and subscriber to your journal for almost 25 years. As a Pole who spent the War in a Nazi concentration camp and who came to the United...
...might bring in the way of a free flow of ideas and information...
...In The New Leader, however, I found a laudible exception...
...The fact that Jon Kendrizo disagrees with some of my views is no cause for distorting what I said...
...The fact is that the motives of our government officials remain as suspect as ever, and when the champions of the most devastating bombing campaign in history in Vietnam raise not a whisper of protest at the recent setback for restoring democracy in Greece, yet loudly oppose tyranny in the USSR, we cannot allow our tools of skepticism to become blunted...
...In connection with your 50th anniversary celebration, I join in sending you my best wishes for continued growth and development...
...I also observed that the question of the Soviet dissidents, unlike Vietnam, would tend to unify the Democratic party "because it poses a fundamental foreign policy question on which most Democrats can today agree...
...It has proved that one can combine the striving for social reform and fundamental human rights (including the right of every nation to develop its own culture) with the condemnation of all transgressions against these principles, no matter who commits them...
...Second, one's allegiance to the Jackson Amendment is a poor measure of one's position vis-a-vis detente...
...In the last paragraph of my article, I quite strongly expressed my support for an end to the isolation of the Soviet Union from the United States, and vice versa...
...Both he and Medvedev agree that, in the words of the latter, "the more distant prospect...
...Roy Medvedev says No...
...But I doubt, if he would think about it for a moment, that Kendrizo, would consider disunity in the Democratic party a cause as compelling as the struggle for intellectual freedom within the Soviet Union...
...As a Pole who spent the War in a Nazi concentration camp and who came to the United States rather than return to Poland after its fall to Communism, I could never understand why American liberals who forthrightly opposed Hitler refrained from attacking Communism and Soviet Russia as the greatest threat to man's freedom today...
...Schlesinger "gradually" reached this conclusion 13 years ago: "But surely one of the strongest arguments for a detente is precisely the fact that relaxation might give the forces of pluralism and tolerance a chance to dissolve the ideological dogmatism of Soviet society," Finally, encouraging dissent abroad does not mean discouraging it at home...
...This is not "shameful duplicity" on my part, just sensible politics...
...I pointed out that a number of intellectuals have become critics of President Nixon's policy of "unconditional detente," which is not to say that either they or I oppose the concept of detente itself...
...At issue is not detente, but the meaning of detente...
...Kendrizo, on the other hand, is guilty of drawing a shameful analogy between party unity in a democracy and totalitarian tyranny...
...Schlesinger's account of discussions with Soviet writers during his 1960 visit to the Communist countries (in The Politics of Hope), I. F. Stone's memorably scathing attack on the practice of railroading Soviet nonconformists into mental hospitals, and Lewis' column on the dilemma facing the renowned dancer Valeri Panov, are tributes that come immediately to mind...
...is that international detente will undoubtedly promote broadening of democratic rights and freedom in our country...
...If detente is accompanied by improved human and cultural?not merely economic—ties between East and West, as well as by a greater, not a lesser, degree of liberty inside the USSR, then I am all for it...
...The Politburo's latest crackdown, far from initiating their efforts, has only given them an added impetus...
...The question raised by the proposal is a matter of tactics, not principle: Does the possibility that the Soviet government will interpret the granting of "most favored nation" status by Washington as a carte blanche for further repression outweigh the long-range gains such a move The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...New York City JON KENDRIZO Carl Gershman replies...
...ANDREW PLESZCYNSKI Leftist Consistency In "The Soviet Dissidents and the American Left" (NL, October 29), Carl Gershman asserts that the recent support for the Jackson Amendment voiced by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., I. F. Stone, and Anthony Lewis, among others, is an indication that the "Left" in America is "starting to react to new issues" and is forming for an "ideological counterattack" against the liberal criticism of American policies in the '60s...
...Gradually [my italics], a consensus is growing among liberals that, in Schlesingefs words, *the question of intellectual freedom is at the heart of the stability of detente.'" First, and it is almost embarrassing to have to make the point, the present sympathy of American intellectuals for the struggle of dissenters in the USSR is by no means a "new" phenomenon...
...Santa Barbara, Cal...
...But as I. F. Stone began a recent piece, "Andrei Sakharov is no enemy of detente...
...Andrei Sakharov says Yes...
...It is shameful duplicity to reproach the "varied groups with differing values" in the Democratic party for causing "disunity" and in the same breath decry rigid Soviet ideology ruthlessly enforced in the name of unity...
Vol. 56 • December 1973 • No. 25
