Correspondents' Correspondence

...In former times, he said, the policy was "fully justified...

...In another incident, the Philosophy Faculty Council of Belgrade University expressed its solidarity with the "Belgrade Eight" by quitting en masse...

...Today, the only remaining Ukrainian Politburo member is Vladimir Shcherbitsky...

...The message was not lost on Yugoslavia's leader...

...What followed was perhaps typically Yugoslav...

...When officials ordered three of the group fired from the research positions, the head of their institute refused to comply and resigned...

...Moreover, his Ukrainian cronies had in recent years precipitated a number of skirmishes with the dominant Great Russian faction, involving both personalities and policies...

...Three of them recently participated in a symposium at the Interuniversity Postgraduate Center in Dubrovnik...

...It is perhaps fitting, therefore, that the tersely-worded decision of the Party Central Committee to "remove N.V...

...Podgorny was following in the footsteps of Nikita Khruschev, who headed the first commission for revamping the Stalin Constitution from 1962 until December 1964, when Brezhnev assumed the chairmanship...

...The 70-year-old Communist party chief is now pretty much in charge of his own transfer of power, with a little help from such friendly comrades as hard-lining Party ideologist Mikhail Suslov and the "Brezhnev bloc" within the Politburo...

...Considered a dove in the Moscow aviary, Podgorny has lost not only a top job, but also his influence in the ongoing process—about to enter its final stage—of choosing a successor to Leonid I. Brezhnev...

...The memo described an influx of Chinese heroin from Southeast Asia and warned that hard drug addiction was perhaps already out of control...

...Through all of this, the Praxis people have maintained a posture of guarded optimism...

...Two of the group's contributors have also reappeared in academic journals...

...During the last two years, they have established firm and relatively secure transport, storage and distribution facilities in and around Amsterdam...

...They appear to employ as traffickers Europeans youths, aged 18-25 and themselves addicts, whose arrest yields no significant leads for further investigation...

...the fact that the veteran powerbroker Sus-lov—who was instrumental in the ouster of Khruschev—is alive and kicking at 75 becomes crucial...

...It went on to observe: "Estimates of heroin likely to result from unlawful cultivation of opium in Southeast Asia suggest that the quantity available would very substantially exceed any possible scale of local consumption and might result in a very substantial surplus for illicit export...

...Dutch police recently carried out several big raids on the drug rings,but they may have acted too late.Unlike the highly concentrated French Connection—which depended on heroin prepared in Marseilles laboratories and was destroyed in 1974 through cooperation by French and North American narcotics agenties— the Triads' operations involve many loosely related small operators and are too elusive for a spectacular single swoop...

...conditions are emerging that make it easier to satisfy the workers' ever-growing domestic and cultural needs...

...One reason for this is Yugoslavia's preparation for the Helsinki accord review conference, to be opened in Belgrade June 15...

...The organizing committee of the Korcula Summer School, the group's annual international symposium, banned since 1974, has applied for permission to hold the meeting this year...

...All this demands considerable material sacrifice from the Soviet people and the allocation of a major portion of the national budget for defense...

...Podgorny did stay on, but he was evidently outvoted by the Party apparatchik members whom Brezhnev had substituted for the Supreme Soviet deputies, Supreme Court judges and legal specialists appointed by his predecessor...

...Some members began leaving China in the 19th century, emigrating to North America and Western Europe...

...In France, for example,there were nearly 60 drug-related deaths in 1976, a record...

...Exit Podgorny New York—It's succession time again in the Kremlin...

...But now collective wealth is multiplying year by year...

...Praxis, easily the nation's most dissident publication, was subjected to increasing pressure...

...There has certainly been an increase of the amount seized [in Britain] in the first part of 1976...

...Khruschev had wanted to upgrade the power of the Soviets top to bottom, and to admit more grassroots influence to a state that had become increasingly bureaucratic and divorced from the needs and "will" of the people...

...A similar trend across the Channel was confirmed by a secret memorandum of Britain's Home Office, whose contents were made available to this correspondent late last year...

...Many authorities now see the one possible solution as diplomatic: They believe that to smash the Triads, the aid of the poppy-growing countries of the Far East is necessary...

...Passports were confiscated, then returned...

...For as a survey prepared by the Department of Health has noted, most figures fail to take into consideration the number of addicts not officially registered for treatment...

...When asked whether the Korcula Summer School will be convened this year, Bakaric waffled: "I don't think there is any interest in our society to spend money on it, but the decision lies with the [local] self-management authorities...

...In an interview with a Lisbon newspaper in January 1976, sociologist Rudi Supek, rector of Zagreb University and director of the Korcula Summer School, insisted that the dispute between Praxis and the Party was "circumstantial" rather than ideological...

...Now that the intragerontocratic succession struggle has eliminated the 74-year-old Podgorny...

...and the editorial board of the magazine, outlawed since 1975, is reportedly hoping to resume publication...

...These "successes" may seem slight, yet they represent an improvement over conditions last year...

...Shortly after Suslov's Sofia address, Podgorny abruptly cancelled his participation in a reception for a high-level delegation from Turkey...

...Even official reckonings of the extent of drug use here—such as the estimate of the Standard Conference on Drug Abuse that addiction is rising by 10 per cent a year— may be misleading...

...Although the early 1975, upon passage of a special positions elsewhere, the journal was shut down, the Korcula Summer School was forbidden to open, and the members' teaching possibilities were considerably reduced...

...One week later, Party Secretary Suslov, a strong advocate of a stepped-up Soviet military effort in Vietnam, openly rebuked Podgorny in a speech delivered in Sofia, Bulgaria: "We would like the life of the Soviet people to improve at a faster rate...

...Because the topics to be discussed included the nature of bureaucratic Socialism—a favorite radical humanist theme—it had been feared that the meeting might be blocked, but there was no interference...

...Ironically, the self-management system, one of Tito's proudest achievements, prevented the Party from taking immediate action, and it was not until early 1975, upon passage of a special law in the Serbian Parliament, that eight Belgrade University professors could be suspended for their writings in the magazine...

...This has taken on a new urgency in Europe because of the dramatic rise in heroin use throughout the Continent...

...His "confinement" lasted nearly two months, as he simply dropped from sight?traditionally a sign that a Soviet leader is out of synch with his comrades...

...The Triads were established as a religious organization in the fourth century...

...Another Ukrainian, Pyotr Shelest, was unseated in 1972—ostensibly for opposing Brezhnev's U.S.-Soviet sum mitary phase of detente...

...After nationalist riots broke out in Croatia in 1971, the government moved toward recentralization and rigid ideological conformity...

...Primarily selling "brown sugar" —a mixture of heroin and morphine, codeine or caffeine—the Triads have also constructed a trade network that today embraces most of Western Europe...

...was another factor undercutting Podgorny...

...For example, Dmitri Polyan-sky, a Podgorny protege, was so adamant in promoting consumerism in budgeting and national-resource allocation that last year he lost his Politburo seat and was demoted to minister of agriculture...

...Together with West Germany, they initiated discussions last year aimed at utilizing the police forces of the European Community against such global crimes as drug trafficking and political terrorism...

...It had previously been assumed that much of the drug seized here was in transit [to North America], but it is no longer possible to be certain of this...

...Just how far the trend will go is difficult to say...

...He explained that the stabilization of the domestic situation had made the amnesty possible, and played down the importance of outside pressure...

...Recent political developments appear to be working in the group's favor, but a government decision on rehabilitation has not been reached.The reemergence of Praxis and the Korcula Summer School wouldput Yugoslavia back on the map as a center of Marxist theory...

...Podgorny from membership in the Politburo," was accompanied by an announcement that the new Brezhnev constitution will soon be published...

...only with the appointment of a new director could the offending intellectuals be removed...

...Coworkers often came to the aid of the former professors being pressured by the Belgrade Party committee...

...Problems arose in the late '60s when the group aimed its critical guns at the existing Socialist society of Yugoslavia, suggesting that bureaucratization and alienation were not unique to Stalinist systems but survived in Tito's regime as well...

...But we have to take into account objective reality that forces us to make considerable expenditures for the defense of our country, and not for our country alone...

...A new dean was ultimately named, but he proved equally resistant to local Party arm-twisting...

...With him, Brezhnev, and Premier Aleksei Kosygin currently making up the ruling troika, decisions on who will follow Brezhnev, as well as on the vital matters of detente, the Middle East, Eurocommunism, and China, will be expedited without the restraining, often moderate, hand of Podgorny...

...That the power struggle is now reaching a climax was made obvious by the abrupt ouster of Soviet President Nikolai V. Podgorny from the Politburo on May 23...

...In addition, some prominent Praxis members have been allowed to return to public life...

...The authorities became rather defensive about the conference when the international human rights discussion started focusing on Yugoslavia along with other Warsaw Pact countries...

...Interestingly, Praxis professors at Zagreb University, while often criticized, have been allowed to keep their positions, probably because their antinationalist feelings meshed well with Croatian Party politics...

...Although Podgorny supported Brezhnev on the issue (he is, after all, credited with initiating the French-Soviet connection that ushered in detente in the mid-'60s), the loss of a Ukrainian on the ruling body was clearly a slap in the face of the President...

...In a speech in Baku on May 21 of that year, then Party Secretary Podgorny referred to large-scale Soviet defense spending and heavy-industry "priority development" as a thing of the past...

...The uncertainty about the future is reflected in the group's plans: Although convinced that the chances for rehabilitation were never better, it has been exploring the possibility of publishing Praxis in Western Europe should a Yugoslav comeback f a i l .—TOM HENEOHAN A Chinese Connection LONDON—The lucrative European black market for hard drugs, controlled until recently by the notorious French Connection, appears to have been taken over by the Triads, a web of ancient Chinese associations with close to a million members scattered throughout the world...

...Such measures were even written into the Communist party Program drafted with Khruschev's approval in 1961...

...At the very least, this should give the Carter Administration something to think about.?Albert L. Weeks Praxis Redux MUNICH—Following years of official harassment, the Yugoslav Marxist thinkers known as the Praxis group—after the title of the bimonthly journal they published— are trying to make a comeback...

...This year, they are expected to explore the possibility of committing the entire Community to subtle but intense diplomatic pressure—including the threat of trade sanctions—that would force the opium-producing countries into cooperative action.—THOMAS LAND...

...From its formation in 1964, the group, composed of philosophers and sociologists inspired by Marx's call for a "relentless critique of all that exists," has attracted international attention for its radical humanist perspective on Communism and capitalism...

...Immediately following Brezhnev's October 1964 seizure of power, though, that Program began to be ignored, and the makeup of the constitutional commission was altered to reflect the new Party chief's will...

...Podgorny was always a spokesman for the consumer lobby, and his advocacy of a discrete balance between guns and butter reached a crisis point in 1965, when his rivalry with the new First Secretary Brezhnev initially came into the open...

...The Podgorny-Suslov exchange, a subtle washing of dirty linen via official statements, took on a more ominous aspect in the weeks and months ahead...

...Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet since late 1965, Podgorny had long been a thorn in the sides of several Kremlin power groupings...

...I think the situation will be clarified shortly," he said...

...Officially, he was said to have been "confined to his house by the doctor's orders...

...Known in Chinese as Huk Sai Wui, or the Black Associations,they take their English name from the triangles used in initiation ceremonies...

...No professor would agree to become faculty dean under the prevailing circumstances...

...To counter the criticisms, Vladimir Bakaric, a member of the nine-man collective state presidium, announced at a mid-April press conference that political prisoners would be released...

...France and Britain have already moved on the international level to deal with the problem at its source...

...While it did not clarify in time to hold the 1976 Korcula symposium, the group feels its prospects have improved...

...The next year, he lost his seat on the Secretariat...

...The issue of the Soviet Constitution, under revision since 1962...

...He and his colleagues in the Presidia of the Soviet Republics seemed to favor strengthening the more populistic features of the Stalin Constitution of 1936—like the provision for national referenda and the granting of effective power to the legislative branch of the government...

...One author, Belgrade University philosopher Svetozar Stojanovic, went so far as to characterize state policies as "Stalinist anti-Stalinism," and declared that charismatic political leadership was inimical to the principles of Socialism...