The Trials in That Other World
MIHAJLOV, MIHAJLO
NOTES OF A SURVIVOR The Trials inThat C)tlicrVVorld. bym|hajlom|hai°v How strange it all is! For almost 14 years, up to six months ago as a matter of fact, I was being arrested, tried, bounced...
...Here you can go wherever your eyes lead you, read whatever you wish, say and write anything that comes to mind without being untrue to yourself...
...When I heard those words my entire being radiated with joy...
...Regardless of what the free world may do, though, the dissident movement in the Soviet Union cannot be squelched...
...So I find myself in a room in gigantic New York City, gazing out the window onto the rooftops of buildings whose storage tanks seem like sprawling spiders...
...it could assume anti-Western, antidemocratic tonus...
...There has been a new wave of trials in that other world and the sentences are being handed down: Yuri Orlov—seven years in prison and five years internal exile...
...A closing note...
...somewhere a verdict is being read that had been decided long before the arrest and the trial, and the prisoner's friends and family are being chased away, along with those nosey foreign correspondents...
...Moreover, following the Belgrade review conference, it became evident that, outside of a great deal of verbal noise, the democracies were not going to do anything about the Communist's nonadherence to Helsinki—a nonadherence that, in effect, proclaimed the Kremlin's intention of disregarding any international agreement that it may be a party to...
...1 see faces—white, black, sometimes yellow...
...Aleksandr Ginzburg—eight years...
...But then, suddenly, newspaper headlines come knocking like heavy fists at one's door...
...The most frightening thing that can happen to a person is to be forgotten in prison...
...somewhere in the prison cellars women are being sprayed with cold water hoses...
...The only purpose of the current dissident trials in the Soviet Union is to tear out of the free world's hands—out of the hands of the United States—the most dangerous weapon that can be used against the Communist dictatorships...
...Otherwise, it cannot really exist at all...
...And only rarely do you feel the desire to engage in polemics with those in the free world who believe that freedom is not a goal but merely a means to something supposedly more important, who argue that in order to achieve this larger purpose individual liberty may be limited...
...Now it is also my duty to do everything possible to help people understand and keep in mind those countless men and women in the prisons of the Communist world...
...Soon the soft, cool breeze coming from the air-conditioner turns into a cold wind tearing through a broken cell window...
...The Soviets' point is the same: to show the entire world that the politics of defending human rights will fail...
...Thus, in the struggle for peace, the treatment of human rights activists is far more important than the signing of salt n, m, iv...
...Everyone realized that to the Communist dictatorships the struggle for human rights was far more dangerous than the hydrogen or neutron bombs...
...A successful liquidation of dissent in the USSR will strengthen the more dogmatic and aggressive elements within the Communist Party of the USSR...
...That meant that everyone knew what had happened to me, people were keeping watch, I wasn't alone...
...How familiar it all is...
...Today, I myself am in the free world, and it is 1 who must write protests, demonstrate and join defense committees on behalf of people far away whom I don't know yet are close to me, people who are obviously innocent but have fallen prey to a barbaric regime...
...If the U.S...
...The air-conditioner hums gently, enveloping me in coolness...
...Such are the cases of Orlov, Shcharansky, Ginzburg, Petkus and the many others currently in the news...
...If it fails to recognize that it has no other choice, then one fine morning New York's spider storage tanks will indeed turn into prison watchtowers, and its free people will find themselves in that other world...
...This strengthened the Communists' conviction that the West would swallow anything as long as there was some sort of arms limitation agreement to be signed...
...I am here, not in that other world, and it is not I being tried and sentenced, it is not I strangers are attempting to console by offering their moral support...
...All are in jail today because they were members of groups that had taken it upon themselves to monitor Soviet compliance with the human rights provisions agreed to by the 35 signatories of the Helsinki Final Act in the summer of 1975...
...Only here, in America, can one begin truly to comprehend that if humanity is to have a future, it must be free...
...The soft clicking of the elevator grows into the clang of the jail door, which always causes a prisoner's heart to stop beating...
...For almost 14 years, up to six months ago as a matter of fact, I was being arrested, tried, bounced around from prison to prison—and somewhere in the world people were protesting, demonstrating, signing petitions urging my release...
...Therefore, I cannot allow myself to sit back and simply enjoy my sweet freedom...
...everyone dresses differently...
...Anatoly Shchar-ansky?3 years in prison...
...I would be happy just to sit here and enjoy this freedom, and not think of what is distant in time and space...
...What gave me the strength to endure in that world...
...Irecall vtvidly the great hope everyone felt soon after President Carter's inauguration, when he proclaimed that a primary goal of his Administration would be the protection of human rights everywhere in the world...
...I remember my first imprisonment...
...acts decisively and firmly, I have no doubt that the Communists will retreat, as they did in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962...
...If they are right and the West, instead of responding in serious fashion, limits itself to empty words and written protests, then I am convinced that we shall witness the end of detente, the first steps toward a new war and a new Munich...
...No, Solzhenitsyn is wrong: It is here, in the United States, that the embryo of humanity's future is to be found...
...In that other world, I met many people who were ready to sacrifice their lives for the truth, but sometimes were "saved" at the price of what they had fought for —truth...
...To expect gratitude from them would be just as misplaced as to expect thankfulness from a mother whose life was saved by the sacrifice of her child...
...How much strength that gave me...
...It could cancel technical, technological and scientific aid to the USSR, stop credits, and end the sale of all computers and drilling equipment, as well as wheat and much else...
...But now, for the first time in my life, everything has turned topsy-turvy...
...Breathing this marvelous air, I am inclined simply to live and enjoy each day and not think about anything far removed, about yesterday or even about tomorrow...
...This could put an end to the hope for continued internal change in the Soviet Union, and for the eventuality of real peace...
...And I shall never forget the moment when the investigator hissed in an angry voice: "Well, your little friends in the West who have raised all of that fuss aren't going to help you...
...Do Russian, Ukranian or Lithuanian human rights activists receive more lenient sentences...
...There, on the other side, everyone grasped this immediately, including the prisoners and their jailors...
...Throughout history there have been trials where not only the fate of the accused was decided, but much more?the fate of the future...
...Should it become disillusioned with the democracies, however, it could shift in a different direction, inward perhaps...
...behind the wall I hear the quiet clicking of the elevator door...
...We are again facing a crucial moment when the fate of the democratic states, and in many respects the development of the totalitarian world, is being decided...
...For the free world has at its disposal a number of other possible actions that would constitute a more meaningful and painful counterattack...
...So it goes, on and on...
...On the street below, an exotic life teems day and night...
...In that place from which he was exiled dwells the dark past...
...It seemed that for the first time in recent history America had found the ideological and spiritual weapon that could penetrate Communist totalitarianism and demagoguery...
...There is no checking in with the police, no ideological campaign in the press, no "criticism and self-criticism," no omnipotent Party...
...Such were the cases of Dreyfus, of Georgi Dimitrov, of Sinyavski and Daniel...
...It is exactly for this reason that the Communists are directing their efforts at discrediting the very idea of human rights...
...As I was finishing this article, 1 read in the newspapers that some consideration is being given to exchanging Shcharansky and Ginzburg for two Soviet spies recently caught in the U. S. How such an exchange would gladden the KGB...
...For this would confirm to the world that Russia had tried and sentenced real spies and not human rights activists...
...How familiar it all is...
...Yet what is involved is more than merely the matter of human solidarity...
...Here in the West this is not always understood, and it is not understood by everyone...
...How can we help those who must endure now...
...Yes, everything has turned upside-down, and it is difficult to believe that both worlds exist simultaneously, the one of limitless freedom and the other of absolute slavery...
...In my view, the fact that Ginzburg and Shcharansky are Jews is not all that important...
...For the last two months I have been enjoying this incredible, indescribable air of freedom that, like all sustenance, tends to be cherished most when it is no longer available...
...There are trials and retributions for espionage (making public statements about illegal persecutions), for engaging in subversive activities (helping the families of prisoners), for slander and hostile propaganda (telling the truth...
...Even here in New York, after reading reports of these trials, I begin to smell the putrid prison urinal and the more repulsive, animalistic odor of violence...
...It came so suddenly that I wasn't even certain whether anyone in the neighboring city, let alone the West, knew of my arrest...
...Viktor Pet-kus?0 years in prison plus five in exile...
...I know that somewhere, at this very moment, someone in an isolation cell is being beaten by fat-faced warders with red five-cornered stars on their caps...
...Perhaps this is precisely how the majority of the population here live...
...There is no effort to be uniform—not in thought, in ideology, in party adherence, or in hair styles...
...The spider storage tanks-change into watch towers...
...It also seems to me that those who would be "saved" in this way might not be overly grateful...
...As long as the Communist countries continue to blatantly violate human rights, I believe that the single correct course of action for the West is to nullify the Helsinki Agreement...
...This, of course, would only be a minimum response...
Vol. 61 • July 1978 • No. 16
