Russians Justify Invasion

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31835, 13 November 1968, Page 1

Russians Justify Invasion

Soviet trade union officials told the secretary of the Canterbury Furniture Trades Union (Mr S. 0. Harris) that the Russians were justified in occupying Czechoslovakia.

Mr Harris yesterday returned from four weeks in the Soviet Union, as a guest of the Soviet Timber. Paper and Woodworkers’ Union. Mr Harris said Russians had told him that Russia had been afraid that Czechoslova-

kia would move into the Western camp and become a capitalistic country. “They have got some quite good points about this,” said Mr Harris. At an informal talk in the cafeteria of a Soviet factory, union leaders had told him that Russia moved in to stop Western capital, particularly that from West Germany, flooding into Czechoslovakia. The Russian union leaders felt' that if this had been permitted, it would have

weakened the security of the Socialist block, and would have endangered Russia.

Mr Harris said that if Western capital had been permitted to flood into Czechoslovakia, Rumania would have come under Western influence in the same way. The Russians said that Western finance entering in this way could undermine the economy of countries such as Czechoslovakia and Rumania. There was no knowing at what point such influence would stop. This was what the Russians were worriedi about.

Mr Harris extended his stay in Russia to see the celebration of the fifty-first anniver-

sary of the October revolution.

Asked if he was impressed with the anniversary day military parade, Mr Harris said that he saw z “dirty, great three-stage rockets.”

“I had never seen anything other than a fire-cracker before,” he said.

• The only drunk that Mr Harris saw in the Soviet bloc was in Vilna, Lithuania. There, he saw and heard some men coming out of a hotel, singing merrily. One very merry man came out carrying his briefcase in his mouth, as a dog would.