Rostropovich

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32633, 15 June 1971, Page 12

Rostropovich

Sir, “M.C.H.” has knocked-on in front of the post—hence my arrival for some loose ball. He knows very well I did no, advocate the starving of artists to stimulate their creativity. He knows I found the chink in his defence and my “up and under,” which exposed the Soviet method of gagging (or directing) artists by keeping them insulated, by subsidies, from the realities of their surroundings, is still valid. The Soviet artists appear to have as much freedom as a circus pony trained to jump through a hoop or their Olympic Games athletes who are “in” the armed forces. The film the N.Z.B.C. showed late last month of May Day in Moscow certainly did not show a maypole. They called it a rocket with nuclear warhead.—Yours, etc., JOHN BATEMAN. June 14, 1971. Sir,—On the flimsy basis of his pitiful catalogue, surely “A. B. Cedarian” would hardly dare claim to be a critical authority on Soviet art; until he acquaints himself with examples of the real thing, he should curb his reckless excursions into the dangerous realm of art criticism. The N.Z.B.C.’s advance publicity for the C.B.S. television documentary, “Voices from the Russian Underground,” exposes the nature of Amairik and his book, “Will Russia Survive until 1984?” Amairik is psychopathic; his book, literary sewage. While disclaiming any authority, I demur at Michal Andrevitch’s lumping me with “A. B. Cedarian” as not having “any insight into the moral and social background of'the Soviet system . . . ” Ido claim to have, at least, studied the subject sympathetically, but one is entitled to challenge Michal Andrevitch’s credentials for claiming, with an air of such magisterial authority, that insight, which one must, perforce, infer, he believes himself to possess.—Yours, etc., M. C. H. June 12, 1971.

Sir, —Touching on the All Blacks, “M.C.H.” should realise that, like lion-tamers he listed alongside playwrights, they would under Marxist-Leninism be State-

controlled. Any member politically doubtful would. lose his shirt, be shadowed by the police, and maybe ordered to stay indoors and learn the balalaika. It could be. In June, 1969, at the world conference, delayed by the subjugation of Czechoslovakia, Mr Brezhnev said: “We are witnesses to the fact our ideas are spreading more and more. Marxism-Leninism is on the offensive today and we must develop that offensive to the utmost.” This June, Mr Edgar Hoover’s testimony reads; “In 1970 old-line Communists renewed their efforts to influence people. The most serious threat to security is from the Soviet Union.” An extract from the final 1969 conference documents reads: “Communists everywhere will propagate in the working class movement and among the broad masses, including the young people, the ideas of scientific socialism.” (Marxist-Lenin-ism). —Yours, etc., A. B. CEDARIAN. June 14, 1970. [This correspondence is now closed.—Ed., “The Press.”]