‘White guard author’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33438, 21 January 1974, Page 15

‘White guard author’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) EAST BERLIN, January 20.

The dissident Russian author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a “counterrevolutionary, White Guard author.” according to East Germany’s chief Communist ideologist, Kurt Hager.

In a speech attacking thfi author's latest work, “Gulag Archipelago,” Mr Hager said the timing of its appearance in the West had been calculated to obstruct detente and the success of the European Security Conference.

At the conference, now in its critical second phase in Geneva, Western participants are demanding that a final European settlement should include freer movement of ideas and people throughout the whole of Europe in East and West.

Mr Hager called Solz-

lhenitsyn a “White Guard [author” in a reference to the [anti-Communist Russian ! soldiers who unsuccessfully [tried to overthrow 7 the new [ Soviet Government during the Civil War after 1917. ! In his speech before the [East German Communist [Party Academy, published in the official newspaper, “Neues Deutschland,” Mr Hager said Solzhenitsyn’s latest work was being exploited by alleged organisers of an anti-Soviet campaign as a means of ideological diversion against Russia and its allies.

The party official made no reference to the actual contents of the new book, a lengthy documentation of the practices of the various Soviet secret police organisations from their outset in 1917, and of the Soviet concentration camp network between 1918 and 1956.

On the European Security Conference itself, Mr Hager referred sceptically to the West’s demands for greater freedom of ideas and people, saying that such freedoms must never be abused to disseminate anti-Soviet defamation, or the ideas of fascism, the cult of violence, racial hatred and amorality. He said East Germany and the other Communist' bloc countries would demand that such propaganda be declared illegal, and banned throughout the whole world.