East and West

Press, 28 January 1988, Page 40

East and West

Sir,—Whether peace on our planet is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity’s stubborn bigotry, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before the human race. Negative actions beget negative responses. The newspapers would be responsible for most of what one group hates of another, "The Press” being a typical example of slamming the Soviets at every opportunity to perpetuate the perceptions of the Western population (and to sell newspapers). C. E. L. Field and' T. R. Loudon should travel the socialist countries and not believe without question what they read or view in an edited tele-,? 1

vision film or such propaganda publications as "Reader’s Digest.” Russians are no more oppressed than we are. Socialism was born out of man’s inhumanity to man in a capitalist environment. Since then capitalism has been trying to stamp it out as evil. — Yours, etc., G. McRAE. January 22, 1988. Sir, —M. T. Moore does not seem to appreciate the difference between patriotism — a dirty word in our enlightened society — and abhorrence of the Russian prison system with its K.G.B. officers, as well described in Solzhenitsyn’s works. Fancy Israeli imperialism killing only 30 to 40 stone and fire-throwing Palestinians. In Lebanon the Arabs manage that many in a week. In Berlin (1953), in Budapest (1956) and in Prague (1968) you threw a stone and you got a Russian tank wrapped around your neck. In Poland we have a Polish general at the helm who is also a low-ranking Russian general, taking orders from just about everybody in the RussianWarsaw Pact military establishment. In Afghanistan the comrades had to bump off some halfdozen native comrades before they got one willing to invite them in. I could write about Finland, et al, mentioned by M. T. Moore, but the word limit is strangling me.—Yours, etc., C. E. L. FIELD. January 26, 1988.

Sir, —For C. E. L Field (January 22), the Soviet Union is no prison; most of its people and the people of its “satellites” are happy and proud of their respective countries, with full employment, free health, free education, low rents (including central heating), their rich cultures and access to all amenities and services. Further, Comrade Gorbachev’s programmes of openness, reconstruction and official accountability please most. “Foreigners,” within the U.S.S.R. (except three million East Europeans) or within the Soviet Bloc, are treated differently from Russians, receiving more cultural independence and more funding than our own Maori. The Tsarist conquests are older than New Zealand’s conquest by Britain. Countries becoming communist are not Soviet-dominated. Nor are their economies; communist trade is co-operative, planned and compensatory, unlike capitalist exploitation and foreign ownership. But newly communist countries are attacked by subversion by the old privileged class and by white capitalist nations, and have to adopt wartime practices.—Yours, etc., SUSAN TAYLOR. January 23, 1988.