Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No. 10. May 22, 1974

"We defend Solzhenitsyn's civil rights not his politics"

"We defend Solzhenitsyn's civil rights not his politics"

Dear Sir,

When I first spoke out (through the pages of Salient) against the exile of Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Union, I predicted that a rash of slanders about "Trotskyite counter-revolutionaries" would most likely follow. And they did. Through letters to the editor by Terry Auld Don Franks, and Peter Franks, students were treated to a disgusting display of fabrication, along with the usual apologies for the repressive politices of Stalin, Brezhnev, and Mao. I will deal with a few of the major points here, and take up some of the others in future letters.

1)All the letters which attacked the Young Socialists' defence of Solzhenitsyn had a common thread running through them: They all implied or suggested that the Young Socialists not only defended Solzhenitsyn against forcible exile from the Soviet Union, but also defended his politics. It is commonly known that Solzhenitsyn has rejected socialism and Marxism, hence Auld and company have been doing their utmost to link the Young Socialists to bis right wing political ideas.

The fact is, of course, that we defended Solzhenitsyn's civil rights, not his politics; and we clearly explained all this in our activities at the time of his expulsion.

So why must Auld and company deliberately contuse this point? When people are defending the repression in the Soviet Union and China it is only be these methods of falsification that they can hope to manufacture a "credible" case.

2)One of the most disgusting spectacles in this debate has been the attempt by Auld and company at using quotes by Marx and Lenin as a cover for their "justifications" of the bureaucratic regimes in the Soviet Union and China.

Marx and Lenin explained that the establishment of a workers state does not in Itself abolish the class struggle and the influence of bourgeois ideology in society. The working class and its allies must constantly struggle against these forces in defence of their state and their ultimate goal of socialism.

But Auld and company twist these facts to their own purposes. By their "logic", any disagreement with the dictates and policies of Stalin. Brezhnev, or Mao, is automatically an expreaalon of ' alien class forces", which must obviously be suppressed. These "Marxists" thereby condemn. In advance all dissent and critical thought in the Soviet Union and China. To them, it is all simply a reflection of the continuing influence of bourgeois ideology.

Stalin used this "rationale" when he annihilated all his political opponents in the late 1920s and 1930s, among them almost all the leaders of the Bolshevik Party which led the Russian revolution of 1917. And Auld and company employ the same formula when talking about the repression of dissidents in the Soviet Union.

Peter Rotherham

for the Young Socialists.