With the expulsion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn the West is rejoicing: its anti-Communist ursenal can claim one more piece of ammunition. Those who expelled Rudi Dutschke, refused to receive Chilean refugees, and introduced a notorious anti-immigration act now profess disgust with this insult to the civilised world! Heath has declared that Solzhenitsyn would be welcomed should he wish to settle in England.
What he omits to point out is the treatment meted out to the last exile from the USSR. Leon Trotsky, who was hounded from one capitalist country to another and denied any stay whatever in Britain. The message is clear: Solzhenitsyn is being welcomed and feted, not because he is a refugee from tyranny,' but as an enemy of socialism.
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
Nevertheless, the expulsion of Solzhenitsyn raises important questions for socialists as to the nature of the Soviet Union. The capitalist press orgy must not be used as a pretext for evading serious discussion on his deportation in the working class movement.
Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union following the publication of the first part of his book Gulag Archipelago. In the Soviet Union most of the facts described in the book are unknown to the mass of people, its author has received. This expulsion is only one act in the systematic repression of all independent working class activity and dissent by intellectuals: repression which reached its climax in 1972 with the arrest of hundreds of dissidents in Ukraine and the attempt to dismantle the whole of the samizdat network.
The slanderous attacks on Solzhenitsyn's book in the Soviet press have provoked a reactWOMEN & THE TORY OFFENSIVE: 2D pog pamphlet analysing the Tory offensive against women workers and women in the home, and takind up the immediate struggle, Price 15p inc. postige10p for orders of six or more-from: IMG Women's Commission, 97 Caledonian Road, London N1. SHREWSBURY & MINERS: Benefit socini, Friday 1 March at B pin in Nightingsie pub, Nightingale Road, Wood Green, London N22, All welcome, Organised oy tottennam mo 'FIGHT THE TORIES-Back the Miners|" Public meeting, Saturdey 23 February, Bpm at Convey Hall, Red Lion Square (near Holborn tube). Speakers include Jack Collins INUM Executivel, a Lahodr condidate, ond a member of NUS Executive. Organised by Nus London slueen Organi non: Miners Solidarity Committee.
IRISH POLITICAL HOSTAGES Campaign picket a British Medical Association. BMA House Tavistock Square, London WC1 on Sunday 24 ion in dissident cireles in Moscow. Most important have been the attacks on the Kremlin's action by Yevtushenko (one of the more popular poets who has hitherto toed the Party line) and Roy Medvedev, a prominent Marxist historian. On 6 February, Medvedev issued a 7,000 word review praising Solzhenitsyn's contribution to the history of Stalinism and defending his right to publish such a work.
Medvedey said that prior to his first arrest, Solzhenitsyn considered himself to be a Marxist, but that he lost his belief while being imprisoned. But, Medveder added: "Marxism Hence the heat it has created, and the treatment will certainly not perish for the loss of one of its former adherents. We even think that Marxism will only benefit from debate with such an opponent as Solzhenitsyn."
Medvedev has also gone further in criticising Solzhenitsyn's identification of Stalinism with Leninism. In Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn *In the years before prison and in prison itself, I thought for a long time that Stalin had given a fateful direction to the course of the Soviet state, Then Stalin quietly died. Hut how much has the course of our ship of state changed in fact? The particular personal imprint he gave to events was dismal stupidity, wilfulness and sell-glorification. Otherwise, he simply followed exactly in the footsteps.
LED PARTY ASTRAY
Medvedev replies: *Stalin did not "follow in the footsteps." In the very first wears after the revolution he did not always foliow in Lenit's footsteps. And curtainly allorwards, with every step he led the party astray.
Stalinisin in many respects-negatet -and is the bloody annihilation of Bolshevism and all revolu tonery forces, le a certain sense, it is a real counterrevolution.
Medvedev also adds 'T do not very mach like then: (tebcioos) ideals of Pictures of Solzhenitsyn with West German author Heinrich Boll were flashed across the world -he has been welcomed and feted as an enemy of socialism most just human society. way leycls.
Joliet Agorter