In May of last year, the Fourth Congress of Soviet Writers assembled in Moscow to hymn the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The party hacks were in full control, and neither Solzhenitsyn nor any other dissenter was permitted to mount the rostrum. So Solzhenitsyn put his protest in the form of a letter to the congress that was circulated privately among the delegates and soon dominated all the corridor discussion. It has become the credo of dissenters not only in Russia but in Eastern Europe as well. Excerpts:
Since I am unable to speak from the platform, I would ask the...
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