"Renegades cannot expect impunity," Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev told a Moscow party meeting last week. "The Soviet public harshly denounces the abominable deeds of these double-dealers." Brezhnev was talking about the country's increasingly restless intellectuals, many of whom have al ready been subjected to show trials and long prison sentences for displeasing the state. Before the situation gets better for them, Brezhnev indicated, it will get much worse.
And so it already had. A few days before Brezhnev's speech, Attorney Boris Zolotukhin was expelled from the party, apparently for defending one of four young writers sentenced last January to prison terms ranging from one to seven years (TIME, Jan. 19). Along with Zolotukhin, the party also expelled five intellectuals who signed a formal protest against the star-chamber aspects of the trial. Far from dealing too sternly with the writers, the pro-government Literaturnaya Gazeta said last week, the courts dealt too lightly with them. Its solution: deport the dissident writers. "Instead of feeding such people at public expense in our prisons or corrective labor camps," wrote Editor Aleksandr Chakovsky, "it would be better to let them be supported by the taxpayers of the U.S., Britain or West Germany."
Dissension among Russia's artists seems to have spread well beyond literature. Calling a special press conference, Mrs. Ekaterina Furtseva, the Soviet Culture Minister, assured Western newsmen that "never have conditions for artistic creation in Russia been so favorable as now." She then went on to announce that a gala international ballet contest will be held in Moscow next year. Of course, the emphasis will be on "realism"—meaning that abstract dancing is out. "And we do not share the opinion of some ballet lovers who approve of the sexual direction that ballet has taken," added Mrs. Furtseva. "When you see sexual figures on the stage, it is unpleasant." That was too much for Contest Chairman Igor Moiseyev, director of the Bolshoi Ballet and the Moiseyev dance ensemble. "Sex," he bridled, "is not abstract." As newsmen roared their approval, Mrs. Furtseva glared: "I don't entirely agree with you." Coming from an official, those are ominous words in today's Russia.