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An identical chasm exists between Communism and the Russian national consciousness. It pains us that the West heedlessly confuses the words Russian and Russia with Soviet and U.S.S.R. To apply the former words to the latter concepts is tantamount to acknowledging a murderer's right to the clothes and identification papers of his victim. It is a thoughtless blunder to consider the Russians the "ruling nationality" in the U.S.S.R. The Russians were the recipients, under Lenin, of the first crushing blow. They suffered millions of victims (with the most outstanding killed off selectively) even before the genocidal collectivization of agriculture. At the same time Russian history was reviled. Russia's culture and its church were crushed. Russia's clergy, nobility, merchants and finally its peasantry were destroyed. Though the regime's blows fell next on the other nationalities, the Russian countryside today has the lowest standard of living in the U.S.S.R., and Russian provincial towns have the lowest priority in the distribution of consumer goods. In huge areas of our country, there is nothing to eat, and the purchases of U.S. grain do not improve the people's diet (the grain goes to military stockpiles). The Russians make up the bulk of the slaves of the Soviet state. The Russians are exhausted; their debilitation is becoming hereditary, their national consciousness has been debased and suppressed.
Nothing could now be further from the heart of the Russian people than a militant nationalism; the idea of an empire is repulsive to them. But the Communist regime watches its slaves carefully and takes special pains to suppress their non-Communist consciousness. The result: enormous labor camp terms for the proponents of freedom (Igor Ogurtsov—20 years, Vladimir Osipov—16 years, Yuri Orlov—seven years); the new arrests of priests, the spiritual teachers of the people (Gleb Yakunin and Dmitri Dudko); the destruction of the innocent Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers' Rights; the continuing mass imprisonment of young Christians; the exile of Andrei Sakharov.
In expectation of World War III the West again seeks cover, and finds Communist China as an ally! This is another betrayal, not only of Taiwan, but of the entire oppressed Chinese people. Moreover, it is a mad, suicidal policy: having supplied billion-strong China with American arms, the West will defeat the U.S.S.R., but thereafter no force on earth will restrain Communist China from world conquest.
Communism stops only when it encounters a wall, even if it is only a wall of resolve. The West cannot now avoid erecting such a wall in what is already its hour of extremity. Meanwhile, however, 20 possible allies have fallen to Communism since World War II. Meanwhile, Western technology has helped develop the terrifying military power of the Communist world. The wall will have to be erected with what strength remains. The present generation of Westerners will have to make a stand on the road upon which its predecessors have so thoughtlessly retreated for 60 years.