Two well known critics of American aggression in Vietnam have issued statements expressing their disquiet over the recent trial of writers in the Soviet Union: Bertrand Russell: There is an influential hody of people in the West which is always ready to condern as wicked anythinr that happens in the Soviet Union, whilst at the sare time boasting of the ‘liberty’ and 'democracy' @ joyed in the so-called Free World, Such people Jive in a black-and-white world and show no willingness to judge questions on their merits. Those of us in the West who have struppled cover the years against these Cold Warriors have welcomed the encrmous changes in the Soviet Union in the past 15 years, changes which have undoubtedly led to greater human happiness and freedom, These admirable developments are endanpered »y the mock trialiust held in Moscow. So intolerably unjust were the procedures of the court that even the official journal of the British Cormunist Party, normally a faithfuly. spokesman for the Soviet Union, felt compelled to publish its criticisms, The Soviet writers should be retried before an open court and have the right to defend themselves fully.
Utes *. ; Mary McCarthy: A historian might wonder how it is that in countries wher freedom of speech can lead and has often led to a prison sentence, speech has a value and an honest directness that we in the tr-diticnally free countries almost envy. . With you speech is a kind of action, while with us it is, more and more, words. —Braveend blunt speech is coming fror the writers of your gountry today, and from Spain, where only this week a young writer has been tried for Speaking the truth in an article and risks two years in prison, Our problem, as writers in America and in England, is to make authority listen when we! talk. - ‘In this at least you have succeeded. It was like the problem Tolstoy Faced with the Czar, who cleverly refused to goal him for his subversive utterdrices. and only coaled his followers, This left Tolstoy feline like a hypocrite in other words, a play-actor - which is sorewhat our situation.’ Your gesture may, nevertheless, help us who are in opposition against our /§/?/ own governments, which justify the war in Vietnam on the ground, among '° * others, that it protects the right of speech which they claim does not and cannot exist in communist countries. You and Sinyavsky and Daniel and Galanskov and Winsburg are bent on proving that it can.