MY COUNTRY AND THE WORLD, by Andrei Sakharov. 109 pages (Collins Harvill) £2.25. Academician Sakharov’s latest book shows very clearly how his political views have changed as a result of the experiences suffered for his role as the Soviet Union’s number one dissident. In the summer of 1968, Sakharov first published his ideas on the … Read more
THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, Volume II, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 712 pages (Collins and Harvill Press). £4.95. This is an agonising heavy book to read which leaves the reader cold and empty inside. The great pen of Alexander Solzhenitsyn paints a picture of a different planet, a strange world of ragged “zeks” (camp slang for prisoners) their … Read more
TO DEFEND THESE RIGHTS: HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE SOVIET UNION. By Valery Chalidze, translated by Guy Daniels 340pp (Collins and Harvill) 4 pounds Valery Chalidze was a founder member of the Soviet Human Rights Committee together with the Nobel Prize winner, Andrei Sakharov. Chalidze was the legal expert of the group. His political weapons … Read more
SAKHAROV SPEAKS. Edited and with a foreword by Harrison E. Salisbury. 245 pages. (Collins and Harvill Press £3.00. This collection of Andrei Sakharov’s writings is a product of a great deal of work between the Academician himself and the well-known American journalist, Harrison Salisbury. Nearly half the book is taken up with Sakharov’s famous essay, … Read more
THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO 1918 – 1956. by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 660 pages. (Collins & Havill Press). £3. A leading dissident authoress, Lydia Chukovskaya, was recently expelled from the Soviet writers’ union. At the end of a two-hour meeting to condemn her works, she was allowed to speak and told the literary bureaucrats that Russian literature … Read more