(00:00:00) I Telephone from my home in London to various people inside the Soviet Union and from them I glean information about what's happening to the people who referred to and I pass that information on to various people various organizations in London and United States Again by using the telephone tonight is States. I've been phoning over the last few years to Washington to Boston to New York and various other places in order to see to it that the information is spread and I know from experience that once I've made that telephone call to the United States within a matter of hours. The information is right across the United States (00:00:41) what kind of information specifically is it that you're transferring (00:00:45) information such as the harassment or arrest or beating up of a dissident or a Jewish refuseniks information about the violation of Soviet laws inside the prison camp. Information about the repression of someone who's applied to emigrate or who has exposed the abuse of Psychiatry such example, recently Alexander pod rabbinic who together with one or two others as an ambulance orderly had seen from his own experience how Psychiatry was being we can say either abused or misused but in any event, he felt it was a gross abuse of human dignity and he passed the information out to the West I gave a great deal of what I got to Amnesty International in London who passed it throughout the world and at the same time, he was being harassed by the Soviet authorities for giving out this information. Eventually, they attacked him by arresting his brother. His brother was sentenced to a term of imprisonment and eventually he himself was put on trial. And is now serving a period of five years Exile up in the far north north east of Siberia and what's called the coldest place on Earth. This sort of information comes to me. I never actually spoken to pod rabbinic himself, but I've been in close contact with a number of his friends. You'll appreciate why I won't mention their name because they are still in the Soviet Union and I've spoken to them by telephone and they give me the information and I rely on them. I assume it's authentic and I pass it out again by telephone or by personal contact with people (00:02:32) presumably what you hear then is tale after tale of Woe and suffering minimal heroism what generally are the kinds of mistreatment that refused Knicks and dissident (00:02:46) General Kathryn. I would say is one of a hardening of the attitude of the Soviet authorities. We're here. Sometimes people in the west talking about a liberalization. I see no evidence of a liberalization. I see only a Hardening of the attitude of the authorities as the dissident movement grows. I used the word dissident in its widest sense because there are variations amongst the dissidents. There. Are those who want to reform the Soviet government. There are those who want to have more freedom for religion. There are those who are calling for the correct interpretation of Soviet law, which they say is being violated by the Soviet authorities themselves. There are a section completely apart the Jews and the Volga Germans who are not calling for any change at all in the Soviet government, but they're only asking to be allowed to immigrate in each of these cases. We find that the Soviet government are coming down the more and more heavily. I think perhaps the outstanding example is one whose name has become widely known throughout the world. That's Anatoly sharansky. He was probably treated in the way he has been Because he was a bridge you referred to me as a conduit perhaps of information. He was much more than that. He was a bridge between the different groups. You see at a very early age in his early 20s. He joined the Immigration Movement because he wanted to leave the country and go to Israel. He was refused permission to leave on the spurious grounds of being in possession of State Secrets, which of course it at a nonsense then he found that as a refuse Nick as we call these people who are refused permission to emigrate as refuse Nick. He drifted towards meeting other refuse Nixon and activists and he has a kind of charismatic personality which brought him to the for and also because he is not merely a Jew who wants to emigrate and a nationalist who wants to live in a country which he feels is that of his people as a human rights activist here. Instinctively Drew towards others who have the same kind of attitude and he became very close to Professor. Andrei sakharov who you probably know has been referred to as the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. He was the leader of the team which produce the hydrogen bomb and when mr. Khrushchev openly betrayed the promise he'd given to Professor sakharov not to explode the 50 Megaton bomb sir of turned away in disgust from his government and began then his own Civil Rights Campaign and he began to become aware of the abuse of civil rights inside the Soviet Union now Anatoly sharansky became friendly with professor sakarov. And because it's a sharansky is very fluent in English. He acted as interpreter for professor of to Western reporters, and therefore was frequently meeting Western correspondence and giving them details, not merely of the Jewish Immigration Movement but of the Civil Rights, Movement generally from there. He drifted onto meeting people like Professor Yuri orlov, Alexander Ginsburg and others who formed soon after the Helsinki agreement between the United States Western European powers and the Soviet Union. That was I think August 75 if I'm correct soon after that. They formed a Helsinki monitoring Committee in Moscow for the purpose of pointing out how the Soviet government were openly violating the solemn promises. They had just signed this spread and various other committees were set up probably with the help of people like sharansky and Professor Sullivan others in a number of other towns one was formed in Leningrad one was forming Kiev in Georgia in the town of Tbilisi and so on and the in a film that was made secretly in Moscow by a British television team. Shh. Excuse but not only on behalf of the Jews but also on behalf of the Volga Germans a group of people who've been settled in the Soviet Union since the time of Catherine the Great and the 18th century and were loyal Russians until Stalin decided in 1941. When the Nazis invaded that these people could be a disloyal element remove them from the Volga to Central Siberia. They've gradually over a period of very many years been allowed to move back there. But most of them are clamoring to get out want to live in Western Germany. They have exactly the same problems as the Jews are having unfortunately from their point of view. They haven't got the same public support from the Western public as the Jews in the Soviet Union are getting from Jews in the Western World. Anatoly sharansky detailed their plight on this television film that was made in Moscow. He also referred to Pentecostal list and Baptist who are suffering bitterly under the repression of the Soviet authorities and He was seen to be a bridge and a link between all the various groups. And therefore they were determined to destroy him and at the moment it looks if they are physically destroying him. I don't know if you've heard the reports of his health the end of August his mother visited him in just appalled prison, which is about 500 miles east of Moscow. She hadn't seen him for just over a year and she said he looked like a prisoner from Auschwitz. He was unable to concentrate on talking for any length of time. He is a man with a brilliant (00:08:34) mind as I recall it from seeing news photographs and film clip see he was very active and vigorous indeed as and slightly overweight. It seemed from pictures. No Seeley emaciated now and (00:08:48) yes, he's actually short and a friend of mine referred to him as the Napoleon of the Jewish dissident movement there when I mentioned to this to him on the phone, he said to me Is that because of my height or because my bald head he had a great sense of humor this of course was well before he was arrested Not only was he well built although short, but he was a football player or would you would call a soccer player and very active physically and with a brilliant mind he graduated from the Moscow State University of Moscow at the age of 16 degree in mathematics unheard of and they his mother said that not merely did he look like a prisoner from Auschwitz, but in fact, he was unable to concentrate in talking for more than 10 minutes at a time and he complained all the time of severe headaches and pain in his eyes. This is the way they are treating a man who is what I would call a hero when you referred before to the situation there I added heroics. I was thinking principally of a man like I'd only sharansky (00:09:55) do you ever or have you ever talked to those who have been in prison? To substantiate the stories that come in from relatives and (00:10:02) Friends indeed many times many times particularly to those who are now living in Israel. I've spoken to a number like your submission are Shimon Grill EOS Juri vodka, I could name dozens of them, but I think one name is most important for me to name that's Edward kuznets of who was one of the two who was sentenced to death in December 1974. What's known as the Leningrad Aeroplane trial remember a small group of Jews who in frustration at being refused permission over and over again in despair? They tried to steal a small 12C to aircraft and flight themselves out of the Soviet Union. We feel that the whole idea was implanted in their minds by a KGB agent provocateur. They were followed all the way through they were arrested before they even got to the plane instead of being charged with attempted theft of government property. They were charged with treason and this to a certain extent answers what you were asking me before and it M to leave the Soviet Union without official permission is considered a treasonable act and article 64 a of the criminal code of the Russian Federation Republic and it carries a punishment of death or 15 years imprisonment and in the case of Edward kuznetsov and marked them shits the one who was going to Pilot the plane they were both sentenced to death by an irony of Fate at the same time the Spanish government to sentenced to death to bask terrorists and the Soviet government had the impertinence to cry out at the barbarism of the sentence at the same time as they themselves sentence these two Jews who had committed the heinous crime of trying to leave the country illegally to death owing to the invidious comparison and to the outcry in the west these two had their sentences reduced to 15 years and very recently a few months ago our into the intervention of the American government. Because it's of them shits and several others of that particular group of Trials were released and flown to New York from where they went to Israel very shortly after they arrived in Israel within a matter of two or three days people with whom I work in England known as the 35s women's campaign for Soviet. Jewry brought Edward kuznetsov over to England there was going to be a Soviet exhibition in London. This was in May of this year. And at the same time these ladies 35 women's campaign conceived the idea of having their own press conference at the same time as the press conference opening the Soviet exhibition and they had Edward kuznets of as the main speaker. He knows a little English not a great deal. So when he came I sat with him through the night working on what he was going to say and I translate it into English for him and I set talking with him through the night and I was horrified as some of the stories he had to tell The conditions in the Soviet cams now. I've read his book prison Diaries, but even having read it and knowing what was in there having read the gulag archipelago over and over again. I was still horrified to hear it from the actual mouth of a man (00:13:13) who had suffered. No, was he sentenced to 15 years as a hard labor or was this the psychological (00:13:19) imprisonment that other nose is hard labor and I won't go into detail now about the conditions in those camps those hard labor camps, but I suggest to any people listen to this program who have no idea of it. They should read the gulag archipelago by Alexander solzhenitsyn and many other books read kuznetsov's prison Diaries. It's a horrifying account of brutality deliberately inspired brutality. Its sadism at its (00:13:49) worst. Now we've heard in the west of perhaps two dozen dissidents. Whose names come to mind. How many dissidents May there be in the Soviet Union. What is your best guess as to how many people a would like to see the government changed or be would like to leave all (00:14:07) together? It's a very difficult question to answer my contacts with the dissidents are not such that would tell me how many there are I do know that there are 80,000 Christians in prison Baptist. Pentecostal is another's 80,000 in prisons in a subpoena for the heinous crime of trying to teach religion to Children how many others there are various kinds it's very difficult to estimate the figure probably runs into very many thousands of the Jews who are trying to leave last year 1978. They granted permission to 30 mm. So I just over 30,000 to leave the Soviet Union. We know that a hundred and seventy thousand applied to leave as a gap of a hundred and forty thousand that one year alone this year probably the greatest figure for emigration so far. They're coming out at the rate of about 4,000 a month by the end of August. That's about three weeks ago. Just over 32,000 come out. We do know that each month on the average 16,000 are applying to leave which means that 1 in 4 is being given permission to leave. The numbers are building up at an alarming rate. We have lists of these refuseniks as we call them but the lists we know are very incomplete because the only names that we have on those lists are people who want to give their names and because we believe in human rights and human dignity, we would not dream of publicizing the names of anyone who'd not did not want his name to be put forward. Therefore. We only include on our lists those people who have given their names our lists run into about two to three thousand families, but we are confident that there are very very many more than that. There must be from last year and this year alone. Most of them are afraid to give their names to what we call the activists. They're afraid of repercussions. I don't realize that publicity is the best Safeguard they have (00:16:06) as far as I'm thinking in particular. Of the Soviet Jews who wish to leave the country. We know that their ability to leave the country now in greater numbers has come from some political pressure from other countries. I'm not exactly sure why the Soviet government softened on this issue particularly. I'm wondering if their fate will suffer perhaps from the recent defection of the Soviet artists. (00:16:31) Well, I'll come back at you. First of all and say that part of our fault is that where use a word like defection and it's used widely not only by yourself but via journalists and people generally to my mind that word should always be put in quotation marks because I see nothing in the way of defecting of a person wanting to leave the country in which he lives and particularly when we think of someone like ballet dancers or ice skaters. What in the name of God is there in defection for a ballet dancer to want to leave the country or heated? Is he betraying them? Is he giving away State secrets? Be harming the country not at all. But it's part and parcel of the whole Soviet communist philosophy that there's is the ideal society and that anyone who leaves their ideal Society to go to decadent capitalism is betraying the Soviet Union is betraying socialism betraying communism and so on we should not use the word Defector because we are falling into the Trap of using a Soviet terminology and therefore falling into the way of thinking the way they think it's not merely a question of semantics. Not merely a question of using words. It's a question of falling into their way of thinking now to answer the question that you put to me. I don't think that the fact that these people have decided to leave the Soviet Union is in any way harmful to the thousands of others who want to leave on the contrary. It gives publicity in the west to the fact that people like these two ice skaters who we are told lived a very comfortable and very pleasant life in the sub Union they felt Treated and they wanted to leave how much more so is it for the ordinary person in the street who feels that he is being discriminated against and the Jews are discriminated against and this is one of the main reasons that you'd want to leave many of them have been leaving living reasonably comfortable lives until the last few years, but recently anti-Semitism is growing a pace and many of them who leave today are not so concerned about going to Israel. This is why a number are coming to America now and coming to the Free World in the west because they are very worried at the fact that there is less and less opportunity for their children to get higher education hardly. Any these days are being accepted for University and they're worried about their children's education. And this is Again part of the total policy of discrimination against the Jews. This is why so many are leaving. I'm convinced that the quote unquote defection of these people can only help people in the To understand the reasons why the so much discontent inside the Soviet (00:19:12) Union for the Jews. Now in the Soviet Union, is it simply a matter that they are Jewish that they are being refused exit visas, or is it a more political than that? (00:19:25) Nothing in life is simple everything is complicated and in the subunit everything is even more complicated for these people. It's particularly the fact that they are Jews especially as many of them know nothing apart from the fact that on their internal passport a sort of identity card Point number five says nationality and every one of them carries the name Jew again against that on his passport. In addition. There is the feeling that they are being repressed and as individuals, they are not part and parcel of a community because no Jewish Community exists. They are discriminated against Jews, but they've got no advantages of being Use ukrainians are known as ukrainians this probably discrimination against them on the part of the Russians, but they feel they are part of the Ukrainian Community who live in the Ukraine the same thing applies to latvians lithuanians estonians was Becks and so on they all have their own area and their own Community. There is no Jewish Community because this was destroyed effectively by Stalin in the Years 1948 1952. And since then has been no possibility of Jews learning anything about the Heritage that are no books on the Hebrew language. No books on Jewish history philosophy culture or anything like that. And so a very large number of these people feel they are Jews, but don't know what it means to be a Jew. They just got this stigma of being a (00:20:56) Jew so there's discrimination then is dissimilar from the type of discrimination the Jews faced in the 1930s in Eastern Europe where they were full members of their communities (00:21:07) indeed it is and Jewish community in Germany was a very highly organized community and at the same time the anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union is not the same as existed in the 30s in Germany. I remember very vividly I'm old enough to remember when the first open attacks began on the Jews in the early 30s, and I remember seeing in the movies and the film documentaries and so on how the brown shirts the essay were beating up Jews in the streets of Berlin Jewish shops had their Windows smashed the large sign. Yoda was put together is there and boycott Jewish Goods was broadcast all through Germany. It's quite different in the Soviet Union today. There is a very subtle quietly growing discrimination. There is a fear that they could develop into a large-scale pogrom. This program was known to be being prepared in the last year's of Stalin's life when he had plans and documents have been seen now to prove this he had plans for the all the Jews in the major towns to be attacked in the streets. It was estimated about a half of them closed on 1/2 million would be killed and the streets the other one and a half to two million would then be transported to Central Siberia where they would be quietly done away with this was in January February of 1953 and of 52 is being prepared 50 January 5th, March 53. They were getting it under way. Fortunately Stalin died and the plan was brought to a halt. We fear that there's a possibility that this sort of thing could come alive again. It has not yet reached this (00:22:49) stage. Some people believe that Stalin was completely mad and that his passion overwhelmed his logic in many of these cases. Is it something that the government itself would carry out or would it take the impetus of one man in a top leadership position to push the surround is a (00:23:05) seal point. It's not merely The Madness of one individual today. It is official policy on the part of the Soviet government to promote this anti-Semitism it began soon after the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arabs in 1967 when numbers of Jews began to apply to leave the Soviet Union and they had their first kite which they flew I think I can put it in that way in Poland where there were very few Jews left. There were about six to eight thousand Jews left by 1969. Most of them had either been killed in the concentration camps or the remainder had fled and had gone by various ways to Israel 1969 the Polish government expelled all the remaining Jews almost all of them members of the Communist party and sincere Communists and sincere Patriots to Poland. They were all expelled. Most of them went to Sweden quite a number came to United States. We now have documented evidence that this was done on this Specific Instructions Not of the Polish government, but at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow, they instructed the polls what to do. It's now developing to the stage where the Soviet government is, officially encouraging and openly inciting anti-Semitism. Not one single day goes past without there being some vicious anti-semitic publication. Either in the press or in books in magazines cartoons cartoons, very reminiscent of the filthy stuff that was churned out in the 30s by dr. Goebbels radio and television and it's reached frightening proportions. So that this is not just one man's Madness. It's an official policy on the part of the Soviet government. And this is one of the things that's frightening the Jews and making them apply to leave in such large numbers. Although they know that many of them may face severe harassment because they apply to leave on the one hand the Soviet government wants to get rid of the Jews on the other hand. She won't let them go. It's an anomaly but I don't think I can answer that question. (00:25:17) There was a recent report. This was several months ago that US Census was taken in the Soviet Union and it was a census of population by race and it showed that the actual Russian race itself was a very small fraction of the total population of the Soviet Union and there was an end and Calluses which accompanied it which said that some of the repressive policies of the Soviet government and its so-called expansionist policy and controlling its satellite countries is due to the inherent in Security in that the Russian race has had for many hundreds of years or they've been repeatedly invaded and so on does this make any sense to you? Is there any yes an action perhaps (00:26:02) between quite correct the greater Russians or the Russians as compared with all the other communities the other nationalities, they aren't the largest in number. Although they are only a proportion of the whole mess of the Soviet Union. They make up less than 50% but they are the largest by number. I don't think it's so much insecurity. I think it's me Russian chauvinism and expansionism. They feel that they have the right to conquer the world and to own the world and in many respects Its Reflection of the German attitude of the Superman. Super race, I think they feel that they are the super race, whether it's a reflection and a reaction to their being considered subhumans as slabs by the Germans. I don't know but I'm sure that they have tremendous chauvinism and they are extremely narrow in their patriotism. They feel that they have the right to own and conquer the whole world. Not merely the Soviet Union how do (00:27:03) the activities of these dissidents affect how the Soviet government responds to the United States in in terms of for example salt too. Well, they've linkage is the (00:27:14) term. Yes, the Soviet authorities are very aware of the fact that they have a strong card to play in that people in the west are concerned about human dignity and human Freedom. They know that we are prepared to give a great deal to help the individuals who in trouble not only in the Free World but inside their world behind that Iron Curtain this from our point of view is a weakness. Because we are prepared to go out of our way to lose certain things to make concessions to the dictators to help individuals. But I think that it's fortunate for the Western world that the troops in Cuba has now come to the public eye because to my mind this is indicative of the way the Soviets treat their solemn promise. Now, I mentioned before Anatoly sharansky and Professor Yuri orlov and other dance and professor of in regard to the Helsinki monitoring agreement and I said then that they were exposing the violations of Helsinki which was a solemn promise signed by the Soviet government. And before the ink on their signature was dry. They were violating it. I am convinced they will do exactly the same with salt and I think the presence of the troops in Cuba is exactly the same sort of thing, which fortunately has come to the fore now and is exposing the hypocrisy of the other Soviet government and I think it's a very good warning to the Western World to be with Yeah of salt 2 or even if salt one because I'm convinced that the Soviet authorities will violate that as soon as it suits their purpose. You see the policy of the Soviet Communists is one that was laid down by Lennon many years ago, which is that truth is only to be used when it happens to be most convenient for us but a lie is usually much more convenient because we can manipulate a lie. This is the whole reasoning behind their philosophy. And I think that it's fortunate that Cuba has now brought the attention of more western states were not over in this sense particularly to the United States senators and congressmen. The dangers are relying on any promises made by the Soviet government. They have to get guarantees and tie up agreements which are concrete and how you're going to that. I don't know. I personally would give all I'm not a United States citizen. I have no right in this at all, but I have a right as an individual who could be affected by a Holocaust by our world war. Would give every support to the Senators who are prepared not to ratify salt because I think that ratifying salt 2 is playing into the hands of the Soviet imperialists who have the intention of Conquering the whole world. They will continue with a kind of policy. They have always used of trying to push in whatever Direction they can and if they can push the United States and Britain and France and the Western World generally in One Direction, they find resistance they will pull back and they'll pull push in another Direction Hercule a premier. So T is a policy which they all use go back in order to jump better somewhere else and this they will do whatever they see any weakness in the United States government. And this is why I would give a warning. I don't know how much my voice will be listened to our we give a warning to all members of the United States Senate and Congress be very very wary about any agreements. You're thinking of signing with the Soviet Union. (00:30:29) How did you become involved in (00:30:30) this? Well, you'll have gathered from the way. I've been speaking that I've got. No great love for the Soviet Union in my young days. I was Socialist as many of us were in the 30s and I was never a member of the Communist party, but I was inspired by the Soviet Union and what we thought was a socialist Paradise. I was very quickly disillusioned when I began to look at night. I remember very vividly the trials the perch Trials of the 30s and so on and there were many instances. I was telling big before we came in of the things. I remember of those days of the perch trials and how people in the west were deceived by them and then came 1939 the the infamous non-aggression treaty signed between the Soviet Communists and the national socialists of Germany and we were horrified. I was even more horrified in 1944 when watching the Red Army Advanced we saw we in those days we used to draw maps on the wall with red lines as the Soviet Army was advancing advancing and pushing the Nazis. And they got as far into Poland as Warsaw and they stopped on the banks of the River rissalah on the East bank and they waited deliberately waited until the Warsaw Revolt by Warsaw by polish Patriots had been crushed by the German Nazis. And then they Advanced ago. They wanted to make sure that there were no non-communists in any leading positions and I became horrified by the cynical attitude of these people. There was no question of him really looking after the interests of the ordinary people's of their own country or of the world. They were politicians pure and simple of the most hypocritical kind and I became very cynical of them. I'ma came I myself became affected by their cynicism but in the opposite direction and I knew very little about what was happening to the Jews in the Soviet Union as a Jew myself my family been in England for 300 years. We personally will not By the Holocaust we lost no relatives. Fortunately England wasn't invaded or my family would have gone right the rest of the Jews of Europe went but perhaps because we were not affected I and other members of my family. My brothers have always felt the sense of guilt that not sufficient was done to save those who did go in the Nazi concentration camps. And so I began to be concerned about what was happening in Soviet Union, but for a long time got no information and it's been explained by the title of a book that was published by a man named Elie Wiesel a Jew from Hungary called the Jews of silence. And for a long time. I along with many others thought that they were deliberately silent because they wanted no contact with the Western World and then I met one or two who had managed to get out and I heard their stories and again, I was horrified and I began Take an interest but didn't know how to do anything. Didn't know what to do until 1969 about a year before the Leningrad tiles are referred to previously a committee was formed in the area of London, which I live and they said they wanted to try to help dude. Get out in the Soviet Union by now. We had heard that some were trying to get out and I joined this committee. They then found that I could speak Russian. I learned it some years previously and they asked me if I would be prepared to make any telephone calls if they could find numbers I did that and I found two one first of all and then to another and the numbers began to build up and the people inside the Soviet Union were happy to find that the information they were giving me was being passed on a was being published because they heard about it over the BBC World Service or Voice of America or similar broadcasting systems. The people who were giving me the numbers and asked me to have phone were pleased to find that I was reliable and was making his telephone calls and was working at it quite a lot and so it built up of itself and really before I knew where I was I was making 10 12 15 calls a week it built up and the time came when I was getting message after message call after call that I was making from London with appeals letters to leaders in the west and so on and I would be sitting up all night translating them because I tape recorded all my own conversations and I would then pass them on the following day to people who dealt with them so that I found I was spending as much time at this as I was a (00:35:26) teaching you make it sound very simple as you just pick up the telephone and you get an international operator in your connected. I would I'm surprised I would think that there would be some sort of control. Calls coming in and going out of the Soviet Union (00:35:40) indeed. This is so it does sound simple the way I say it but it never has been simple in the earliest days and I started phoning it was complicated but not difficult, but there were very little very few problems in the way of making contact with the people. I wanted to speak to and I was often asked why is it you think that the Soviet authorities allowed these calls to go through and I usually give the answer that I felt that the Soviet authorities had been overtaken by technology and they didn't quite know what had hit them and they weren't fully aware of how the Immigration Movement was developing and then after a while when they realized what was going on and they had caught up with the technology of it. They let the calls go through in order that they could monitor what was being passed out and what information I was giving in or others were giving so I wasn't the only one telephoning I Be the one who's made most of the phone calls and most contexts. But many other people were phoning from Britain France and United States and Canada, but I think that they allowed it to go through as long as it suited their purpose from about 1972 onwards there began to cut telephones of Jewish activists and other (00:36:58) dissidents. They would refuse to allow these people to have telephones or oh, (00:37:02) yes telephone line was cut and then a short while later they send the maintenance men around who would room actually remove the telephone this happened over and over again, and although those of us who were concerned in this campaign protested to our governments. Neither British government nor the American government really did anything at all about it, which I find very regrettable because it's all part of what I was telling you before of how the Soviets will hook. You labeled me a sautee, they'll push and push whatever they find a soft underbelly and the communication system. The telephone system is part of the whole of that system. In many instances I say they cut telephones and it began to get more difficult for me to make contact. But as more people were applying more telephones were becoming available. And so I would from one person get a telephone number. I would folder that one until it was cut as more people were coming out. They would give me the numbers of people to whom I could telephone in the Soviet Union my calls were not only to Moscow but to many other places throughout the Soviet Union from as far west as Riga and Tallinn and as far east as ill Quartz Creek, I think on one occasion I see your phone to her barofsky, but I didn't get through but I did get to irkutsk which is in the far Central east of Siberia on several occasions. There came a time when I realized that the Soviets were going to make difficulties in getting through and the last for the last 18 months. Two years is been getting more and more difficult to phone Moscow from Landon is reasonably easy because we have direct dialing from my homeland and I can dial to anywhere in the United States anywhere in France. And anyway in most countries in the world and in the Soviet Union, I can dial Direct to Moscow but not to any other town. I now find that when I dial and get through and start to speak as soon as I speak the language is cut now, I don't know if it's because they monitor listening on these calls knows my voice and cats it or whether by some electronic device my voice Sparks off some switch which cut it off but in very many instances by no means all of course, otherwise, I wouldn't get through at all, but in very many instances as soon as I start talking the line gets cut so they are very well aware of me and they are slowly steadily getting a hold on it, but we have to try to be one step ahead and so far we have been all the way through. (00:39:34) Do you think that the in the west that people who are doing work that you are doing will be able to keep ahead or will their simply come a time when phone service will be terminated and we won't hear anything more from from dissidents and refuse necks and (00:39:49) others I hesitate to forecast anything that will happen in the future in the Soviet Union, but I think a lot depends on the perseverance and put in acetate of people in the west at one time the the dissidents and the Jews were the people of Silence but nevertheless news did filter out. I think now it's going to take a major effort on the part of the Saudi authorities to close that voice down completely because now they know that the Western world is fully aware of the discontent inside the Soviet Union. (00:40:22) Referring now to those who have changed their allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States the artists who have recently left that country and decided to stay in the west and also the dissidents who were turned over in exchange for the two Soviet spies. What do we learn from these people? (00:40:42) I don't think they can teach us a great deal because we know so much about the conditions. I think we can learn a lot from what they tell us, but from what we see in them that as I said earlier people like the to ice skaters Champion ice skaters Olympic champions of the sixties, I believe they were living at the highest level in the Soviet Union with two cars with a very comfortable apartment ability to move out the Soviet Union whenever they wanted to with groups to move anywhere inside the Soviet Union. They were prepared to give up a great deal to leave. It says something for the system inside. This is what we have to learn from their (00:41:19) departure are these people going to be reduced? To Simply do you think to to political pawns as it were? I (00:41:27) think it'd be very regrettable. If we drop into the Soviet way of thinking that we allow them to become Pawns in a game. They're not pawns a human beings all of them. And when I refer to them, I mean not only those dissidents but all the 260 odd million people the Soviet Union, they're all human beings just as human beings all over the world to my mind Vietnamese Cambodian American anyone else are human beings and it's because I'm concerned about human beings human dignity that I mean this campaign now, I'm not concerned only with users Jews, although they are my primary interest because I'm a Jew I'm concerned with human dignity. I think it'd be a great mistake if we allow them to become Pawns in our game, but I think what we should all bear in mind is something that was said by Stalin I beg your pardon by Lenin very many years ago when referring to dealings with the West he said when the time comes for us to hang the This they will fall over themselves to sell us the Rope. (00:42:26) How do we avoid this though? You already caught me and it a couple of times thinking thinking of the merely as inanimate objects, if you will and not as human beings, how can we help them on the one hand but avoid the political complications that we have had with the Soviet Union where our politicians and leaders many times can only think of them in terms of an exchange of freedom for them for technology and so (00:42:54) on. I think that firmness on the part of western politicians is most important the firmness that I can see now being portrayed in regard to the Cuban troops, and I'm pleased to see so many more American politicians are standing up firmly the more politicians in the west show firmness and bring pressure on the Soviet government the more they will be aware that they cannot push a soft underbelly and the more People in the west are prepared to realize what a brutal totalitarian medieval dictatorship. This is the more I think they will be prepared to stand up to it. This is what has to be done. (00:43:32) Finally. Do we know what will happen to men? Like Anatoly sharansky sharansky comes to mind because I guess he is the most well-known. (00:43:42) Well, you know, the name should run ski has come to be so widely known to you and many others because the people who are concerned about the campaign in the west have made his name known we have pushed his name. I think we have got to keep on pushing his name and other names in order to see to it that Anatoly sharansky does not perish inside a Soviet prison and the more we press the more the cipher his position will be there's got to be more and more pressure from the west and there's a God-fearing individual and I think I'm probably speaking to a God-fearing person now, I think we must pray to God that he will guide us in that direction.