THE SOVIET SECRET POLICE
Six, May I difter from Mr. Edward Crankshaw in regard to the analysis of Soviet methods which he makes in his extremely interesting review of The Dark Side of the Moon? I, of course, share his horror at the " deliberate cruelty perpetrated by a group of Nazi men, efficiently exterminating millions whom they regard as inferior human beings," but is he correct in describing Soviet deportations to forced labour merely as the work of " a group of men roughly and with an ecstasy of inefficiency preventing millions from upsetting a new way of life being laboriously worked out for the benefit of tens of millions " ? Mr. Crankshaw here ignores the fact that the deportations described were not of Soviet citizens, but of men and women of other countries. How could citizens of Eastern Poland, men and women of the humbler, as well as the richer, classes, deported as described between 1939 and x941, possibly interfere with " a new way of life " in Russia?
Nor can the deportation policy be explained, still less excused, on the grounds that, " for good or bad reasons, the Russians do not like the Poles." Is Mr. Crankshaw not aware that when the Russians annexed the Baltic States in 1940 they carried off tens of thousands, and that they did the same when they annexed Bessarabia? Is he also unaware that deportations from Central Poland have continued in spite of the well- known fact of the Polish Provisional Government's subservience to Moscow? And is it so certain that the " new way of life " is being worked out for the benefit of tens of millions? What about the terror shown by the Displaced Persons in the camps in Germany at the possibility of being sent to Russia?—Yours faithfully, KATHARINE ATHOLL (Chairman, British League for European Freedom). 66 Elizabeth Street, S.W. r.
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