Red exploiters
Sir: May I add a few remarks to Professor Hugh Seton-Watson's ar- ticle 'Red Exploiters' (9 January), every word of which is true? His analysis of our predicament vis-a-vis the Kremlin seems to call for some kind of agreed public standpoint :
1) As things are, both major British political parties are much more concerned with their domestic exchange of bowdlerised Keynes than with the defence of Europe.
2) No British government will act otherwise unless pressur- ised by a group of people who, day in day out, portray the Soviet threat and insist on counter-action.
3) The Kremlin is very sensitive to adverse criticism from the civilised world about concen- tration camps, pseudo-trials and the ludicrous persecution of creative minds. For inst- ancc, it finds it very hard to explain why near Moscow the world's greatest writer has to live in the garage of the world's greatest cellist.
4) Much could be done to curb the extravagances of the So- viet rulers, whom Hugh Seton-Watson correctly des- cribes as a 'vigorous and brutal social élite', simply by equating them with Hitler and his gang. The compari- son is becoming more just every day and is quite well understood, for example, by African politicians who have seen pictures of both Belsen and the Berlin wall.
5) The Kremlin is not only dan- gerous to the civilised world: It is also a suffocating bore. Westerners think of it as readily as they think of can- cer: thus they spend as much on defence as on education without taking the slightest interest in defence. But de- fence could become much more interesting if it ex- tended to systematic truth- promotion and lie-nailing.
6) The Russian 'second March revolution' can happen only through violent disagreement at the top, the defeat of the expansionists and a genuine thaw. This is perfectly pos- sible in due course provided European public opinion plays its part. So far it never has, except in emergencies, because the politicians have never been properly pres- surised by public opinion.
7) Last but not least, surely we owe it to the Russian people, which has shown such en- durance in war and peace, to do everything to persuade its government to decide to allow it to rejoin the human race.
Charles Janson
39 Edwardes Square, London w8
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