"Aleksandr I.Solzhenitsyn. Words of Warning to the Western World " - читать интересную книгу автора

masochism.
To understand properly what detente has meant
all these 40 years - friendships, stabilization of
the situation, trade, etc I would have to tell you
something, which you have never seen or heard, of
how it looked from the other side. Let me tell you
how it looked.
Mere acquaintance with an American, and God
forbid that you should sit with him in a cafe or
restaurant, meant a 10-year term for suspicion of
espionage.
In the first volume of Archipelago I tell of
an event which was not told me by some arrested
person, but by all of the members of the Supreme
Court of the USSR during those short days when I
was in the limelight under Khrushchev. One Soviet
citizen was in the United States and on his return
said that in the United States they have wonderful
automobile roads. The KGB arrested him and
demanded a term of 10 years. But the judge said
"I don't object, but there is not enough evidence.
Couldn't you find something else against him?" So
the judge was exiled to Sakhalin because he dared
to argue and they gave the other man 10 years. Can
you imagine what a lie he told? And what sort of
praise this was of American imperialism - in
America there are good roads? Ten years.
In 1945-46 through our prison cells passed a
lot of persons - and these were not ones who were
cooperating with Hitler, although there were some
of those, too. These were not guilty of anything,
but rather persons who had just been in the West
and had been liberated from German prison camps
by the Americans. This was considered a criminal
act liberated by the Americans. That means he has
seen the good life. If he comes back he will talk
about it. The most terrible thing is not what he
did but what he would talk about And all such
persons got 10-year terms. During Nixon's last
visit to Moscow your American correspondents were
repotting in the western way from the streets of
Moscow. I am going down a Russian street with a
microphone and asking the ordinary Soviet citizen
"Tell me please, what do you think about the
meeting between Nixon and Brezhnev?" And,
amazingly, every last person answered: "Wonderful.
I'm delighted I'm absolutely overjoyed!"
What does this mean? If I'm going down a
street in Moscow and some American comes up to me
with a microphone and asks me something, then I