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

know that on the other side of him is a member of
the state security, also with a microphone who is
recording everything I say. You think that I'm
going to say something that is going to put me in
prison immediately? Of course I say: "It's
wonderful; I'm overjoyed."
But what is the value of such correspondents
if they simply transfer western techniques over
there without thinking things through?
You helped us for many years with Lend Lease,
but we've now done everything to forget this, to
erase it from our minds, not to remember it if at
all possible. And now, before I came into this
hall, I delayed my visit to Washington a little in
order to first take a look at some ordinary parts
of America, going to various states and simply
talking with people. I was told, and I learned
this for the first time, that in every state
during the war years there were Soviet-American
friendship societies which collected assistance
for Soviet people - warm clothes, canned food,
gifts and sent them to the Soviet Union. But we
not only never saw these; we not only never
received them (they were distributed somewhere
among the privileged circles) no one ever even
told us that this was being done I only learned
about it for the first time here, this month, in
the United States.
Everything poisonous which could be said
about the United States was said in Stalin's days.
And all of this is a heavy sediment which can be
stirred up anytime. Any day the newspapers can
come out with the headlines "Bloodthirsty American
imperialism wants to seize control of the world,"
and this poison will rise up from the sediment and
many people in our country will believe this, and
will be poisoned by it, and will consider you as
aggressors. This is how detente has been managed
on our side.
The Soviet system is so closed that it is
almost impossible for you to understand from here.
Your theoreticians and scholars write works trying
to understand and explain how things occur there.
Here are some naive explanations which are simply
funny to Soviet citizens. Some say that the Soviet
leaders have now given up their inhumane ideology.
Not at all. They haven't given it up one bit.
Some say that in the Kremlin there are some
on the left, some on the right. And they are
fighting with each other, and we've got to behave