orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (07/18/84)
Mike Musing suggested that the Letters for Peace campaign was useless because the Letters would not get through. He also suggested that a better method would be to support radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union. There may be problems with getting letters through to the Soviet people. But the point of a campaign like Letters for Peace is personal contact and friendship-not more broadcasts of rhetoric controlled by either government. The people on both sides , East and West , have a vital interest in insuring the world and mankind's survival--if Americans knew Russians as friends they would not want to kill them, and neither do the Russian people want to kill the American people. It is the governments obsessed with power politics who threaten humanity's survival-not the people under those governments. In fact the Peace Movement in Eastern Europe has been generally ignored by the press, but it is important nonetheless. Rude Pravo, the official Czechoslovakian newspaper reported a spate of letters from young people and others calling on their government NOT to install new Soviet missiles in response to the deployment of American cruise missiles in Europe. President Dwight Eisenhower predicted: "I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than are governments. I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it." The American and Soviet peoples have both been continually told by their governments to think of the other side, the families, children, and hard-working people they are threatening to kill, as "enemies". It is time to recognize that the Soviet and American people have a common stake in stopping the arms race-regardless of their governments. That is what Letters for Peace is all about! Tim Sevener Bell Labs - Whippany
wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (07/25/84)
> The American and Soviet peoples have both been continually told by > their governments to think of the other side, the families, children, > and hard-working people they are threatening to kill, as "enemies". > > Tim Sevener Sorry, but the above is nonsense. I will not speak of what the Soviets may have told their people, but I have been constantly barraged over my entire life by distinctions between the Soviet government/economic system and the peoples of the USSR. Yes, they are different. Does this mean, though, that these people are wonderful, virtuous souls who happen to be imprisoned by a super-powerful oligarchy using vast numbers of secret police to maintain their power? No, it doesn't. Who do you think the secret police are recruited from, anyway? The Soviet people, every man, woman, and child, are to at least some degree responsible for the continued existence of their foul government and the continuation of its loathsome philosophy. I DO blame them. They are continuing to try to live peaceful and uneventful lives, as easily as possible, when instead they should be rising up in a wave of righteous indignation, slaughtering all government officials, and completely dismantling the organizational structure of the USSR and its component states. Sure it would be hard -- their government has made sure that they have few, if any, arms. It IS a case of bare hands and rocks against tanks. Many, if not most, would die. It is still worth it, and they should be expected to do it. The fact that the common soldiers obey orders instead of turning their weapons on their officers and the KGB cadres, the fact that the factory workers continue to produce, even sloppily or shoddily, instead of trashing their machines and burning down their factories, the fact that the teachers teach, the doctors treat, and the dancers dance, means that these people are supporting the Soviet system. Until they stop doing that, they really ARE our enemies. When they do rebel (Hungary in 56, Czechoslovakia in 68), we have failed to do what we should -- to immediately get them armaments to enable any revolt to continue and expand. We are failing to get enough support right now to the Afghans. We are either often our own enemies, or perhaps the "commies-under-the-bed" folks have something in what they claim; in any case, we have failed to encourage and support peoples under the Soviets to throw off their shackles. So we are not blameless. But the man-in-the-street in Moscow is not a saint, either. It is his cooperation that keeps the tanks moving down the roads to Kabul, and keeps the Kremlin bosses in caviar and vodka. If I could type in Greek, I'd do it here -- there is a saying that translates as "Freedom or Death". There is no other honorable choice. Will Martin